10/1/23 - Come to the Table: A Beautiful Mind - Philippians 2:1-13

Come to the Table: A Beautiful Mind

Philippians 2:1-13

October 1, 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=0MaJK4wLnrs

According to one historian, Roman society in the first century had become the “most status-symbol-conscious culture of the ancient world” and Philippi was the quintessential Roman colony.  Named for Phillip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, it was a retirement community for veterans of the Roman army and a city saturated in social hierarchies.  People displayed their status by what they wore, where they were seated, the offices they held, the property they acquired and whether their family names were chiseled on buildings.  [1]

Humility was never considered a virtue in ancient Rome.  If we are going to understand this part of Paul’s letter, we have to remember that. The church in Philippi is experiencing conflict. Paul appeals to them to be united in Christ. He knows that to give in to another person, to back down from an argument, to let another person’s needs or concerns prevail over your own – that is highly counter-cultural and therefore will not happen without intentional effort. 

So he reminds them our example is not found among society’s elite, but in Christ. He borrows the language of a first-century hymn and appeals to them to have the mind of Jesus who did grasp his divine status, did not hold on to his power as God, but let it go for the love of the world. Paul begs them “Have that same mindset. Adopt the beautiful mind of Christ.”   

Some years ago the movie A Beautiful Mind told the story of a Nobel Prize winner who struggled with schizophrenia. His breakdown left him unable to distinguish between what was real and what was not real. This is the struggle faced by the church at Philippi and often by many of us – we cannot distinguish between what real power is and what it is not. People often think that real power can be leveraged or earned or purchased or won, but exactly the opposite is the case.  Jesus reveals the true power which is also the essence of God.  He sets aside competition.  He does not act for personal gain or status. 

Because we misunderstand power so thoroughly, we often think that Jesus gives up power, but only temporarily.  We think that God continues to hold all the power. What is much harder for us to conceive is that Jesus is in the form of God and does not grasp after equality with God, because that is not in God’s nature. God is love.  God created a world that was very good out of love.  Just like Jesus, God self-emptied in order to make room for a creation to function separately, to allow freedom.  This is the nature of the Triune God, to bow in relationship to each other. This is the nature of the power at the center of the universe.

We have to understand this letter carefully because our context is different from Phillipi. On the one hand, our culture is also status-conscious.  We may enjoy a sense of worthiness by the kind of transportation we use or where we live or what we wear or the titles or degrees that come after our names.  Or for the number of followers we have on social media or how many Likes we can get. We can easily be self-absorbed and self-important.

But on the other hand, humility is now considered a virtue in many circles, especially among Christians who have taken Paul’s words to heart. And so we may try to out-do each other being humble. It’s like what happened in the ancient church during Lent.  The priest prostrated himself on the floor, saying, "God, before You I am nothing." Immediately the richest man in town prostrated himself on the floor, saying, "God, before You I am nothing." Right after that the town beggar prostrated himself on the floor, saying, "God, before You I am nothing." And then the rich man whispered to the priest, "Look who thinks he's nothing."

“Many Greek texts include a crucial word in verse 4 that does not appear in some English translations. This word can be translated as “also.” With also included, the verse reads something like this: “Each of you not considering your own interests but also the interests of each of the others.” We live in a world where some of us have been socialized to look out too much for our own interests at others’ expense. Conversely, others of us have been trained to look out only for the interests of others at our own expense. But a truly harmonious community—a community of comfort, encouragement, consolation, and strength—calls for balance: each one looking to others’ needs while also not ignoring their own.”[2]

The Rev. Liz Cooledge Jenkins writes, “Maybe this is what self-emptying looks like—not that we make ourselves nothing, as some English versions translate verse 7, but that we empty ourselves both of arrogance and of self-belittlement. That those of us tempted toward narcissism are met with loving accountability from our communities. And those of us tempted to think our own needs aren’t important find joy and true fellowship with those who consider our concerns essential.”[3]

Writing from prison, Paul says “Make my joy complete. Adopt the beautiful mind of Christ.” 

What does this look like in every-day life? Theologian William Placher uses an illustration from the world of basketball.  In basketball, the players who are always asking ‘How am I doing? Am I getting my share of shots at the basket?’ they are the ones who never reach their potential. The best players are the ones who lose themselves in an effort to be a part of the group. They get caught up in the game and forget about themselves. And isn’t that the case with all of us in whatever we do? An artist becomes lost in the work; lovers become lost in their beloved; workers are excited about a common enterprise. You toss aside that part of yourself that is always watching how you are doing. And in that self-forgetfulness, you become most fully yourself.[4]

That is where the joy comes in -- when you get caught up in doing what you are doing for its own sake, not because it makes you look good to others or adds something to your resume. We find joy when we are being the people God created us to be. Joy breaks out as we are freed to be our most authentic selves.  And as we allow others that same freedom.

The first time I saw a whale, years ago, I had no idea what I was in for. We got on the whale watch boat because it sounded like a good adventure with our kids.  After we had braved the wind and the waves for about an hour, the ship slowed down and then . . . a humpback whale launched itself into the air.  And I was simply awestruck.   My heart sped up and much to my surprise, tears were streaming down my face.  The name for that was joy.  Pure joy at witnessing a creature doing what it was created to do.  It jumped out of the water and turned around in the air and splashed down.  Then it did it again.  And one more time.  Then it slapped the water with its tail and went on its way.  Being itself was enough. 

Some of us need to empty ourselves of arrogance and be the wonderful, ordinary humans that God created us to be. But some of us also need to empty ourselves of self-belittlement. We need to know the joy of authenticity, to delight in being ourselves and allowing others that same joy. 

Cole Arthur Riley is a Black Christian in her 30’s.   I find her writing to be full of wisdom and healing.  She grew up in a home full of noise and laughter, but she didn’t feel it.  Later she would be diagnosed with anxiety and depression.  Everyone else would be dancing in the kitchen while she hung out in the bathroom.  She says that it took a long time for her to realize that it was not that her family wanted her happy; it was that they wanted her close. They didn’t want for her the kind of sadness that would alienate her.

She mentions Marie Kondo who said to pick up a possession and if it sparks joy, to keep it, but if not, to let it go.  In her book This Here Flesh, she writes “I wonder if we were to lift our own selves up, how many of us would end up throwing ourselves out along with the bread ties and the jeans that don’t fit? ”[5] 

Writing to the Philippians, Paul was urging them to be who they already were in Christ Jesus, the people of worth who God created them to be, not the people who needed to track their status to prove it.  I hear echoes of Paul in the words of Cole Arthur Riley as she writes within our culture. She says “Joy, which once felt [frivolous to me] has become a central virtue in my spirituality.  I am convinced that if we are to survive the wait of justice and liberation, we must become people capable of delight.  And people who have been delighted in.”

“Some of us go our whole lives without ever being – or rather, knowing that we are – truly enjoyed by a person.

We can become cynical about communal affirmation, hoping that our affirmation of self will suffice. We try to meet our self-hatred with the sound of our own voice, because this, for whatever reason, is seen as a superior strength. But I think we were made to be delighted in.  And I think it takes just as much strength to believe someone’s joy about you as it does to muster it all on your own.  We shouldn’t need to choose self-affirmation at the expense of the affirmation of another.  I think we were meant for both.”[6]

Beloved ones, God is at work within us and delights in us.  May we know this.  May we revel in the freedom and joy of it. May we delight in others as God delights in them.  Thanks be to God.

[1] Cynthia A. Jarvis 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. 343

[2] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/lectionary/october-1-ordinary-26a-philippians-2-1-13

[3] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/lectionary/october-1-ordinary-26a-philippians-2-1-13

[4] William Placher, Narratives of a Vulnerable God (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1994)

[5] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (New York, Convergent Books, 2022), p. 167

[6] Cole Arthur Riley, p 159-160

9/24/23 - Come to the Table of Grace - Philippians 1: 21-30; Matthew 20: 1-16

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nichzeBQ2yc

9/17/23 - Come to the Table: Pursuing Peace - Romans 14:1-12

Come to the Table: Pursuing Peace

Romans 14:1-12

September 17, 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=VF-ajxGuMek

I was at the home of a church family, in a church much like this one.  We had shared a delicious dinner and were still sitting at the table when a young child in the house popped out of her seat and went to the front door. Apparently, she and her father had exchanged some signal that I had missed. Still inside the house, she opened the door and yelled

“Go Yankees!”   

