1/21/24 - When We Cannot Walk on Water - Matthew 14:22-33; January 21, 2024

When We Cannot Walk on Water  

Matthew 14:22-33

January 21, 2024

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=yn5VwNzHmQE

Image:  Lorenzo Veneziano, Christ Rescuing Peter from Drowning. 1370 Staatliche Museen, Berlin

There are so many ways to read this old familiar story. First, we might jump in as twenty-first century people.   If we do that, our default may be to call into question whether this really happened.  Everyone knows that you can’t walk on water, unless it is frozen, and if it were frozen, then the disciples could not have been sailing a boat across it.  So, some contemporary people read this story and immediately dismiss it as un-factual and therefore untrue.

But some contemporary readers are not bothered by those details.  They understand that a story can be true on another level. So when they read it, they comprehend that the story is about storms.  Storms might be weather-related with thunder and lighting and rain and wind as in this story.  Or storms might be a metaphor for difficult times in life.  Whatever this story means, maybe it can be applied to something like a health crisis or a relationship challenge or a job loss or grief or any other time when circumstances have rocked your boat and knocked you down and the waves of fear and uncertainty keep rolling over you.

Not caring whether Jesus really walked on water, these readers focus on the message which they think is about having  faith in the midst of a storm. Often, their take-away is that Peter just didn’t have quite enough faith. He jumped out of the boat full of confidence, but then then he noticed the wind and became afraid and started to sink. “But if he would have stuck with it”, they say, “he would have walked on the water all the way to Jesus.”  When the story is read this way, it too easily becomes a guilt-trip for ourselves or for other people.

Sometimes, the message sounds like this:  Peter could have walked on water if he had only believed. So if you just have enough faith, then your marriage will be happy.  Or if you just believe hard enough, you will be healed. . . or your children will be safe. . . or you will overcome whatever storm is currently about to knock you off your feet.

You could read it that way. Many a sermon has been preached around that premise.

Nadia Bolz-Weber has a great response to that.  She says, “this approach . . means that a) the chaos of my life is still terrifying and b) now I also have to feel bad for not being able to transcend it through a sufficient amount of faith and self-esteem.”[1]

If we are currently afraid and doubting in the midst of a storm, then that reading may do more harm than good. 

Another approach – you might read from the perspective of someone who understands the Sea of Galilee.  Local tour guides apparently will tell you that wind storms spring up suddenly and frequently.  This is a typical part of the region’s weather. [2] 

As experienced fishermen, the disciples would surely have been used to this. This is a strong storm, battering the boat as they row into the wind, but it is not the storm that scares them. They only become afraid when Jesus comes towards them.  They are afraid because they don’t recognize him.  They think he is a ghost.  This is Jesus, their friend, their amazing teacher.  They spend the better part of every day with him – why don’t they recognize him? 

To be fair, the disciples have had quite a day. First, they had received news that John the Baptist had been executed. John who had baptized Jesus not so long ago.  John, whose disciples had brought word to Jesus when John was in prison.  The news that John had been beheaded would have been terrifying and grievous.   But they hadn’t been given any time to mourn or process, because there was a crowd of needy people and Jesus spent the day teaching and healing them.  And then, when they finally thought they might get to call it a day, Jesus had insisted on feeding everyone.  They had been pressed into picnic set up and clean up for a few thousand people.  Pushing down their grief and terror about John – now we call that compartmentalization – they must have been completely astonished to find themselves playing a role in this miraculous feeding. 

And again, they find themselves with questions and thoughts that need to be explored with their community and with Jesus.

But, do they get that opportunity now?  Absolutely not, because Jesus makes them get into a boat without him.  He commands them to go to the other side of the lake.   The way their day has gone, maybe they are not surprised when the winds start up and the whitecaps form.  They have been rowing hard into the wind and are still far from shore.  When Jesus comes walking toward them on the water, they are physically and emotionally spent.   It’s not really that surprising that they don’t recognize him.

What is it that keeps any of us from recognizing God’s presence among us?  Could it be anxiety or confusion?  Are we emotionally overloaded, pre-occupied with worry or distress or grief?   Are we physically spent from living life too fast – the to-do list, maintaining home life and church life in ways that deplete rather than sustain.  Are we overwhelmed with responsibility and caring for others, like the disciples who had to put the needs of 5,000 people ahead of their own?  Have we pushed out all sense of wonder and possibility so that when God shows up, we don’t recognize them and we are afraid? 

Where does fear lead us?

I don’t know about you, but sometimes, when I am afraid, I do something stupid– like getting out of the boat in the middle of the lake.  Author and minister Debi Thomas says “Nowhere in the Gospels are we called to prove our faith (or test God’s character) by taking pointless risks that threaten our lives.  Nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus teach that bad things happen to us because we’re too chicken to earn God’s protective care.”[3]

Sometimes, in our fear, we call out to God for help.  Jesus helps Peter do what Peter asks – to walk on the water to him. “Jesus does not demand that Peter get out of the boat, but he seems as interested as anyone else to see how the venture will end.”[4]  Even when Peter fails, he doesn’t drown, because Jesus rescues him.   Perhaps this is how our faith develops, how we start to recognize God’s presence, in the tension between doubt and trust, between we know and what we don’t, between sinking and swimming. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew all about the real dangers of courageous faith.  In The Cost of Discipleship, he wrote  “Peter had to leave the ship and risk his life on the sea in order to know both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord.  If Peter had not taken the risk, he would never have learned the meaning of faith.”[5]

There is a third way we might read this story. We could see it through the eyes of Matthew’s post Easter community.  If the storm is the metaphor that 21st century people recognize, the first century Christians would have immediately understood the symbolism of the boat.  For Matthew’s first readers, the boat, on the water with the disciples inside it, is an image of the church on mission in the world.  Matthew says that Jesus made the disciples get in the boat and go without him to the other side.  “This, then, is a story about the community of faith commanded by Jesus to sail off without his physical presence.  It is a story about the church in every age.

We’re all together in the same boat, and finding it hard going. We’ve been rowing all night, but the wind is against us, the waves are battering and the shore is still a long ways off.  We have less and less hope, and more and more doubt about ever really getting there. 

In this story, Jesus is not in the boat with the disciples.  And is this true also of us, more than we realize?  Are we, like them, a lot of the time just sailing by our own wits and wiles?  Relying on our skill sets and past experience to get us through.  Doing over and over what got us through storms in the past ?” [6]  

What takes Peter out of the boat?  Is it his fear or his courage?  That’s the question for me.  If the boat as symbol of the church, is Peter abandoning ship because the external forces against it are too strong?  Is he leaving because the chaos and hostility are just too much?  Or is he leaving the boat to be closer to Jesus?  Is he stepping out on faith in order to be more like Jesus?