A neighbor out for a walk on the sidewalk immediately hollered back “Go Red Sox!” 

“Yankees”

“Red Sox”

This exchange continued with vigor on both sides and with encouragement from within the house until the neighbor was out of range. 

I may be rushing in where angels fear to tread, but I’m just telling the truth if I point out that we have both Yankees and Red Sox fans among us.  There might also be some people who cheer for a football team other than the Giants here too, but I can only handle one sports illustration per sermon. 

Back to the Yankees and the Red Sox . . .

Some people say that baseball is “just a game” and others know that it is the very best metaphor for the meaning of life.  Which side you come down on and whether you cheer for the Yankees or the Sox or someone else probably has more to do with who raised you than your systematic theology, even if you claim baseball as your theology. 

This kind of division is something like what was going on in the Roman church.  Their conflict was about food, not baseball.  We aren’t sure about the details.  The difference of opinion might have been about whether or not a person needed to keep Biblical dietary laws in order to please God.  It might have been about whether eating meat sold in the market after a portion was sacrificed to the Roman gods mattered to God.  In any case, there was a division between those who ate meat and those didn’t. 

For some, this was a deeply rooted cultural issue.  To eat meat that was not kosher or might have been sacrificed to idols went against everything they had been taught from childhood.  To others, who had been raised in different families, it was of absolutely no significance.  Maybe they were Gentile Christians who had never observed food purity laws.  Maybe they were Christians who believed that the Roman gods didn’t exist and so sacrifices made to them had no meaning. 

There were serious conflicts in the early churches about these questions.  About a decade earlier, in writing to the church at Galatia, Paul had strong words against Peter who had separated himself from Gentile Christians during meals.  He also chastised the Galatians for celebrating some days as more holy than others. But he has had some time to reflect.  Here in Romans, perhaps we are hearing from a more mature Paul who is speaking in a more calm and considered tone.[1]

The Galatian church also seemed to be requiring new Christians to adopt Jewish practices related to food and circumcision.  Paul was adamant that that was not necessary.  But, in Rome, no one was requiring adherence to Jewish traditions as a test of faith. What was happening in Rome was that people were treating each other with contempt.  Meat-eating Christians were looking down on vegetarian Christians.  What Paul is concerned about is the absence of love in the congregation. 

We have different faith practices and different beliefs because we have different life experiences.  Some of us have lived through difficult events which either profoundly changed our minds or else strongly reinforced what we had always understood to be true.   We may feel like our faith has been hard-won. I grew up in a household where the only opinions that seemed to matter were those of the grown-ups.  I was a long ways into adulthood before I claimed my own voice,  but once I did, I knew that I was entitled to my opinion and I often thought that everyone else was entitled to it as well. 

Last week, Edith and I heard a report from the sociologists who are directing the study within the Thrive project.  The discussion was about differences within our congregations on the issue of racism.  A survey of congregations within the Alliance of Baptists was taken at the beginning of the project. Many of you participated in that.  Among the results of that survey were these – 85% of respondents agreed that they were motivated to work for racial justice and 88% said that the Bible teaches to stand up for the oppressed.  If we turn that around, it means that 15% of the members of Alliance churches indicated that they are not motivated to work for racial justice and 12% believe that the Bible does not teach us to stand up for the oppressed. 

That seems so much harder to deal with than which baseball team you cheer for or whether you are a vegetarian or carnivore.  The majority of these progressive Baptists might easily have contempt for those who hold the minority opinion.  But that is precisely what Paul warns against – we are not to dismiss those who do not believe like us or vote like us or live like us.  They do not answer to us. They answer to their own conscience and to God.  It does not mean that we cannot talk about our differences.  I believe we should. It means that we cannot write each other off.

In verses 7-8, Paul writes, “ We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

Remember that this is a community with internal divisions, but also a minority community greatly at odds with the surrounding culture.  These Roman Christians may quite literally be the only Christians their neighbors will ever know.  So, living to the Lord means that they represent the God of Jesus.  They represent Jesus everywhere they go.  They represent the others in this congregation.

Our culture prizes the rights of individuals to speak and act for ourselves.  But it is still true that when some of us are out in the world, by no choice of our own, we represent all white people.  When some of us are out in the world, by no choice of our own, we represent all black people. I have been the first and only woman pastor that some people know, and so they evaluate all women pastors everywhere based on my words and actions.  There is more at stake that our petty squabbles or even our most serious disagreements.  What we do in some situations may make all the difference in whether peace will prevail.

Aman Ali is a American whose parents emigrated from India.  He is Muslim.  He was 16 years old on September 11 2001. On September 11, 2015, he offered this reflection on that day:

Fourteen years ago today, I almost beat the living snot out of a kid in my high school. It was the last class of the school day, and everyone was glued to the TV in the room . . .

The teacher walked out of the classroom for a second and when she did, a kid in my class stood up and said "Man, I hope we bomb Afghanistan back into the Middle Ages where it belongs."

I remember every word and every moment.

I turned around and looked at him and said "Why? They didn’t  do anything. Yes, lets go after who did this, but why do you want to bomb thousands of people who had nothing to do with it?"

He looked at me in disgust and said "Are you seriously defending them?" as he pointed to the footage on the TV of the planes hitting the buildings.

I said "Of course not. I'm just saying what good does bombing all those innocent people do?"

Then he goes "I bet it was your father flying that plane."

And as if it was some kind of Pavlovian reflex, I grabbed him by his shirt and came inches away from punching him in the face . . . The only thing that stopped me milliseconds before doing it was the look he gave me.

He had a smug smile on his face as if he was telling me "Yep, I knew it."

I froze when I saw that smile. I knew I had lost this argument because I essentially reinforced everything he believed that I was trying so hard to passionately counter.

I let go of his shirt and pushed him away from me. He continued to stare at me with that smile telling me again and again "Yep, I knew it."

Thankfully the teacher wasn't in the room when that happened, otherwise I probably would have gotten suspended. But the fact that nothing happened to me physically didn't take away the pain and regret I still have from that moment.

To this day I randomly have nightmares about this incident, thinking about his smile telling me "Yep, I knew it" again and again and again. What if I was the only exposure to Muslims he ever had? What if that's the opinion he carries about Muslims for the rest of his life? What if he goes around at dinner parties and tells others "Those Moslems, man. I had a class with a Moslem once and the dude tried to punch me for no reason at all."

And in unison, everyone at the party would go "Yep, I knew it."

I woke up this morning realizing what the date was and uttered "Oh God, here we go" to myself. I pulled out my phone to see what I missed while I was asleep and noticed a Facebook message. It was from the kid I tried to punch. I haven't spoken to him in 14 years ever since that moment. What was he messaging me for now? He told me how difficult it is to think about that day because he can't forget all the hurtful things he said to me and he profusely apologized. I was like "Whaaaaaaaaa?" and gave him my phone number and asked him to call me.

We talked and I asked him what he's been up to since high school. He said he spent two U.S. army tours deployed to Afghanistan and got to interact with hundreds and hundreds of people that were nothing but warm to him. Night after night, he said he'd be invited to the poorest of poor people's houses for food eating some of the best things he's ever tasted. The endless supply of love, hospitality and goodwill he got from people there were a constant reminder of that hateful moment as an ignorant teen he wanted to bomb this country mercilessly and the hurtful things he said about my dad.

"I deserved to be punched." he said. "Sometimes I really wish you did."

And that's when I realized I'm really glad I didn't. Because we never would have been able to have this conversation 14 years later.[2]

Beloved ones, may we learn to recognize God’s image in those who are not in our image, whose language, choices, behavior and convictions are not the same as ours.  As Paul writes near the end of this chapter,  “let us pursue the things which make for peace and the building up of one another.”   May it be so for you and me.  Amen.

[1] The work of Mary Hinkle Shore on this text was very helpful to me this week. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-24/commentary-on-romans-141-12-2

[2] Aman Ali on his Facebook page, September 11, 2015

https://www.facebook.com/amanalistatus/posts/pfbid02cbWZFGBFvGs8TAtwrNDW2Emvnw1QSSRpWvVM67Atu8WV3Vuw5u6YsXSqXD8FAqzkl

9/10/23 - Come to the Table of Love - Romans 13:8-14; Matthew 18:15-20

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAZK7NkmaDY

9/3/23 - Come to the Table: Lavish Hospitality - Romans 12:9-21; Matthew 16:21-28

Come to the Table: Lavish Hospitality

Romans 12:9-21 Matthew 16:21-28

September 3, 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=k8S-XXi45zk

Many people would say that we live in a hostile world. It is trendy to speak of how polarized Americans are, of how difficult it is to have a civil conversation with those who disagree with you.  We are quick to blame each other and harsh words often escalate into acts of violence. We sometimes act as though this kind of hostility and polarization is a new thing.

Let us quickly remember the situation of the early church in Rome. At first that church, like all of the early churches, was mostly a congregation of Jewish Christians.  But then, the Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews from Rome. That included Jewish Christians.  The letter to the Romans seems to reflect a situation in which Jews are returning to Rome a few years later, after Claudius died.  So imagine this: Christian Gentiles have been worshiping Israel’s God and  celebrating Jesus as Messiah for years, without any Jews present at all. It becomes easy to forget the Jewish roots of the faith. Then, the Jews return, including Christian Jews.  And people have to figure out how to live together in one faith community. [1]

Today we have Protestants and Catholics.  Today we have mainline and evangelical Protestants.  But right near the beginning, one of the biggest threats to the gospel were the cultural and social and theological differences between Jewish and Gentile Christians.  Talk about being polarized.

Those Roman Christians might have been at odds with each other, but they were even more at odds with the dominant culture where it was their patriotic duty to worship the Roman gods and goddesses.  Because of their allegiance to Jesus, both Jewish and Gentile Christians were often viewed as atheists and trouble-makers.

Church life was difficult because of one set of cultural conflicts and civic life was difficult because of another set of cultural conflicts.  Paul is appealing to them to build up the community, inside and outside the church because of the love of God demonstrated by Jesus.  “Let love be genuine, hold fast to the good,” Paul says. 

He provides a long list of practices by which they might embody that genuine love.  For just a few minutes, let’s focus on verse 13, which says “contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.”  That one verse has an internal focus – the needs of the saints – and an external focus – hospitality to strangers.  It implies a balance.  We are to care for insiders and outsiders in equal measure. 

Biblical hospitality is more than treating others with good manners or setting the table so that every piece of silverware is in the right place.  It is about extending a radical welcome because everyone needs a place to belong.  It is about being a community of grace and mercy where transformation happens.   

Too many times, churches have failed the most basic forms of hospitality.  Fred Craddock was a nationally respected Disciples of Christ preacher and teacher when he died a few years ago. When he was a young pastor he served a church in the hills of eastern Tennnessee. Years later, he went back to that church.  He took his wife Nettie along for the ride because she had never seen it.

On the way, he told her about his experience in that church.  Oak Ridge National Laboratory was nearby.  It was expanding and new families were moving into the area. The young pastor Fred urged the congregation to call on the newcomers, to invite them to church.

“Those people wouldn’t fit in here” the church members said. 

A week later, there was a congregational meeting.  One of the longtime members said, “I move that in order to be a member of this church, you must own property in the county.” The motion passed, over the pastor’s objections.

When Fred and Nettie pulled up to the old church building, years later, it looked to be a busy place, much busier than he remembered. The parking lot was full — motorcycles and trucks and cars packed in there. And out front, a great big sign: ‘Barbecue, all you can eat.’

It was restaurant, so they went inside. The pews were against a wall; the organ pushed over into the corner. There were all these aluminum and plastic tables, and people sitting there eating barbecued pork and chicken and ribs — all kinds of people.  Thinking about all the people in Jerusalem in the book of Acts, preacher Fred thought to himself – “there are Parthians and Medes and Edomites and dwellers of Mesopotamia, all kinds of people here. 

He said to Nettie, “It’s a good thing this is not still a church, otherwise these people couldn’t be in here.”[2]

When the world is hostile, Paul says, you are to be hospitable.  Bless those who curse you.  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.  That is the high calling of those who follow Jesus.  Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we act as though it is our church, our special community, rather than the instrument of God’s love which Jesus built for a purpose. 

Hospitality is hard, friends.  For all kinds of reasons.  Trust doesn’t come easily.  There are language barriers and generation gaps, intense theological differences, and political ones.  Sometimes people smell bad.  Sometimes they don’t like the food you’ve worked hard to prepare.  They’re too loud or too quiet.  They don’t respect our traditions. Sometimes we are tempted to say “Those people just wouldn’t fit in here.”

Our FOCUS executive director, Fred Boehrer uses a phrase that I really appreciate.  He says that FOCUS practices lavish hospitality.  That’s what Paul is talking about.  Lavish hospitality helps people recover a place in the world and find healing within community.

Lavish hospitality is also risky hospitality.  Expansive welcome, radical inclusion, even of those who are so different from us, and even of those who hate us is not safe. Definitely not safe. It got Jesus killed.

I often think about Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.  That congregation came into being because of the hostility of white Christians towards black Christians.   The black Christians formed a separate church for their own safety.  A crowd of angry white people burned the original church building to the ground in 1822. The congregation worshipped in secret until it was safe to rebuild after the Civil War.   But they continued to open their doors to outsiders. They invite everyone to come and join them, even people who don’t like them.

And so, one Wednesday night 8 years ago, a young white man walked into Bible study.  He didn’t look like most of the congregation, didn’t share their background, but they welcomed him into the circle. They talked with him and listened to him and prayed with him.  He  repaid their kindness by pulling out a gun he should never have had and he killed nine dear, faith-filled men and women. 

You remember what that church did, right?  In the midst of their trauma and horror and grief, just four days later, on Sunday, people filled the church and proclaimed their commitment to compassion and forgiveness.  They refused to return evil for evil.

No one would have blamed them if they had cancelled Bible study for a while or if they had hired a security guard, but they didn’t. The next Wednesday night, they did what they’d always done on Wednesday night.  They held a Bible study and welcomed anyone who was interested.  This time, about 150 people of different races, faiths and backgrounds committed themselves to the Spirit of radical welcome,  in the same room where nine people had died. [3]

Lavish hospitality is radically counter-cultural and deeply risky.  Do not be deceived into thinking it’s about good manners and being nice.  Lavish hospitality is part of the transformational abundance that Jesus envisioned for us. 

Paradoxically, Jesus said that those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for his sake will find it.  The way to have abundant life is not to save it, but to spend it, not to protect it and keep it safe, but to give it away. 

As Frederick Buechner puts it, “Faith is a word that describes the direction our feet start moving when we find that we are loved.”[4] So we must allow ourselves to be found by the love of God. Friends, come to the table of lavish hospitality today, because Christ has invited you.  Come to this table to embody the transformation that Jesus offers.  Come not because you outrank your friends or your enemies. Come as a beloved and cherished child of God who belongs here whether you identify as sinner or disciple or both.  Come to the table of grace knowing that all of us belong, that everyone is truly welcome.  And may you leave here today strengthened as you respond to Christ’s call, “Follow me.” [5] 

[1] J. R. Daniel Kirk, Romans for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Misused, Problematic and Prooftexted Letter in the Bible, (Perkiomenvill, PA:  The Bible for Normal People,  2022) pp. 17-18

[2] [2] Craddock Stories, Mike Graves and Richard Ward, eds. (St Louis:  Chalice Press, 2001), pp 28-29.

[3] https://sojo.net/articles/bullets-and-radical-welcome

[4] Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1966), p.99

[5] https://orchardpark.org/sermons/second-sunday-after-pentecost/

8/20/23 - A Lonely Place - Matthew 14:13-21

A Lonely Place

Matthew 14:13-21

August 20, 2023 

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

Image:  Anonymous, Hand of God with loaves and fish, United Reformed Church, Brighton, England

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27fnHXzzygY&t=34s  

Jesus wants to be alone.  So he goes to a lonely place. 

He wants to be alone because he has just heard the news that King Herod has killed John the Baptist. John is dead. Herod is under the impression that Jesus is John the Baptist reincarnated, which means that what happened to John could easily happen to Jesus.   It is heart-breaking, terrifying news, and Jesus just wants to be alone for a while.

Herod Antipas imprisoned John for speaking the truth about Herod’s own immorality after Herod divorced his first wife and unlawfully took his sister-in-law as his second wife. Herod did not appreciate the bad publicity. Putting John in prison was bad enough, but now, Herod has causally beheaded John, at the request of his dancing step-daughter.  Jesus is hurting. He is baffled. He is seriously disappointed with God. How could God let evil win like that? 

But Jesus is not the only one distressed by the terrible news. The crowd goes to Jesus because they are afraid and angry and discouraged and heart-broken. They are sick in body and soul. Jesus doesn’t get to be alone because the people need him and he has compassion on them.