I agree with Debi Thomas.  We are not called to prove our faith with pointless risks.  But sometimes we are called to leave the safety of our tribe, our church, our comfort zone to go where Jesus is.  We remember that when Jesus said “take up your cross and follow me,” that was not a call to a safe and convenient life.

One final thing I notice is that Jesus neither praises nor scolds the disciples who stay in the boat.  We have not explored this story from their point of view. Matthew doesn’t really offer it to us.  But I’m sure they have opinions about what Peter did.  Maybe some of them wanted to join him.  Maybe some thought he was a total fool or even disobedient because Jesus had put them into the boat in the first place.   Maybe they were angry at him for abandoning his post and endangering them all further. 

Even when we are in the same boat, we are not in the same place on our spiritual journeys.  For some of us, the most faithful thing to do is to stay inside the boat. Others needs to test the waters, to see what happens when they test the waters. But what Jesus says to all of us. What Jesus says to everyone in the boat or out of the boat or about to go over the side,  is this  “Take heart, it is I.  Do not be afraid.” 

Take heart, friends. Trust that God who brought us this far will be with us all the way to the far shore, even when we can’t see them or don’t recognize them.  Take heart –reach for deep for the courage that comes from leading and living and loving with your heart.  Trust and doubt and trust again, even in the storm, even thought we have been rowing all night.  Trust and doubt and trust again even when we are foolish or afraid.  Even when the sea is so great and our boat is so small, take heart, all the way to the far shore.

[1] https://thecorners.substack.com/p/the-case-against-wwjd-bracelets

[2] Karoline Lewis, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/when-we-cant-walk-on-water

[3] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2709-out-on-the-water

[4] Lance Pape, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp Editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 225.

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship,  rev. ed,  trans. R.H. Fuller (New York:  Macmillan, 1959), p. 53.

[6] I am greatly indebted to the Rev. Brian Donst, for this sermonic angle and his succinct phrasing.  http://food4fifty.blogspot.com/2023/08/welcoming-jesus-as-he-is-not-as-we.html

1/7/24 - Those Who Dream Will Not Keep Silent - Luke 2:22-40

Those Who Dream Will Not Keep Silent

Luke 2:22-40

January 7, 2024

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=YU-Adtgb5nI

Anna and Simeon are doubters.  They have to be. Luke tells us about one particular day when they seem full of faith and confidence, but that’s just one day.  I have to believe that they had other days, different days.  We don’t know Simeon’s age,  but he is always pictured as old.  At some earlier point, he received a word from God that he would not die until he saw the Messiah.  He might have received that word at 20 and now be in his 30’s.  But, on this day, he says “I can die now because I have seen God’s salvation.” And that suggests he is old enough to be close to death. But think about it. If you had become convinced that you were going to see the Messiah in your lifetime, could you really sustain that belief every day?  Wouldn’t there be times of doubt?  Especially when you witness, as Simeon did, the violence being visited on his country, the religious and political factions among his people.  Perhaps he has lost a beloved spouse or been alienated from his children.  Maybe he deals with chronic pain. We don’t know any of the details that make up his life, but I expect that he has the same kinds of worries and hardships that all people face. And that’s why I say he has to have his doubts. 

Anna has been a widow for most of her eighty-four years. Widows are dependent on other people’s charity.  They are often poor and treated unjustly. Anna knows suffering. She is from the university of life, the school of hard knocks. She’s among the company of those who suffer in this world and among those who create space in their hearts to pray. I do not know any praying person who does not also sometimes doubt. 

Fred Buechner said  “Whether your faith is that there is a God or that there is not a God, if you don't have any doubts, you are either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”[1]

I’m belaboring this point because sometimes we separate ourselves from people in the Bible. Sometimes we think that we could never be like them, never speak or act as boldly as they did, because we see them as totally confident and faithful and we know that we are not. So I want to remind us that what we see is one extraordinary day which has probably been a long time in coming.   Anna and Simeon are able to speak and act as they do because they have lived through the cycles of doubt and trust many, many times. 

When Simeon and Anna became aware of Jesus’ presence in the temple, they could not keep silent. They were compelled to speak up. God’s dreams were not for them alone.  Like them, we should not keep silent, but keep speaking and acting to share God’s dream.

Doug Pagitt was the founding pastor of a church in Minneapolis called Solomon’s Porch. That church went out of existence last year at age 23.  Doug was also a leader in the Emerging Church Movement.  That movement and the example of Solomon’s Porch were formative for thousands of Christians and church leaders of my generation. 

Before Doug got involved in that movement, he was considered a highly successful pastor. He served as youth minister at nationally known church running a very large youth ministry. And then he worked for a private foundation where his job was to find the next generation of church leaders and his funding for that was virtually unlimited.  But there came a day when he realized that a voice inside him was saying that there was a different kind of church world he wanted to see happen.  Some might call that a dream. So he left his fully-funded job and set off to plant a church without any money and little support. In a recent interview, he said “you know one of the things that happens when you do something like this and that other people consider to be brave or heroic, often in the moment it doesn't feel that way.  It’s not a self-narrative of I'm being brave. It’s normally a sense of “I don't have another choice right now.”   I was serious enough about my Christian spirituality and my vocation to say “there is not a future for me that I see as preferable inside this [church] world.” [2] He was compelled to speak and to act, to share God’s dream as he understood it with people who were not receiving it.

This week, I had the incredible privilege to be part of an interfaith group, Christians, Muslims and Jews together, who were lobbying for a ceasefire in Gaza.  I was in the presence of some extraordinary people who were compelled to speak up.  There was an Israeli woman whose grandparents and other family members were killed by Nazis in Poland during the Holocaust.  Her father narrowly survived at age 11.   She recognizes genocide when she sees it.  She had her 9-month-old baby with her. She said that she cannot look at her own child without seeing the images of Palestinian children being killed and she cannot keep silent. She was articulate and persistent and kept speaking even when her voice shook with emotion.

I heard the testimony of a woman from Gaza who has lived here for decades.  On October 21, sixteen members of her immediate family in Gaza were killed by an airstrike.  Sixteen people. All at once, she lost her mother, her brother, her sister-in-law, two nephews, the losses go on and on.   There are some members of the family still alive, she thinks, but she doesn’t know where they are and can’t contact them. She weeps every day.  Her husband has also lost family members. They say that they have to speak up, to plead for the bombs and the killing to stop,  for the sake of those who are still alive. 

I heard from first generation Palestinian- Americans, US citizens who believe that they do no matter, that no one who looks like them is valued in this country, which is their homeland.  Even so, they cannot keep silent.  This was not their first meeting with this elected official.  They keep raising their voices, even though they often think no one cares, no one is listening.

I wonder how many people heard Anna and Simeon in the temple that day?  It probably would have been easy to dismiss them.  They were strangers, old people, probably talking nonsense.    I wonder how it was that Simeon got to hold baby Jesus. Most new parents don’t hand over their newborns to strangers in crowded public places.  Did he just grab the baby from Mary’s arms?  Or did Mary recognize something important was happening?  I don’t know.   But someone listened. Someone was paying attention or else we wouldn’t know the story. 

The Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie said, “Stories matter. [Multiple] stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”[3]

God’s dream of shalom, of intense pervasive well-being for all creation, is not for us alone.   We must share it.  We must tell our stories about Jesus, about ourselves, about the world we live in.   There is a time to speak and also a time to keep silent so that we can listen to others. When we lobbied earlier this week, the meeting scheduled for 30 minutes lasted 45 minutes.  And in all of that time, I spoke for less than a minute, just to introduce myself.  My default, you might have noticed, is to talk, but what I might have said did not compare to the stories and voices that needed to be heard.

Friends, we live in a time of great change, a time when one world is dying and another is struggling to be born.  That may make us fearful.  It may increase our doubts.  But we cannot lose hope.  We must keep dreaming.  On the threshold of this new year, this is my prayer for myself and for all of us – that we will speak up when necessary, for ourselves and on behalf of others to share God’s dream,  and that we will also be silent to hear the stories of strangers and friends who “dare to seek to dream God’s reign anew.”

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

[1] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (New York:  HarperCollins, 1973), p 20.

[2] https://trippfuller.com/2023/12/18/doug-pagitt-the-emerging-church-the-end-of-solomons-porch/

[3] TED Talk:  The Danger of a Single Story, https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en

12/24/23 - This Night We are Those who Dream - John 1:1-5, 9-14

John 1:1-5, 9-14   

December 24, 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=6Pv5w2u9tYQ

John does not start with the birth of Jesus.  There are no angels visiting or singing, no shepherds, no Bethlehem Inn with no vacancy, no baby in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.  John begins long, long before that. 

“In the beginning,” John writes, “in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”

In the beginning, John says, referring to that time when God said “let there be light”  and there was light. And when God proclaimed “let the dry land appear” and it was so.  God speaks and things happen. The Word goes out and light emerges from the darkness, waters move and dry land forms, plants and animals inhabit the land. 

John is telling the story of the Word of God.  That Word is Jesus. The Word of God is that generative power, that wisdom, that divine reason at the heart of everything. The Word of God is the mystery that was long before Christmas and is also at the very center of Christmas. John’s gospel begins not with Jesus’ conception or his birth, but at the birth of the cosmos.

The first century philosophers reading along would be nodding their heads in vigorous agreement.  God is pure spirit – sound and light, powerful from the beginning.  They would have approved, until they got to verse 14, which says “The Word became flesh” This word flesh would have been jarring for John’s first readers.  Flesh is impure, weak, and vulnerable. The extreme opposite of the perfect, spiritual essence of God.  This is the scandal of incarnation, that the immensity of God should be revealed in the smallness of a human being.

For 36 years, Dean Smith was the head basketball coach at the University of North Carolina. He was well-loved by his players. One of those players was  Makhtar N’Diaye.  Mak had a lot of talent and potential, but near the start, he had a tough time in practice. All of his coaches were unhappy with him. They kept telling him changes to make and he didn’t seem to be listening.  So eventually, the assistant coach, Bill Guthridge, threw him out of practice. 

Afterwards, Dean Smith, the head coach finds him and asked “Mak, is everything all right? Are you homesick?” 

Mak says “No coach. I’m fine.” But he isn’t looking at the coach.

Smith says “Mal, look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Mak again says, ‘I’m just not feeling . .

Smith interrupts “Mak, look at me as I talk to you.”

They do this a couple more times and then Mak says “Coach, in my culture to look an adult in the eye is not right. It is a sign of disrespect.”

So Coach Smith says “Oh OK.” And he walks out.

The next day in practice, there’s no Coach Guthridge.  The man who kicked Makhtar out of practice is just gone.  He doesn’t show up the next day or the day after that.  Coach Guthridge is absent day after day without any explanation. Then Mak gets a call from his Mom.  Mak is from Senegal.  His mother says “Mak, there’s a man here in my house.  He says he is your coach, your assistant coach.  I know Coach Smith.  I don’t know this man.  He says he’s been here in Senegal for a week learning our culture.” 

Dean Smith sent Coach Guthridge to Senegal to learn his player’s culture so that he would understand him and know how to relate to him and coach him. [1]

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word came to our homeland to learn our culture.

Many Decembers ago, a man was in his study at home when his kids came into the room.

"Dad, we have a play to put on?  Do you want to see it?"

He didn't really want to, but he knew he needed to, so he followed them into the living room and became a one-man audience. At  the foot of the piano stool was a lighted flashlight wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a shoe box. Joseph came in wearing his father’s bathrobe and carrying a mop handle staff. Mary wore a sheet draped over her head. The 4-year-old was an angel with who ran in with pillowcases over her arms which she spread as wings.  Finally, the last child arrived, obviously one of the magi.  She moved like she was riding a camel, probably from trying to walk in her mother’s high heels. She was wearing all the wearing all the jewelry she could find and on a pillow she carried three items. She clip-clopped across the room, bowed to the flashlight, and announced, “I’m all three wise men.  I bring precious gifts: gold, circumstance and mud.”

That was all. The play was over. The father applauded, but he didn’t laugh.  He didn’t correct the wise man.  That child got to the heart of the story:  God loves us for who we are; gold –when we are at our best, circumstance – in the particulars of time, place and custom, and mud – in the messiest parts of our lives. [2]

The scandal of Christmas is that God comes into the world as it is to demonstrate how much we are loved. If you want to know how God feels about human beings, look at Jesus. Jesus came that we might become children of God, John says.  People who are not dominated by the circumstances in which we find ourselves, not defined by how much gold or mud is in our lives, but who understand our worth and power as God’s beloved ones.

Every person is born out of the love of God, expresses this love in their unique personal form, and has the capacity to be united with God.[3]  This is the truth that can change the world.  God became like us so that we might become like God.

A final story for tonight. It comes from a column by Ed Williams, a journalist for 60 years who is now retired.  Ed says “I grew up with the certainties of the fundamentalist Baptist faith.  In my younger days I focused on the uncertainties. As I age, I find myself more comfortable with the mystery, and I find in myself an inclination simply to trust.”

Many years ago, in the weeks before Christmas, Ed was attending a meeting in Miami.  It was hotter than he expected and he had packed only long-sleeved shirts.  So he went to the mall to buy some cooler clothes. A young man emerged from the crowd. Ed thought he was coming to ask for something and he braced himself for the pitch.

But the question came as a surprise.

The thin young man said “Do you believe in Jesus?” 

Ed looked him over. In his mid-30s, he had on a rumpled shirt, jeans and loafers with no socks. Visible on his arms and neck were large sores. Ed recognized them as Kaposi’s sarcoma, signs of the disease AIDS.