At an earlier time in his life, in an event also connected to John the Baptist, Jesus had sought a lonely place. It was right after his baptism which John performed, remember?  As Jesus came up from the water, the voice from heaven had pronounced him “Beloved” and from there, he had immediately spent 40 days alone, all alone except for the voice of the Tempter.   That place where he went to be alone after his baptism is described with the Greek word eremos. 

Eremos means a solitary place, a lonely, desolate, or uninhabited place.  Right after Jesus’ baptism, when Jesus withdraws to eremos, the word is usually translated as “wilderness”.  The same word is used in today’s reading but here it is translated a “deserted place”.

I wish the translators would be consistent so that we would recognize this place for what it is.  It is the remote, uninhabited place where Moses and the people of Israel wandered for 40 years. The place where they didn’t have access to their usual foods so God provided water and quail and manna. It is the place where prophets escaped to save their lives from angry kings.  It is the place where Jesus went after his baptism and was tempted.  It is the place that Jesus seeks to be alone on the terrible day that he learns of John’s death. 

 Eremos is a lonely place.  It is the place we go when we come to the end of ourselves.  The place where we cannot rely upon our own resources.  We don’t usually go there willingly. 

Eremos also implies devastation and depopulation. For exiles in Babylon, eremos recalls a far-off Jerusalem standing empty and desolate.   For Matthew’s community, eremos is a Jerusalem battered and depopulated by Roman armies as they crushed the revolt of 70 CE. [1]

Today, eremos is Ukraine; eremos is Lahaina.

Eremos is where the disciples are near the end of a long, taxing day.  Apparently the disciples couldn’t let Jesus have that alone time either.  Somehow they showed up with the crowd.  And now they want to send the crowd home, back to civilization and shelter and their own kitchens, because it is dinner time.

Then Jesus says “they don’t need to go.  You give them something to eat.”

This should be the out that Jesus was looking for.  I thought he wanted to be alone.  He has the perfect excuse to disperse thousands of people, but instead he says  “They don’t need to go. You give them something to eat.” 

Jesus doesn’t fix it for the disciples.  He wants to figure it out with them.  Evil has just won, remember. Jesus may not be too confident that God is going to come through now.  He is waiting to see what will happen, just like they are.

The disciples are incredulous.  The idea that they can fix this is laughable.  Mark’s gospel reports that it would require half a year’s wages to feed the crowd.  They don’t have that kind of resources. 

“We’ve got nothing, Jesus.” Eremos is usually the place where we think we have nothing. 

They say they have nothing, but they do have something.  They have five loaves of bread and two fish.  OK, maybe they have something, but it is definitely not enough for the thousands of hungry people.  Jesus takes it from them, blesses it and breaks it and gives it back to them.  “You give them something to eat”  he says. 

Barbara Brown Taylor wonders what the crowd thought about all this.  She imagines one person saying to her neighbor “What’s going on up there?”  and he responds “You’re not going to believe it – that Jesus fellow just said grace over five loaves and two fish and now some of his men are passing them out through the crowd.  It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen, but don’t get too excited – it will all be gone before it ever gets to us.” [2]

All four gospels tell this story.   Matthew and Mark tell it twice. It seems to have been a favorite of the early churches.  The early churches were mostly poor, marginalized, relatively powerless, sometimes persecuted communities.  Maybe they told it so often because they really need it to be true.  Maybe they felt that what they had was nothing, or if not nothing, than definitely not enough. 

But they kept remembering this story -- about that time when they gave their not-enough to Jesus and ended up with leftovers.  They kept telling this story -- as a reminder that sometimes it is when we have nothing to give that God can use us the most. 

Billy Graham said “When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.”

In this lonely place, Jesus was devastated and depleted, torn up inside and feeling vulnerable.  The disciples were distressed because Jesus was distressed and they were totally aware of their own inadequacy.  And then . . . abundance!

“The wilderness is not what prevents us from serving.  Sometimes the wilderness is what qualifies us to serve. Perhaps it is when we think we have nothing to give that God can use us the most.” [3]   

What do you do when you’ve come to eremos?  When you are at the end of your physical and spiritual resources, when you know that you are completely inadequate for the needs at hand?

Parker Palmer is a Quaker author and activities who writes about spirituality and social change.  He tells the story of a personal experience of need and abundance.  He writes, “After a speech in Saskatoon, I boarded a 6:00 AM Air Canada flight home. Our departure was delayed because the truck that brings coffee to the planes had broken down. After a while the pilot said, “We're going to take off without the coffee. We want to get you to Detroit on time.” I was up front where all the “road warriors” sit—a surly tribe, especially at that early hour. They began griping, loudly and at length, about “incompetence,” “lousy service,” etc.

Once we got into the air, the lead flight attendant came to the center of the aisle with her mike and said, “Good morning! We're flying to Minneapolis today at an altitude of 30 feet...” That, of course, evoked more scorn from the road warriors.

Then she said, “Now that I have your attention... I know you're upset about the coffee. Well, get over it! Start sharing stuff with your seatmates. That bag of 5 peanuts you got on your last flight and put in your pocket? Tear it open and pass them around! Got gum or mints? Share them! You can't read all the sections of your paper at once. Offer them to each other! Show off the pictures of kids and grandkids you have in your wallets!" As she went on in that vein, people began laughing and doing what she had told them to do. A surly scene turned into summer camp!

An hour later, as the attendant passed his seat, Palmer signaled to her. “What you did was really amazing," he said. "Where can I send a letter of commendation?” “Thanks,” she said, “I’ll get you a form.” Then she leaned down and whispered, "The loaves and fishes are not dead."[4]

What do you do when you’ve come to eremos?  When you are at the end of your physical and spiritual resources, when you know that you are completely inadequate for the needs at hand? 

Honestly, I am not sure.  But like the early church I keep remembering this story.  The wilderness is not what prevents us from serving.  Sometimes being in the wilderness is what qualifies us to serve. Perhaps it is when we think we have nothing to give that God can use us the most.   

So, I am taking stock of what I have, every little bit, and offering it all to God. What I have in this moment is probably not enough, not nearly enough.  But what we have together, with God’s help, just might be. 

[1][1] Richard Swanson, Provoking the Gospel of Matthew:  A Storytellers’ Commentary, Year A  (Cleveland:  The Pilgrim Press, 2007), p. 191

[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Problem with Miracles” in The Seeds of Heaven:  Sermons no the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2004), p. 51

[3] This was one of my favorite take-aways from a comprehensive sermon by Rev. Mark Quanstrom, This One is Easy , delivered at College Church, Kankakee, Illinois on August 6, 2023  https://collegechurch.org/past-sermons/this-one-is-easy

[4] Parker Palmer “Loaves and Fishes are Not Dead,” OnBeing April 6, 2016, https://onbeing.org/blog/loaves-and-fishes-are-not-dead/

7/30/2023 - The Easy Yoke - Matthew 11:16-29, 25-30

The Easy Yoke

Matthew 11:16-29, 25-30

July 30, 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=-lvcx75FkSc

When I look at Emmanuel, I see a congregation whose spirit of generosity and compassion is as strong as it was when I arrived thirteen years ago.   I see a church that has endured a difficult season, but is rallying with the courage and creativity that I have come to associate with you. I do not see a dying church, but I do see an uncertain one.  I see evidence of widespread weariness and the lack of a clear vision mixed with some grief and fear.  I see a church and a pastor who might be ready to internalize these words of Jesus as we never have before.

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Jesus is weary and frustrated because the same leaders who rejected John the Baptist for being too uptight and demanding are rejecting Jesus for being too easy-going.  They just can’t seem to understand the deep peace he wants to impart.  There’s no way to win with these folks and it is exhausting.

What might be wearing us out right now?

·       Big worries – like the heating up of the planet or the possibility of another worldwide pandemic

·       Close, personal concerns about a family member’s health or navigating a life crisis

·       A bank balance that will not cover this month’s bills.

·       Having to avoid the danger zones every time we have a simple conversation with friends or family members because of the deep rifts over every social and political issue

What might be wearing us out as Emmanuel Baptist Church?

·       Wondering when the next major building crisis will hit and how we will manage it

·       Investing energy and time into planning programs or activities which are not well attended or appreciated.

·       Feeling like we’re always letting someone down – whether it is the lonely older adults isolated by health concerns or the younger generation who seem more anxious and less supported than many in recent history

·       Continuing to do church tasks for which we have lost the passion, because if we don’t, who will?