“Why do you ask?” Ed said

The young man shared his story.  He had come to Miami years ago. When he was diagnosed with HIV, his family told him not to come home. Over time, his condition had developed into AIDS. 

A few days earlier, he said, his family had called.  They had had a change of heart and invited him home for Christmas. 

He said that he couldn’t tell them that he was broke.  He needed money for bus fare.  Ten dollars would get him home for Christmas.

Ed was in a Bible study class at his home church. Not long before this trip, they had discussed the passage where Jesus speaks to those who are to inherit the kingdom and reminds them of how they had helped him when he was down and out. In the scripture, they ask, “When did we do this?”  Jesus answers “Whenever you did it for one of my siblings, you did it to me.”

Ed said the problem with knowing the Bible stories is that you need to act on them.  In his pocket, he had a $20 bill that he had intended to spend on a shirt.  He didn’t know whether to believe the young man or not. But he decided it didn’t matter, he obviously needed the money.

Ed handed him the twenty.

“Here,” he said, “Merry Christmas.”

The young man was surprised. He took the money and looked straight into Ed’s eyes.

"Thank you," he said, and it was as heartfelt a thanks as Ed has ever received.

Then he put the money in his pocket and walked away. Just before he melted into the crowd, the young man turned and raised his hand in a farewell salute. And he said, "I think you are Jesus."

Before Ed could respond, he vanished into the crowd of shoppers. What Ed wanted to say to him was, "I thought you were Jesus."[4]

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was God.  And God said “Let there be light.”  And there was light.  And the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood to share our gold, circumstance and mud.  And God said “Let there be peace.” 

And there was peace.

God said “Let there be joy.” 

And there was joy.

God said “Let there be love.” 

And there was love.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth.

[1] https://youtu.be/l8b52JwLojM?si=PlnU2AZGDyyupCw3

[2] Rex Knowles, “Gifts of the Wise Children; or Gold, Circumstance, and Mud.” The Guideposts Christmas Treasury (Carmel, NY: Guideposts Associates, 1972), pp. 197–98]

[3] Ilia Delio, Mini-Incarnation of Christ,  https://cac.org/daily-meditations/mini-incarnations-of-christ/

[4] Ed Williams FB post December 21, 2022 https://www.facebook.com/profile/100001444266449/search/?q=Christmas

12/10/23 - Those Who Dream - Sow Joy - Luke 1:46-55

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUJytFvg3v8

12/3/23 - Those Who Dream … Prepare the Way - Isaiah 40:1-11; Mark 1:1-8

Those Who Dream … Prepare the Way

Isaiah 40:1-11,

Mark 1:1-8

December 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=wHcd66dFuTk

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

This is the either the first line of Mark’s narrative or it is the title of the whole ting.  The beginning of the good news. Perhaps Mark wants us to hear echoes of another beginning “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.”  The good news that Mark is telling began a long time ago. It rests on other beginnings. It is a continuation of an old dream, a new chapter in a long book.

Perhaps Mark is suggesting that everything he will write, his whole story about Jesus from John the Baptist to the calling of disciples to healing the sick and feeding the hungry to his execution and resurrection – all of that is just the beginning.  

This is the beginning of the church year.  In another month, the beginning of the calendar year. Seems like we’re always beginning things, by participating in the opening rituals of another cycle of life or trying to re-establish habits which we have let slip. We begin again to practice healthy ways eating, exercising and sleeping. We resolve again to be generous, to read more good books, to spend time outdoors, to seek to love that person who pushes all our buttons.

For some of us, this time of year carries nostalgia and longing.  We unpack decorations that carry memories- good and bad.  We sing the songs and make the favorite holiday foods.  Others take on the persona of Scrooge or the Grinch and resolve to grit our teeth until the month is over.  Whether you love or hate this time of year, there is often a sense of “here we go again”.  After a few decades of that, we may become jaded.  Is decorating really worth all this time and effort?  What really matters?  We have begun again and again so many times  and what have we accomplished? 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ the Son of God,”  Mark writes.  The Greek word there is euangelion.  I love to say that. Euangelion. In the second half of the word, angelion sounds like angels.  Angels are messengers.  Angelion means message.  Eu is a prefix that means good. Good message, good news, sometimes we translate it gospel.

When Mark was writing, euangelion was used most often about good news of victory from the battlefield.  By extension that mean good news of peace and prosperity, or the good life resulting from military power. [1]

Mark deliberately uses that word, with its cultural implications, in the title of his story about Jesus.  The good news of Jesus is not news of a military victory.  Mark’s story is of a different kind of battle.  He is declaring war on the political culture of Empire; he is subverting the way things are with the way things could be.

Mark begins his story of Jesus with John the Baptist. Of course, John’s story begins earlier, with his parents Zechariah and Elizabeth.  His parents who were faithful to God in spite of the lifelong disappointment of not having children, of struggling to live under occupation and practice a faith that was being corrupted by politics. The story of John’s beginnings includes his father’s dream that his son would be part of guiding his people in the way of peace.

In Zechariah’s time, a decisive military victory in Egypt ended decades of war in the Mediterranean and united the known world. Caesar Augustus inaugurated the Roman Peace, the Pax Romana. No one before had accomplished such a feat.  And many declared Caesar the savior of the world, the one who ended the cycles of endless war.   One commentator, Kelley Nikondeha, wonders “Why did God choose this time in human history to enter the world through the vulnerability of incarnation?  Why come when peace had finally arrived?” 

Her answer lies in recognizing how Caesar’s peace had arrived – through crushing military victory and control over his subjects through violence.  The Pax Romana benefitted the few while exploiting the many. [2]   Nikondeha writes “After world peace was announced by the empire, God began a counter-campaign in the hills of Judea, a vision of peace with no reliance on violence or war. “

Tradition says that John was born in Ein Karem, a village about 2 ½ miles from downtown Jerusalem.  Both of his parents were from the tribes of priests.  It would have been the most natural thing in the world for John to have followed the path to priesthood and to have stayed in the center of power in Jerusalem, to use that power for the cause of peace.

Instead he emerges from the wilderness.  He dresses strangely – wearing clothes of camel hair.  He is likely very thin, even by first century standards, because he mostly eats honey and locusts.  John has abandoned the easier life he might have had in Jerusalem, for a life of identifying with the poor.  His lifestyle is not eccentric but rather a reflection of his disciplined ability to live on the sustenance the desert provides.[3]

Out in the desert, John is preaching about repentance. He is asking people to change their ways, to start over with God and with each other. He implores them to get ready for the one who is coming.

I don’t know how you picture John the Baptist.  I picture him looking kind of wild – dressed in camel hair with a belt cinched tightly around his skinny self. I think of him shouting at people, like a sidewalk evangelist with a megaphone, maybe almost foaming at the mouth while he tells them how much they need to change.  That’s often my mental picture. But that’s not what Mark describes.

Mark quotes from the Hebrew Bible, mostly from Isaiah 40 which was read a few minutes ago.  Isaiah 40 describes a messenger in the wilderness.  It begins with God saying  “Comfort, comfort my people.”  “Speak tenderly.”

What if all those people are going out to see John in the wilderness, not for a scolding, but for comfort.  What if John is tenderly inviting them to imagine themselves living a different life? Inviting them to be done with all the things that bind them to anger and resentment.  With kindness and love, suggesting that they face the truth about themselves and prepare for change.[4] 

As he quotes from Isaiah, Mark inserts a new verb. Where the older text described preparing a path, Mark speaks of the construction of a new way.  What is being created is no mere path; a new way of life is being built into the shell of the old world.[5]  John calls for repentance.  Repentance is beginning again. Repentance requires a shift in imagination, the ability to dream a new dream, to see a new pattern, and the energy to construct that new way. 

John shows up at the beginning of the good news to tenderly invite us to begin again, to prepare for God’s appearance as much as we can, because the Holy One always breaks into our world in ways that surprise us.  There is a danger that we may reject this invitation -- that we may close ourselves off from one another, cutting away any risks that might lead to joy, refusing to believe that God could care enough to comfort us and others in distress.[6]

How do we receive this good news? How do we begin again?  Maybe by returning to what we already know, to loving God with our whole hearts and our neighbors as ourselves. Barbara Brown Taylor writes, “To make bread or love, to dig in the earth, to feed an animal or cook for a stranger—these activities require no extensive commentary, no lucid theology. All they require is someone willing to bend, reach, chop, stir. Most of these tasks are so full of pleasure that there is no need to complicate things by calling them holy. And yet these are the same activities that change lives, sometimes all at once and sometimes more slowly, the way dripping water changes stone. In a world where faith is often construed as a way of thinking, bodily practices remind the willing that faith is a way of life.” [7]

There is a story told about Ruth and Billy Graham.  One afternoon they were traveling through the mountains of North Carolina where they lived. On that day, they encountered several miles of road construction.  There was one-lane traffic.  There were detours. It was frustrating.  Finally, they came to the end and they saw a road sign.  Ruth Graham turned to her husband and said, "Those words, on that road sign, that is what I would like to have printed on my tombstone." The words on the road sign read: End of construction. Thanks for your patience.

 Beloved ones, until the end of our days, we are always under construction.  And so, we do not lost heart. We begin again, preparing the way, dreaming God’s dream so that imagination and compassion and God’s creative love can find a way into our lives and into the life of this world. Thanks be to God.

[1] Eugene Boring, Mark (New Testament Library)  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2006).  p. 30

[2] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope  (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022), p. 25-26

[3] Mary Grey, The Advent of Peace: A Gospel to Christmas, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2010), p.21-22

[4] Richard Swanson, A Provocation: Second Sunday of Advent, December 10, 2017, Mark 1:1-8 https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/?s=Mark+1%3A1-8

[5] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988, 2008), p. 124

[6]Glenn Bell in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year B, Volume 1 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp Editors, ,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 21.

[7] Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith, (New York:  HarperOne, 2009), p. 9

11/19/23 - To Feed with Justice - Ezekiel 34:11-24

To Feed with Justice

Ezekiel 34:11-24    

November 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=CVwEil3qHAQ

 “You cannot tell the story of injustice  without telling the story of power.”[1] So says Cole Arthur Riley in her wonderful book This Here Flesh.  “You cannot tell the story of injustice without telling the story of power.

The prophet Ezekiel is also concerned with the relationships between injustice, or justice, and power.  We did not read the first part of chapter 34. It begins with “Woe to the shepherds.”  It accuses them of five sins of omission, and for emphasis, the usual Hebrew word order is reversed. The word from the Lord to the shepherds is:

·       the weak you have not strengthened

·       the sick you have not healed,

·       the injured you have not bound up,

·       the strayed you have not brought back

·       the lost you have not sought.[2]

In Ezekiel’s time, shepherd was a common metaphor for a king. Kings were expected to govern well, to protect and diligently care for their subjects. The last four kings had worthless, not so much shepherds, but wolves.  Wolves who ruled so brutally that it recalls the harshness of the Hebrew people’s suffering under Pharoah’s rule in Egypt.[3]  The result of their failed leadership is that the flock has been devoured and scattered, taken into captivity by a foreign nation. 

Ezekiel is describing the time when they are without a king, without a shepherd, in exile. God has had it with the human shepherds. Now God will be their shepherd. God will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the injured and strengthen the weak

The thirteenth-century German theologian, Meister Eckhart, said that “you may call God love. You may call God goodness, but the best name for God is compassion.”

God is the quintessential Good Shepherd, actively gathering the scattered sheep, tending injuries, nursing the sick, restoring the flock to wholeness.  This is a mercy and tender love at their very best. The best name for God is compassion.

But it is not only the shepherd-kings that God is angry with. There are other leaders from within the flock who, Ezekiel says, “pushed with flank and shoulder and butted at all the weak animals with their horns.” There were bullies, strong ones who abused the weaker ones.

Some sheep got to the good pastures first and when they had eaten their fill, they tromped it down so that others couldn’t eat. They got to the clean streams and then polluted them so that there was not clean water for others. God is also displeased with those sheep. 

When I was young, I was taught a certain simple narrative about the Bible.  I was taught that there was a pattern in the Old Testament. The pattern was that things would go well for a time while the people were worshipping and obeying the true God, but then they would fall away and worship idols and things would go badly for them. Eventually, things would go so badly that they would turn back to God.  God would forgive them and things would go well as long as they kept to God’s ways. But inevitably they would turn away from God and worship idols and the pattern would repeat itself.  

That’s what I was taught.  Maybe some of you were taught that too. It is somewhat true, not a bad way to describe the arc of much of Biblical history.  Except that when it was taught to me, it came with another message.  The accompanying message was that we modern Christians were not like those ancient Hebrew people.  Because Jesus had broken that cycle and delivered us and we always only worshipped the true God and never fell away.  That is a dangerous message. It is easily put to work to bolster anti-Semitism for one thing. For another, it falsely presumes that we do not have our own idols.

What I believe is that the Bible tells us the stories of a particular people, because we understand things best when they are specific. But the stories are not unique to the ancient Hebrews. The stories describe the tendencies of all human beings. They teach us what it is to be human.

My friend, Vince Amlin,  is a pastor in Chicago. Last summer, during his sabbatical, he had a powerful experience. He describes it like this,

On a rainy Wednesday afternoon, my family gathered with a dozen others outside the mouth of a cave in Northern Spain. Our guide unlocked the gate and led us on a 20-minute walk, deeper and deeper into the earth. 