Those are some of my thoughts about why we are weary as individuals and as a congregation.  You probably have others.  The list itself can be overwhelming. 

I often remind myself about being good tired vs bad tired.  That’s something I learned from the folksinger Harry Chapin. Chapin’s grandfather was a painter.  He died at age 88, after illustrating Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry. 

One day, toward the end of his life, he said to his grandson, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.

 . . .good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”. He said, “Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter and I painted; God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I painted and I painted and I’m good tired and they can take me away.”[1]

I wonder if we are bad tired because we are living other people’s dreams, measuring ourselves against a previous generation’s definitions of success.  I wonder if we are so weary because 150 years ago, having a large, beautiful building was an essential part of being church in this community, but now, the building feels like a heavy burden.  I wonder if we are weary because we keep trying to sustain all the programs that were started by other people to meet other people’s needs when we were three times our current size.  I wonder if we are bone tired because we have started acting as though we are indispensable to God’s work, when deep down we know we are merely one of countless participants invited to join the work that God is doing

Two weeks ago, I spoke with the Rev. Kara Root.  She is the pastor of Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church near Minneapolis.  That is the church which practices Sabbath together every other Sunday.  That is where I got some of the ideas for the proposal which you will consider in the meeting following worship today. 

Kara was very generous in sharing her time and her church’s story with me.  This week, I read her book[2] and came to understand even more of it.  When they called Kara as pastor in 2008, no one new had joined the church in seven years.  There were no children.  On a good Sunday, maybe 30 people worshipped in a sanctuary that used to hold 300.  And they thought their endowment might last 2 years, if they were very frugal.[3] They were prepared to die, but they said “if we are dying, we’re going to go down swinging.  And if we’re not dying, we’re going to discover what we’re meant to do and be now.”

That was 15 years ago.  They’re still alive.  They have received many new members.  Their largest constituency is now families with young children.  They don’t have much endowment left, but they have enough money to pay the bills and they give away at least 10% of their pledges and loose offering to support other expressions of God’s ministry in the world.  I share all of that because those are the typical ways that we measure vitality.

But what I find more remarkable about this congregation  are the internal theological shifts that they have made.  By facing their prospective death, they came to the deep conviction that the church is God’s, not theirs.  They understand “this is not our church to maintain, our ministry to build, our project to do, or our legacy to pass on.  This is God’s ministry. . . . Live or die, we belong to God.  So we are free to be whom God has called us to be and leave the survival question to God.” [4]

What if that is really true?  What if we are free to be whomever or whatever God calls us to be, and we don’t have to worry about whether Emmanuel lives or dies.  Friends, doesn’t that sound like an easier yoke?   It does to me.  It also sounds unrealistic and hard to sustain. 

Two years after that church made a major change in their worship life as a way of being who God called them to be, they went on retreat.  They asked themselves “What is keeping us from noticing what God is doing and joining it without hesitation?  What unspoken fears or beliefs are still holding us back?”

They agreed on four big underlying assumptions.

1.     Our glory days are in the past.

2.    We are too small, too old, and we don’t have enough money.

3.    If you volunteer for something, you’ll be stuck for life.  (At the time, they actually realized a pattern that some people had to quit the church in order to quit the church job that they held.)

4.    A few people do all the work.

But then, they asked themselves, what is the opposite of each of these statements?  And they came up with

1.    God is doing something here and now that incorporates the past and leads us into the future.

2.    We are exactly the right size and makeup and have the resources we need, for what God wants to do in and through us.

3.    Every person participates from their particularities and passions.

4.    We all share the ministry of the church.

They came home from the retreat and put up that second list in their fellowship hall with the title Our Guiding Convictions.  They didn’t believe them at first, but it was a way to remind themselves to keep living out trust instead of fear.  And it worked.  A few years ago, someone who had recently joined the church said, “I love looking at those; they describe us so well.” [5]

It didn’t happen right away of course.  They had to deal with the things they had learned about themselves, including that people felt stuck in their church jobs.  Now, at the annual meeting every year, the newly installed leaders make a pledge.  Those taking on new responsibilities promise “I will serve out of joy and only as long as it gives me joy.”  

Well now, that sounds like a much easier yoke.

But what happens when the moderator resigns because they can no longer serve with joy?  What if there are not enough people willing to joyfully teach Sunday School?  What often happens is that the church gets anxious and pressures the Nominating Committee to fill the empty slots. And then, some people wearily agree to serve out of obligation or duty. 

But what if we promised God and each other to only serve from a place of joy and meant it.  Wouldn’t that be a real exercise of trust, a way to act out our belief that the ministry belongs to God and that God will provide what is needed for the ministry that God wants?  That’s what Lake Nokomis did.  They once went 18 months without a moderator until someone stepped forward who sincerely felt called and ready to serve with joy. 

 Jesus came with good news of abundance. He shared the presence of a Creator who has blessed the world with good gifts, beauty and wonder and grace– enough for all, if we share.  But there’s a competing story that swirls around us.  It’s a story of scarcity, the fear that we aren’t enough, that we won’t get enough, that we might die somehow outside the presence and love of God.  When we attend to that story, we scramble to do whatever it takes to keep the fear at bay.  And we get weary.

But Jesus invites us into a life of trust, a life yoked with Jesus, moving as Jesus moves at God’s direction. We are called to share the good news of abundance with others.  That’s not particular to us.  That’s the calling of everyone who accepts Jesus’ yoke.  What is specific to us are the ways we share, the people we share with, the particularities and passions that make us who we are, and the ways that assortment of gifts and people combine to be the unique expression of the Body of Christ in this place. 

Friends, you have been asked to consider a major change – a change in ministry priorities which will change our worship life. I believe that God is calling us to share the good news with people we haven’t met, in ways that seek to put their needs before our own. I believe you have heard that call as well, although you might disagree with the particular methods I suggest in the proposal. I remain open to your decision. But as we discuss and discern our way forward, my hope is that we will act from a place of trust and courage.  I hope that we will remember that Emmanuel Baptist Church belongs to God first and always. 

I pray that we will accept Jesus’ invitation into a yoked life which relies on God’s abundance and not our fears of scarcity.  This is not a call to abandon our posts and eat bon-bons on the beach.  There is a yoke and there is work to do.  But I think that if we submit to this yoke, if we can learn to practice deep trust together, to leave the questions of survival to God, then we will become our most authentic selves, and at the end, we will be good tired, and they can take us away. 

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbpoUWO3kA8

[2] I highly recommend Kara’s book The Deepest Belonging: A Story about Discovering Where God Meets Us

[3] https://faithandleadership.com/minneapolis-congregation-finds-new-life-through-the-ancient-practice-keeping-sabbath

[4] Kara K. Root, The Deepest Belonging:  A Story About Discovering Where God Meets Us (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2021), p. 134

[5] Kara Root, The Deepest Belonging, p 147-149

7/16/23 - Anywhere, Everywhere, and For All - Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Anywhere, Everywhere and For All

Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

July 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=DZHY4R3XmwE

Listen:  A sower goes out to sow.

The crowd on the beach is very large.  So large that Jesus launches a boat to be where they can see and hear him.  He’s setting up cues that he has got something important to say, but then he just talks about farming.

This is the first major parable Jesus tells in the gospels.  Later parables often begin with the phrase “the kingdom of God is like . . .”    As in  “the kingdom of God is like a treasure hidden in a field … the kingdom of God is like a very valuable pearl . . . “  But in this case, Jesus just says “Listen:  a sower goes out to sow.”  I bet more than a few people went home that day and said “I don’t have any idea what that preacher was talking about.”

In the preceding chapter, Matthew describes the conflict that was escalating between Jesus and religious leaders who were accusing him of working for Satan. By the end of the chapter, he is at odds with his own family.  And then he tells this story which is in part about the ways that seed is received.  The seed is eaten by birds, scorched by the sun, and choked by weeds.  It fails at the rate of 3:1.  Seventy-five percent of the seed does not bear fruit which might tell us something about the discouragement Jesus is feeling.

Listen:  A sower goes out to sow.

The stories that we choose to tell and hear are intricately tied to our current situation.  The ways that we receive and process information and inspiration are always bound up with our history and present circumstances. 

Scientists and activists have been warning about climate change for years.  Some people have attended closely.  Others have shrugged it off.   But those warnings are increasingly hard to ignore in the midst of global record-breaking heat.

I’ve been on a lot of planes. I’ve listened half-heartedly to the familiar pre-flight drill about seat belts, life vests and oxygen masks.  But on a couple of recent flights, I sat in the emergency exit row.  When you sit in that row, the flight attendant talks to you very seriously and makes sure that you are willing to take responsibility for getting the window open if it becomes necessary. In every case, I did my due diligence.  I pulled out the card in the back of the seat in front of me and read all the instructions.  I looked at the handle which would open the window and satisfied myself that I understood how to operate it.  In the event of a real emergency, I would process that information on yet another level. 

Often this parable is taught with an emphasis on the kinds of soil that receive the seed.  Sometimes, that leads to a kind of smugness.  Those who regularly read Jesus’ words come to believe that we are the good soil and that others represent the path or the rocks or the thorns. 

I think it is more truthful to recognize that each of us contain all the types of soil.  We each respond to the Word from where we are – whether that is due to certain circumstances or life stages.  We may be very receptive at one time and downright hostile at another. 

Sometimes, when life is hard, when our fervent prayers go unanswered, we might wonder “what is God trying to teach me?”  We might even come to believe that God is punishing us.  The parable argues against that.  The parable suggests that the Word of God was sown long before our current circumstances, that the message is consistent, but we may receive it with new urgency in particular times.  I would say it is not so much that God is especially seeking to teach us something in that moment, but that we are primed to receive with new urgency.

Listen:  A sower goes out to sow.  

Jesus names this The Parable of the Sower; he does not call it the Parable of the Four Soils.  The Sower is God.  The seed, Jesus says, is the “word of the kingdom.”  So the seed in this setting might be Jesus, elsewhere identified as the Word, the Logos of God.  Or it might be the proclamation of the kingdom, which is already present and coming into being.  Or the word might be some combination of Jesus and his good news. But the Sower is God.  The parable is first and foremost about God.

One scholar writes, “[God] is not so cautious and strategic as to throw the seed in only those places where the chances for growth are best. No, this sower is a high-risk sower, relentless in indiscriminately throwing seed on all soil – as if it were all potentially good soil. On the rocks, amid the thorns, on the well worn-path.”[1]

God sows Jesus all over the world.  Jesus comes into human experience, to understand how we grow and learn, our hardships, our deep joys, what grieves us and makes us laugh, all the conditions of our complicated lives.

God sows Jesus recklessly, indiscriminately to everyone, rich and poor, gay and straight, those who worship him and those who crucify him, people whose skin is black, brown, tan, or white.  Jesus is present for senior citizens and juvenile delinquents, for taxpayers and refugee children, for those on all sides of every war.   God sows Jesus in foolish,  wasteful love which does not stop to consider who deserves it.

I went to the battlefields of Gallipoli on my recent trip.  And there I heard an unlikely story about a seed. The Battle of Lone Pine was fought between Australian and Turkish forces over a period of 4 days during World War I.  In April 1915, the Australians landed on the shore of the peninsula and immediately had to climb uphill while dodging fire from the Turks who were above them.  The Australians who reached the high ground were ordered to dig trenches as if their lives depended on it, because they did.  The Battle of Lone Pine was fought in August by which time there was an extensive network of trenches.  

The trenches of the Australians and those of the Turks were separated by a No Man’s Land of just 20-60 yards in some places.  When the battle began, there was one single pine tree standing at the place of the fighting. By the end, that tree was gone, obliterated by the shelling.  And so the battle was named Lone Pine. 

The fighting was fierce, the loss of life devastating.  But this was also a place where enemies came to respect each other.   During a truce which allowed them to bury their dead, they began to perceive each other as human beings.  After the fighting resumed, in the wee hours of the morning, under the cover of darkness, they traded canned meat and jam and cigarettes across No Man’s Land. 

Today, on the site of the former battleground is a cemetery and a memorial to the Australian forces.  The final resting place of former enemy combatants is maintained with care by the descendants of those they once sought to kill. It was a place of terror. It is now a place of peace.

A young Australian soldier took with him a pine cone from the battlefield. Why he would want a souvenir from that place, I cannot imagine, but that is what he did.  A few years after the war, he planted it in his home in Australia. It yielded several seedlings.  In 1990, one of the descendants of those seedlings was planted in the Lone Pine cemetery. People felt that the tree had returned home. 

How does that relate to the parable?  Maybe it is a stretch, but for me it becomes a symbol of the seed which is scattered recklessly in all the conditions of human existence.  The seed which is carried away by birds,  or in this case by humans, bears fruit in unlikely ways, ways which may not be known for generations. Seeds of peace may be sown even in the midst of war. Acts of kindness and compassion may be exchanged even by mortal enemies.  The Word is at work everywhere, always and for all.   As God says in the book of Isaiah, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that for which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”

Listen:  A sower goes out to sow.

The parable is first about the sower.  But in the early church, in Matthew’s community, it became a word about the soil, about receptivity and hostility.  It became a word of encouragement to trust the Sower and the Seed even when the failure rate is 75%. The risky business of farming became a metaphor for discipleship.

We each contain all the soils, all the possible responses to the seed.  We receive the message of the kingdom differently at various times depending on our circumstances.  So, perhaps what some of us most need to remember today is that Jesus is already present in every situation we might imagine, sent by God to accompany us, to liberate us, to bring us into an abundant fullness of life.   We need to believe again that Jesus is at work everywhere, always and for all. 

 Perhaps some of us are discouraged like Matthew’s community was.  What we need to hear is the same encouragement that they did.  The best part of the parable is the part about the good soil which hears the word and understands it.  The parable circles in on itself. The truth to be understood is that God the sower is generous and that grace abounds everywhere, always and for all.  The way to respond to hostility and apathy, the way to be encouraged is to understand that the seed only bears fruit when it is scattered with a total lack of regard for who is worthy to receive it and how they will relate to us.  God’s love and justice and blessing are limitless in supply.  God is a risk-taking, wasteful, persistent sower and we are called to be the same.

A sower goes out to sow, flinging precious seed around with holy abandon.   Rev. Tom Long says “Therefore, the church is called to 'waste itself,' to throw grace around like there is no tomorrow, precisely because there is a tomorrow, and it belongs to God" [2]

Listen:  A sower goes out to sow.

[1] Theodore Wardlaw in Feasting on the Word Year A, Volume 3, David Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, general editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2011),  p. 241.

[2] Thomas G. Long, Matthew:  The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p. 151.

5/28/23 - Journey: The Places We Will Go - Acts 2:1-6; Acts 10:34-45

Journey:  The Places We Will Go

Acts 2:1-6; Acts 10:34-45

May 28, 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=Vp218WFJStM

It has been 50 days.  Fifty days since Easter for us.  That was April 9 this year. Do you remember Easter?  Maybe it seems like it was just yesterday for some of us.  Maybe some of us don’t even really remember Easter 2023. 

It has been 50 days.  Fifty days since Resurrection for Jesus first followers.  Fifty days since that life-altering, world-changing event.  Fifty days since Jesus said “Stay in Jerusalem.  Wait for power.”

Sometimes fifty days is not a long time.  I suspect that on this occasion, it felt long.  Jerusalem was not home for the disciples, but they stayed there because Jesus told them to. They stayed for fifty days.  They stayed, waiting for the promised power from on high. What were they expecting, I wonder?  Did they think the power would come with an angelic announcement?  Did they think they would suddenly wake up with special abilities like superheros? 

As they wait, they make a habit of gathering and praying together.  They are together in one place when the power arrives.  The power arrives like the sound of a violent wind.  Think tornado, think hurricane.  It’s unbelievably loud. And the power arrives like fire.  Dancing flames above each person’s head.  The sound of the wind fills the room.  Maybe they go outside to escape the sound, because the next scene seems to take place in a more public space. People come looking for the source of that hurricane/tornado sound.  The power that has arrived with wind and fire has poured over and through the disciples, enabling them to speak in all the languages of this cosmopolitan city.  So they speak, trying to explain about the wind and the fire and God’s power.