Finally, we stood in total darkness at the heart of the cavern until our guide turned on his flashlight and panned it slowly across the rock wall to reveal a horse, painted in purple with a black mane and standing in a red field. This image, the cave’s earliest, is thought to be as many as 36,000 years old. By far the oldest human-made thing I have ever been in the presence of. 

It was beautiful…and daunting. 

To hold my own life up against that timeline. To reckon my days against that horse’s. It makes my time here seem very small. And makes the God who stretches from everlasting to everlasting seem very large.”

“It makes the psalmist number his days,” Vince says. “To count each one as precious, knowing how few we have been given by the one who was before horse paintings, and before horses, before caves that lead into the earth, and before the earth itself.”[4]

Vince’s story reminds that humans have been around for a very long time. It gives me a window on Scripture, an appreciation for the ancient people whose stories still matter.

Ezekiel describes corrupt political leaders, those who use the power of their office for themselves, in ways that destroy the vitality of the whole country. Sound familiar?  It describes people who push to the front of every line and take all that they want with no concern for those behind them.  You and I know people like that.   These are old patterns, but we are still living them out. We might even understand verses 17-22 as descriptive of people who exploit the resources offered by the earth and pollute what remains.   For people in our time concerned with environmental stewardship, Ezekiel’s word are more relevant than the prophet could have imagined.[5]

The solution to bad shepherding and stray sheep is the Good Shepherd, the God whose name is compassion, the one who seeks and gathers and binds up and strengthens.  And one more thing, God says, “I will feed them with justice.” 

“I will feed them with justice.”  We may read that and cheer.  The fat sheep, the bullies are going to get what’s coming to them.  It’s payback time.   We think that justice means to give people what they deserve, like payback or punishment, but in the Bible, the word justice means that people get what they need. 

God will feed the flock with justice, the whole flock.  God will distribute the resources so that everyone gets what they need to live. That’s one sense of the phrase.  But we can also hear another meaning.  The idea that the flock needs to eat justice.  They need to be nourished with justice so that justice will become the fiber of their lives. They need to receive justice where everyone gets what they need and  also they to absorb the ways of justice, so that they will live justly in the renewed land to which they will return.[6] 

“You cannot tell the story of injustice without telling the story of power.”   The story of injustice that Ezekiel tells is a story of the abuse of power, the exploitation of privilege, the failure of leadership. Many of his proclamations have condemned all the people, both those Judeans who remained in the homeland and those deported to Babylon. 
For much of this book, all of the people shared the blame for the situation.  But here, he recognizes that many of the people are victims, led astray by those whom they should have been able to trust. 

In his time, Jesus spoke about religious and political leaders who tied up heavy burdens and laid them on other people’s shoulders, but were unwilling to lift a finger to move them themselves. It’s the same pattern than Ezekiel saw.

Cole Arthur Riley writes now as a person of color in a white-supremacist culture. She says, “We cannot trust a society that makes judgments on the morality of a person without taking responsibility for how its own morality has instigated the conditions that call for such desperate decision-making . . .   You cannot tell the story of injustice without telling the story of power. It requires integrity to become honest about how our power systems and our position in the world affect our capacity to do justice.  Which is to say, justice can never be severed from mercy.” [7]

That message that I absorbed as a child, that message that we are different, that we no longer worship other gods was wrong and dangerous.  We still go after idols like status, self-sufficiency, and convenience. We still maintain systems that exploit or neglect or stigmatize.   We give our primary allegiance to something other than God, whether it be  family, or political party, a way of life or national identity. 

Today we mark the last Sunday in the church year.  Next week Advent begins.  Advent is the first Sunday in the new church year. Some of us have done this cycle so many times that we forget.  We have been keeping the church running for so long that we may be in danger of forgetting the point.  So, today, Ezekiel reminds us about the true nature of the God we worship.  God is the true shepherd of the sheep, the one who nurtures and protects and guides us.  And God is the one who feeds us with justice. At the end of a year, on the threshold of another one, it is all about love and justice. Thanks be to God.

[1] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us (New York, Convergent Books, 2022), p. 122

[2] NIB, p. 1466

[3] Moshe Greenberg, Ezekiel 21-37, Anchor Bible Commentary, Volume 22a (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1997) p 69.

[4] https://www.ucc.org/daily-devotional/your-days-are-numbered/?fbclid=IwAR1K2sJaw-CWnABmgQw2ELq0hX4fade552DoMvWL3rPnTfd2l6qm-FhfoIY

[5]Katheryn Pfisterer Darr, New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 5, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2015), p. 1469

[6] John Holbert, “On Recognizing the Shepherd:  Reflections on Christ the King Sunday,” https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/on-recognizing-the-shepherd-john-c-holbert-10-13-2014

[7] Cole Arthur Riley, pp 121-123

11/12/23 - Time for a New Foundation - Rev. Dr. Elijah Zehyoue - Psalm 118

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsaAfVE7EL8

11/5/23 - Children of God - Deuteronomy 34:1-12; I John 3:1-3

Children of God  

Deuteronomy 34:1-12; I John 3:1-3

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

November 5, 2023 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy7mNCRUFAg

Last month, my high school graduating class had our 40th class reunion.  I wasn’t there, but several friends sent reports about it.  In the six months before the reunion, two well-known and well-liked classmates died.  One died of an apparent heart attack. The other died by suicide, as a result of severe depression.  My friends told me about the stories shared and the toasts offered to the memories of these recently departed classmates. Partly because of that, partly because I have a tendency towards the melancholy at this time of year, and partly because the church calendar invites exactly this kind of reflection on All Saints Sunday, I have been reflecting on the concept of legacy.

I am thinking about an individual’s legacy, what they accomplish or teach or inspire within their lifetime that has a lasting impact.  It is the kind of thing that you sometimes find in an obituary or a eulogy, although neither of those is ever complete.

Moses’ eulogy in Deuteronomy 34 says “Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. He was unequalled for all the signs and wonders that the Lord sent him to perform . . .”  Moses left big shoes for the leaders who would come after him.  There no one like him, says the author of Deuteronomy. We know from other books of the Bible that Moses lived a complicated life. He was born in the midst of genocide, but was spared because of the actions of his mother and sister and Pharaoh’s own daughter.  He grew up in the midst of privilege, as witness to oppression, until one day he killed the Egyptian who abused another Hebrew. Then he fled for his life, eventually settling down as a shepherd in the wilderness. Until God called him to return to Egypt to lead his people to freedom.  Moses did so, but only after a good bit of arguing and making excuses.  That kind of doubt and arguing and whining to God seems to have continued for the duration of his life.  What God accomplished for the Hebrew people through Moses’ leadership was unparalleled.  His legacy was enormous, but his life was far from perfect. In so many ways, he was an ordinary human being with faults and strengths who was used by God in spite of himself.