And everyone present understands what is being said in their own language.  Theologian Justo Gonzalez points out that the Holy Spirit had some options that day. One option was to make everyone understand the Aramaic that disciples spoke; the other was to make each person understand in their own tongue.  The Spirit chose the second one.  The implication is that culture and language matter.  The implication is that those who come into Christian faith, into the Jesus movement, are not expected to become exactly like those they join. . . .[Pentecost] is a resounding NO! to any movement . . that seeks to make all Christians think alike, speak alike, and behave alike.” [1] 

The people in Jerusalem  understand in their first language, what is sometimes called the mother tongue. This is the language used in intimate spaces where people inside talk to each other.  The Jewish people have been scattered into diverse language and people groups.  Just as God drew near to human beings in the person of Jesus, God is coming close again, to speak to each person in their most intimate language.  Scholar William James Jennings says “Speak a language,  speak a people. God speaks people, fluently.  And God, with all the urgency that is with the Holy Spirit, wants the disciples to speak people fluently too.”[2]

Pentecost is often referred to as the birth of the church.  Today we may think of the church as a building or an institution.  We might think of it in terms of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox, or in denominational categories. But it started with a revolutionary intimacy that gave birth to a particular kind of belonging.[3]  The church is that revolutionary belonging.  That is what we celebrate on Pentecost.

The first translator of the gospel is the Holy Spirit.  The love of Jesus evidenced in laying down his life, the power of God demonstrated in resurrection erupts and pours out in one language after another.  Surely if the Spirit is among us, we will follow that lead. Because language and culture matter, we will learn other languages in order to share the power of love.  We will enter into other cultures to cultivate the revolutionary intimacy that leads to belonging.  Perhaps we will learn the language of tweets with less than 140 characters or Rap or Hip Hop or become familiar with the various genres of TikTok videos.  Maybe we will enter into  the wisdom of indigenous people or accept the hard truth about the reality of white supremacy. Perhaps we will learn the language of the creation itself and attend to its groaning. 

God speaks people, fluently.  And God urgently wants us to speak people fluently too.

As a result of that outpouring of the Spirit, 3,000 people join the movement and are baptized. But there are some who sneer. For them there is no miracle of language.  They mock the speakers or perhaps the listeners for being amazed, suggesting that they are drunk.  Justo Gonzalez is a Cuban-American theologian and very aware of how it feels to be a bi-lingual, bi-cultural person.  He suggests that those who sneer that day speak the language of the country.  They expect to hear their language wherever they go and so are not surprised that they hear in their mother tongue. Pentecost is not miraculous for them.  They seem to have the home-field advantage, but it becomes a disadvantage because they cannot see the extraordinary things taking place.[4]  I’ll come back to this in a few minutes.

The disciples were obedient to Jesus.  They waited for the power of the Spirit.  When it arrives, they are transformed.  They become bold.  Before the crucifixion they had run from the authorities. After Pentecost, they willingly get arrested.  They were mostly uneducated ordinary people, but empowered by the Spirit, they speak their convictions passionately and articulately to the most educated elite movers and shakers in Jerusalem.

They continue to lead the revolutionary-belonging movement in Jerusalem until the day when the Spirit leads Peter to the city of Caesarea.  Caesarea is a seat of Roman government, a place avoided by many faithful Jewish people because it is enemy territory. Peter does not know why he is going there, but he is prompted by the Spirit, so he obeys.  He arrives at the home of Cornelius.  Cornelius is a Roman army officer, a Gentile.  He is also a God-fearer who gives generously to support the local Jewish community and prays constantly.  Peter is there in direct answer to Cornelius’ prayers, although Cornelius is the only one who knows that at first. 

Peter is out of his comfort zone.  He doesn’t know why he is there and thinks he should not be.  The first thing he says to Cornelius that it is unlawful for him to be there.  He says “I’m only here because of a vision in which God told me that I should not call anyone profane or unclean.”  In other words, if it weren’t for that vision, that is precisely what Peter would call Cornelius.[5]

Cornelius explains his own prayers and his own vision in which God had told him to send for Peter.  And then, suddenly, everything comes together for Peter.  More deeply than ever before, he understands the meaning of Pentecost.  God speaks people, fluently.  All people.  Even the Gentiles.  Even the occupiers.  Even the enemies.  Peter says “Now I understand, now I am beginning to grasp, that God shows no partiality.”

While Peter is speaking, the Holy Spirit fills the room and empowers Cornelius and his household.  The people who traveled with Peter are amazed.  They didn’t think that the Holy Spirit could fall on Gentiles.  And so begins a pattern that will repeat over and over again through the generations – “The Spirit cannot speak through Them, can it?”  The Holy Spirit cannot speak through the poor.  The Spirit doesn’t belong to women or the uneducated or to enslaved persons, surely.  The Spirit cannot move among my nation’s enemies or my political opponents or even among Christians of another denomination.  “They” can’t possibly have the Spirit of God.  The “Them” changes.  The prejudice endures.  And so every generation must rediscover this profound simple truth that Peter proclaims “Now I am beginning to grasp that God shows no partiality.” 

Sometimes this incident is called the conversion of Cornelius. It is perhaps more appropriate to see it as Peter’s conversion, or one more step in Peter’s ongoing transformation. Cornelius will likely continue in his former path, trusting God with new confidence, but continuing to pray and be generous with his finances as before.  But Peter’s life is the one that changes dramatically.   He enters the household grudgingly, believing it to be a violation of his faith, but after this, he willingly stays for several days, accepting Cornelius hospitality.  He goes on to argue persuasively with other church leaders for the full inclusion of the Gentiles.  It is hard for us to grasp how very revolutionary this is. 

What I notice on this Pentecost is the insiders. I notice that Peter, one of Jesus’ closest followers, is the one who is most changed.  On that day when he abandoned his nets in Galilee to follow Jesus, he could never have imagined that one day he would willingly be the guest in the home of a Roman officer. His transformation doesn’t happen all at once.  It is not complete after he encounters the risen Lord on Easter or when the Holy Spirit flows over and through him on Pentecost or even as he speaks truth to power in Jerusalem.  He keeps understanding this profound love of God in deeper and deeper ways.  And that understanding transforms him.  It transforms the church which is just getting started.

I think of those insiders back in Jerusalem.  Those who scoffed, because they expected to hear the language they heard and so missed the miracle.  What should have been an advantage became a disadvantage.

We who are here today, are mostly insiders.  We know the words to the hymns.  We know how to read a bulletin, how to set up a potluck, how to serve communion. We speak the language of church.   

I’m often grumpy with God lately.  I wonder why the Spirit doesn’t fall on us like at Pentecost.  I wonder why churches everywhere seem to be out of breath, lacking in wind, spirit, oxygen, vitality.  I don’t know why that is, but today I am wondering if my perspective has anything to do with being an insider. I wonder if I, like Peter, am more in need of conversion, of transformation, than some “Them” out there that might exist in my mind.  Peter had to challenge his own faith system in order to follow the Spirit to Cornelius.  His own set of rules and principles had to give way to the Spirit’s prodding. 

He left his home base in Jerusalem and go into occupied territory in Caesarea.  As our theme song says, he left his comfortable space to meet Jesus in a difficult place.

That was the call to mission, the invitation to revolutionary belonging offered by the Spirit two thousand years ago.  The same invitation is offered to us now.  But now we are the keepers of rules and systems,  the ones who maintain practices and values that may jeopardize the mission.  Like Peter, we may have to question and subvert the faith system we have received in response to the Spirit’s prodding.  

I wonder if I need to adopt the posture of an outsider in order to escape the insiders’ disadvantage, in order to truly see where and in whom God is at work.

Friends, this is an on-going conversation, but I pray that we will live more and more deeply into Peter’s proclamation. God speaks people, fluently.  God shows no partiality.  All of “Us” are welcome.  All of “Them” are welcome. The Spirit will welcome us wherever we go, even in the uncomfortable spaces.  May we be open and obedient, risk-takers, visionaries. Come Holy Spirit, come.

[1]Justo L. Gonazalez, Acts: The Gospel of the Spirit (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 2001) p. 39

[2] Willie James Jennings, Acts:A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2017), p.30

[3] Jennings, p. 29

[4] Gonazalez, pp 37-38.

[5] Gonzalez, p. 133

5/14/23 - Let Go: Leaving Behind What We Don't Need - Exodus 16:1-15, 31-35

Let Go:  Leaving Behind What We Don’t Need

Exodus 16:1-15, 31-35

May 14, 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=Clypn290U1s

“We should have stayed in Egypt”, they said.  Memory is a selective thing.  Just a little while after their liberation, the Hebrew people forget how miserable they were in Egypt.  They forget how hard it was to reach the daily quota of bricks demanded by Pharoah.  They forget that when they asked for time off for worship, Pharoah doubled down and required them to provide their own straw and still produce the same number of bricks.  They forget that they were insulted, called lazy and beaten every time they couldn’t meet the unreasonable demands.  They forget all of that.  Because they are hungry and anxious in the wilderness, all they remember is that back in Egypt, they had meat and bread. 