He died within sight of the land he had journeyed towards for years, but without entering it.  Every death is like this. Every death leaves us with questions about how things might have been different.  . . Every death leaves unfinished business.

The actor Matthew Perry died last week. He became famous overnight starring on the TV show Friends which lasted for 10 seasons.  More recently, Matthew disclosed his lifelong struggle with addiction.  He wrote a book about it and discussed it on talk shows.  In one interview he said, “The best thing about me is that if someone says to me ‘I want to stop drinking, can you help me?’  I can say Yes and follow up and do it.”  Matthew went on, “When I die, I don’t want Friends to be the first thing that’s mentioned.  I want [my willingness to help others] to be the first thing that’s mentioned.”[1]  What matters to most of us is not the awards or accolades, but the relationships and the times that we felt like we made a difference for someone else.  Even for someone as famous as Matthew Perry. 

Moses and Matthew both died with unfinished business.  We too shall die with things left undone. 

Reinhold Niebuhr taught theology at Union Seminary in New York for decades and was an influential voice in the middle of the last century.  He wrote

“Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope.  Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.”[2] 

If Niebuhr is correct, that nothing can be achieved in a lifetime, then important work takes the work of several lifetimes.  Important work takes multiple generations.  I am thinking about an individual’s legacy, what a person leaves behind.  I am also thinking about the other side of legacy which is receiving what is left for us by others.   Some of us are grateful for ancestors who emigrated to this land. Because of their sacrifices, we may have received an easier way of life.  Some of us are grateful for opportunities for education or travel or life wisdom of faith transmitted to us by parents or grandparents or trusted elders.

This summer I came across a list of the people who transferred from Temple Baptist Church to Emmanuel in 1970.  That list is on the insert in your bulletin. Of the approximately 150 names listed, I have personally known  only 9.  I am grateful that I knew Audrey Ford, James Ford, Chris Moaton and Mattie Smith Blassengale.  I am also grateful for continuing to know Sam Koonce, Rosemary Koonce, Esther Moore, Beverly Norwood and Dwight Smith.  Many of you will recognize and remember other names on the list.  When these 150 people joined Emmanuel, they provided a legacy for us.  The historic black Temple Church and the very white Emmanuel Church looked very different after 1970.   Because we became racially diverse, people of different races joined us and still do. That is a rare gift, a legacy to be treasured.

I want to honor our elders, those in leadership in 1969 and 1970 who had the wisdom and courage to bring those two churches together. We continue in the work of anti-racism shared by those folks fifty years ago, because nothing that is worth doing can be accomplished in our lifetime.

We inherit a legacy.  We hope to leave a good legacy.   Our ordinary daily actions shape that legacy.  The letter of I John was written to Christians who struggled with some of our same questions.  They had been through some hard times.  At the end of the first century, their church is splintering.  They may wonder what will become of them. There are a lot of theological fights in their time, but the writer of this letter is more concerned with the practical than the theoretical.  He wants his readers to behave like Jesus, not just to believe that he is the Christ.[3]   He wants them to support each other in the love that comes from God who is love.

“Beloved, we are children of God,” he writes.  Not because we have earned that identity, but because God has freely bestowed it.  We often declare that Jesus is God’s Son. What could that mean?

–      That Jesus resembles God, in the ways that a child resembles their parents

–      That Jesus is close to God, close to understanding who God is and what God desires

–      That Jesus enacts the will of God on earth.

“Beloved, we are children of God,” John says. 

What if John means that we are God’s beloved offspring, just like Jesus?  What if we believed that?  What if, on a daily basis, we looked in the mirror and reminded ourselves “Beloved, now you are a child of God.”  

John says that the world does not recognize us as God’s children, just as Jesus was not recognized.  Maybe the world doesn’t recognize us because we don’t recognize it in ourselves.  What if we did? Imagine the legacy that we could create as children of God.

You recognize the name of Rev. Desmond Tutu.  Known for his powerful non-violent leadership in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, he became bishop of Johannesburg and later the Archbishop of Cape Town, in both cases he was the first black African to hold the position.  I was blessed to hear him preach on a couple of occasions. He could remain calm and composed in the face of soldiers occupying a sanctuary, but he was also an excited and joyful preacher, especially when he got warmed up on his favorite subject which was the love of God.   

Someone once asked him about a defining moment in his life.  He told a story from his childhood.  One time, when he and his mother were walking down a sidewalk, a tall white man was approaching them.  Under the rules of apartheid, it was expected that Desmond and his mother would step into the gutter and nod their heads in deference as the white man passed. But this white man was different, and to their surprise he stepped off the pavement and tipped his hat as they passed him. The man was an Anglican priest called Trevor Huddleston who was bitterly opposed to apartheid. When Desmond’s mother explained to him that Huddleston was a ‘man of God’ he made up his mind there and then to become an Anglican priest just like him.[4]  The tip of the hat, the simple act of kindness and dignity, confirmed for Desmond that he was a child of God.  I cannot think of a better example of someone who lived into that identity. 

 John writes “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed . . . but we will be like him.”   

This is our identity and also our future goal, who we are to become.   We live in the now and the not yet.

“Nothing worth doing,” Niebuhr said, “can be accomplished in a lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, . . . can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.” 

And so we are saved by a love that accompanies us all our days, to death and beyond.  Thanks be to God for a love like that.

[1] https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/matthew-perry-wanted-remembered-beyond-friends/story?id=104474000

[2] Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History, (New York:  Scribner Book Company, 1952).

[3] Frank Stagg, [3] As quoted by Peter Rhea Jones in  Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary:  1,2 & 3 John (Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys, 2009), p. 9

[4] https://www.ministrymatters.com/all/entry/3326/you-never-know-what-will-grow

10/29/23 - What Animals Can Teach Us - Genesis 1:1, 20-25

What Animals Can Teach Us

Genesis 1:1, 20-25

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 29, 2023

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

There’s an old video of a beaver on the internet. This young kit is named JB, which is short for Justin Beaver. Orphaned as a baby, JB was brought to a wildlife rehab.[1]  In the video, he lives temporarily  in a regular human house where he hangs out in the bathtub a lot.  JB is a busy guy.  He chews on doors and table legs.  He moves around the human house, gathering things. In the video, we see him pushing the front door mat and lugging the recycling tub and gathering a stream of objects like mop handles, stuffed animals, and shoes – all to build a dam which blocks the hallway. JB is a beaver and this is what beavers do. 

What might we learn from JB?  We might recognize that somethings are deeply ingrained and not likely to change.  If we press that insight for people, we might realize that instead of trying to get someone to change what we don’t like about them, we might just try to appreciate them for who they are.  That’s what I was thinking as I reflected on JB.

But I mentioned it to Jim and he had a different take.  He said that some behaviors are essential for survival in one situation, but completely wrong in another one.  The beaver might not be able to read the situation, but we humans need to do so.  Sometimes we have to change, even to change something really deeply ingrained, in order to thrive.