The Hebrew people have endured much through the generations they’ve spent in Egypt.  They are resilient.  They are used to suffering, but this particular difficulty is new.  They are not just afraid of being hungry, although that is a real fear.  They are afraid of all that is foreign and terrifying in this strange place.  They are afraid of the unknown.   They are still carrying with them their best memories of Egypt, distorted though they may be.  They have not left Egypt completely behind.   

Holding on to and letting go of possessions is one way we have of managing our memories.  We all do this in different ways, depending on our personalities and experiences of abundance or scarcity, depending on the size of our basements or attics or access to storage units. It’s complicated.

Three quick examples.  My friend Lynn recently retired.  In this new stage of her life, she’s been going through things, deciding what to keep and what to give away.  She came across journals and diaries written when she was in high school and college, full of all the angst and curiosity and drama that characterized her life then.  She said she decided that they were not under any circumstances to be left behind.  In other words, she did not want them to be read by her children after her death, so she destroyed them now.  Sometimes the decision is clear – I do not need this any more and neither does anyone else.

I was in a Zoom meeting last week with another friend.  She came to this country from Germany decades ago.  In the Zoom meeting I could tell that she was sitting at a desk, but I couldn’t see much else.  She told me that she was resting her feet on two suitcases.  Apparently the suitcases are stored under the desk to serve as a permanent foot-rest.  The suitcases contain documents from her ancestors’ lives in Germany, including correspondence between her grandfather and great-grandfather and letters from her own father when he was a prisoner of war.  They contain flyers that were produced during World War II. These flyers were distributed every week to people who wanted to go to worship.  They detailed which churches had been bombed and which ones were still open for worship and which ones were structurally unsafe.  She thinks they might be valuable for historical reasons. 

She keeps her feet on the suitcases as a way of holding things carefully.  They remind her “You are going to travel. What will you leave behind and what will take with you?” Her decision about this particular stuff is to hold on to it for now, but she is only carrying what will fit in these two suitcases.

One more example.  I told you last week about the time that I did not move to Canada. For those who didn’t hear that story -- a long time ago, I was involved in an exciting search process with a church, and, after several months of promise, it all went sideways.  What I didn’t mention last week was a large packet of documents that I had to deal with after the dust settled.  The packet included stuff like months of correspondence with the search committee, forms from the denomination as they put me through their wringer, letters from church members expressing personal support or sharing their own distress, and also a few notes from people who told me why  I was wrong and needed to repent.  There were even one or two letters from other Canadian pastors, people who I have never met, who somehow learned the story and tracked down my address and sent a note of solidarity.  I kept that packet for several years.  Every once in a while I would come across it by accident or go looking for it on purpose.  Sometimes I read through the pages as a way of justifying myself and keeping my anger alive.  Sometimes I threw myself a pity party wishing for what might have been.  It took several years, but finally I realized that holding on to those documents was only hurting me, so I put them into the shredder. 

Deciding what to leave behind and what to take with us is complicated.  Some stuff goes out immediately.  Some stuff we carry for a good purpose and some we hang on to even when it is against our own interest to do so.   

The Hebrew people are not traveling with many extra possessions.   They only carry what they actually need to survive this long journey.  They are not carrying many physical things, but the memories of life in Egypt have a certain weight.  The fear of the unknown is making them anxious.   

God responds to their anxiety by providing food.  In the evening, quail blanket the camp.  And in the morning, they find manna.  They’ve never seen anything like it.  They don’t even know what to call it.  The word manna literally means “what is it?”  They quickly come to understand that manna is going to take the place of bread in their lives.  So they try to treat it like they treated bread in Egypt.

Walter Brueggemann notes  “Egypt is a place where bread is gotten only for labor, where bread is only received as a reward for productivity, and where bread is always received in and with fearful anxiety . . . [but] ‘bread from heaven’ is an invitation to break with the destructive politics of bread production and the pressures upon which the empire depends, namely, fear, abuse, anxiety, and exploitation.”  [1]

You see, in Egypt, they were also afraid of not having enough, and so they stored up what they got.  They hoarded it.  They didn’t share.   Those were the practices of life in Egypt.  When they moved to the wilderness, they brought those practices, those behaviors with them.  They had to learn that they couldn’t gather more than one day’s worth of manna, because if they tried to store it, it went bad.  They couldn’t hoard it. But if they each only took their share, there was always enough for everyone.

The manna offered daily reassurance that God was with them.  The One who delivered them out of bondage in the fertile Nile valley would also sustain them in the dry, empty desert.  The other message of the manna was that life in the wilderness is completely different from life in Egypt. 

The stuff they knew how to do, the occupations they were good at, the knowledge that had been passed down from one generation to the next in Egypt would not apply very often in the lives that the current and future generations were going to live.  They had to leave that way of life behind.

 …

When Lewis and Clark were charged with exploring the Louisiana Purchase in 1804, they believed, as everyone did at the time, that there was a water route from Missouri all the way to the Pacific Ocean.  So they set out in canoes on the Missouri River.  This worked until they got to mouth of the river and had to carry the canoes.  They crossed over the Lemhi Pass in what is now Montana, thinking that the next water way was just around the bend, only to be stopped by the Rocky Mountains.  In his book, Canoeing the Mountains, Todd Bolsinger describes this history as an example of adaptive change.[2]  He says that when Lewis and Clark encountered the Rockies, then they started to understand that the world ahead of them was not like the world behind them.  They had all the best tools and expertise for one kind of exploration, but canoes are no use when you’ve run out of water.  They had to leave the canoes behind and take on an entirely different kind of expedition. 

This is what the Hebrew people learned in the wilderness.  The life ahead of them was not like the life behind them.  They had to change their ways of thinking and behaving.  The tools and expertise that kept them alive during Pharoah’s oppression were not going to work anymore. 

Todd Bolsinger, who wrote Canoeing the Mountains, was a pastor for 27 years.  Now he is a seminary professor. He wrote that book in 2018 because he believes that churches and many other institutions have arrived at a place like Lewis and Clark did, like the Hebrew people did.  The world ahead of us is not like the world behind us.  If we are to complete the mission which God has given us, we have to adapt.  We have to change. 

You already know this.  You are tired of hearing about it, tired of talking about it.  We are intelligent people who want to thrive in the world ahead of us.  We want to adapt.  We want to embrace God’s calling.  But we don’t yet understand how to do that, so we keep talking and wondering and listening and praying.

I’m inviting us again to consider the practices that might need to change, our ways of thinking and doing that will no longer work in the world that is now ahead of us.  I started out talking about possessions that need to be managed.  Sometimes we get rid of things easily.  Sometimes we hold on to them with a purpose.  Sometimes we have to cling to them even when they are hurtful.  And I’m realizing that sometimes our possessions and our practices are so intertwined that we can’t separate them.

Right now, I own several fabric face masks.  Three years ago, we learned about face masks.  There weren’t enough N95’s being produced for everyone, so we reserved those for medical folks and the rest of us wore fabric ones.  But now, I don’t know what to do with my fabric face masks.  Should I hold on to them in case there’s a another shortage in the future?  Should I re-purpose them?  What good use could they serve? Maybe I should just start wearing mine again on a mission to bring back the good old days of 2020.

Friends, this is one of the hard questions we are dealing with as God’s people in this time.  We are asking ourselves how we need to change to live in the world ahead of us.  The world behind us required large church buildings and pulpits.  It required stained glass windows and hymnbooks.  Those things didn’t come and go like fabric face masks.  They have served the church for hundreds of years.  They enhanced and strengthened the lives of millions of Christians who passed down the faith from generation to generation.  So we are loath to change them. 

When we do it, it is with great fear and trembling, like when you removed the pews.   But when we take that risk together, it is also a courageous, faithful act.  Sometimes, paddling is just no longer an option and you have to leave the canoes behind. 

We can well understand the fear of the Hebrew people. The mission to which God was calling them required a life completely different from what they had known.  May we also come to trust the message of the manna – the message that God is with us in the wilderness, calling us to live where we are now, sustaining us into the life that is ahead of us.  Amen.

[1] Walter Brueggemann, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 1, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 815

[2] Todd Bolsinger, Canoeing the Mountains: Christian Leadership in Uncharted Territory ( Downers Grove, IL:  Intervarsity Press, 2018).

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.