Perhaps trying to learn life lessons from animals is really more of a projection test.  Watching JB led to very different conclusions for Jim and for me.   But maybe that is also part of the learning.

Genesis 1 proclaims that God created animals – the birds of the air, everything that swims in the sea, and the ones that creep or crawl on the ground, wild and domesticated.  God pronounced them good.  We note that the animals were created first.    Before God created the first humans, the planet was populated with all kinds of plants and animals.  In fact, God felt that animals were so important that the first task God assigned to Adam was to name the animals.  Naming creates relationship. From the beginning, we were intended to be in  relationship with the other animals. And that is good.

We are gathered here today to honor and bless our beloved animal companions.  We are here to thank them for the gift of their friendship; their unconditional love. But we are not only here for the animals that we live closest with—we want to praise all animals that exist in our world and affect the ecosystems we all exist in. The apex predators, the smallest rodents, the annoying gnats and mosquitos and the creatures that feed on them. All life is linked.  It is our duty to protect it in any way we can and help it to prosper, because its prosperity is ours as well.

Entire books have been written about human interactions with animals.  Let me just lift up a few.  

Pets teach us about companionship – the cat that winds around our feet every morning on our way to the coffee pot,  the dog that requires us to stop whatever we’re doing and go for a walk or play a game of fetch. There is joy in those relationships, a wonder at the ability to love across species when sometimes loving members of our own species seems beyond us, and also a strong reminder that life on this planet is not all about us. It includes all of creation, which is full of the love and goodness of God.

We’ve heard the stories of pets making journeys of hundreds of miles in order to find their humans after the animal got lost or the humans relocated.  We’ve seen the uncontrolled exuberance of a dog reuniting with its human after a long absence, like a deployment or a long illness. Those bonds are incredible. Animals can teach us about loyalty.

I am amazed at the ways that animals protect humans. There are highly trained service animals that guide their humans safely through busy intersections and crowded shopping malls.  Others that respond to the triggers of a seizure or a dangerous change in blood sugar and use their own bodies to ensure the human’s safety.  Even more amazing is when this happens in the wild.  You might remember several years ago, a scientist was in the ocean observing whales when a humpback started pushing her around with its pectoral fin and ultimately swam her back to her boat. It could have easily hurt her, but didn’t.  She believes it was trying to protect her from a nearby tiger shark.

Sam-I-Am was the dog in our lives when Erin was born and Molly was 4.  Erin learned to walk holding on to Sam’s tail for support.  When Sam developed epilepsy, they learned how to spot the signs of an impending seizure and how to comfort her afterwards.  When Sam died at age 9, we all cried together. That was their first experience with real grief.

Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most well-known animal lover in Christian history, said that people who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, will deal in similar ways with people.  I think that he is right, people who mistreat animals also mistreat people, but the reverse is also true: people who can be taught to love animals can also learn to love people.  I think of various kinds of animal-therapy programs in prisons or rehab or with those suffering from PTSD.

Jesus told a lot of stories about animals.  In Matthew 6, he tells people not to worry, saying “consider the lilies, look at the birds.”   If he walked among us today, he might say “Quit doomscrolling, go take a walk. Attend to the birds, the squirrels.  Learn about monarch butterflies or earthworms or beavers and be open to new insights about yourself and God.”

Yesterday we put out some pumpkins and mums in our yard.  Last night, Jim took our dog Memphis out front for his final walk before bed.  When they got to the mailbox, Memphis sounded the alarm, barking his most urgent bark. Those pumpkins had never been there before. They did not belong there and people needed to be told – the whole neighborhood, apparently.

This is what I have learned from my dogs. They are fully present in the current moment.  They really notice their environment. They pay attention.  They encourage me to do the same.  To see.  To be present.  To leave the worrying behind. 

Let me close with these words from the poet and priest John O’Donohue

Nearer to the earth’s heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind,

And the light and the rain.[2]

[1] https://youtu.be/DggHeuhpFvg?si=lYb5wSZot5im2Jdh

[2] John O’Donohue “To Learn from Animal Being”

 In To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (New York:  Doubleday, 2008), pp 73-74

10/22/23 - Encouraging Words About Difficult Times - Galatians 6:9-10

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hu4eACGJGik

10/15/23 - For Such a Time as This? Who Knows? - Esther 4:1-17

For Such a Time as This?  Who Knows?

Esther 4:1-17

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 15, 2023

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

Some of you are troubled by the book of Esther.  There are many things which might distress us – the sexualization of women and the violence with which the story ends are high on the list.   You are not alone in wondering about the place and value of this book within the Bible.

In 1946, when three shepherds tossed some rocks into a cave, they heard pottery break and discovered some ancient scrolls which had been stored in jars for centuries.  This was at a place called Qumran, near the Dead Sea.  The scrolls they found, now called the Dead Sea Scrolls, are one of the greatest archaeological finds in modern times.  Tens of thousands of fragments of text were found in eleven caves within a two mile radius.  There were many different kinds of writing – some political, some religious, some legal.  About 200 of the scrolls were manuscripts from every single book of the Jewish Bible.  Every book, that is, except for the book of Esther.[1]  Most scholars believe that these scrolls were created by the Essenes, a Jewish sectarian community that flourished about 200 years before Jesus. They apparently had no use for the book of Esther.

The book of Esther does not mention God, which was also a problem for some.  So, when Egyptian Jews translated the Bible into Greek, a translation we now call the Septuagint,  they wrote in 107 new verses.  They wanted to make a secular story sacred. All of this is to say that we who are Bible nerds could spend a lot of time studying many fascinating issues within and around this book.   If you’re interested in a detailed Bible study of Esther, share that with someone working on adult faith formation.

Our time today is limited, so I am recognizing those valid concerns and setting them aside.  Despite its troubling aspects, the book of Esther has endured.  

Here’s a quick summary of the plot. The villain of the story is Haman. Haman is plotting to kill all the Jews in Persia, mostly because he doesn’t think he has gotten the respect he deserves from one named Mordecai.  Haman has the trust of King Xerxes.  He has convinced Xerxes that these people are foreigners who don’t obey his laws.  King Xerxes has authorized Haman to find and destroy them all over the kingdom of Persia.  What the king doesn’t know is that his new queen, a woman named Esther, is Jewish.  She is Mordecai’s cousin and adopted daughter.  We pick up the story as Mordecai has learned of Haman’s plot. 

The news has spread. Jewish people throughout Persia are afraid and mourning. Mordecai protests publicly, by sitting outside the king’s gate wearing sackcloth and ashes.  But Esther, who lives within the palace walls, is insulated from such information. Perhaps she would prefer not to know.  But Mordecai offers her proof.  He confronts her with the very real threat of genocide. 

Those of us who went to the American Baptist Mission Summit this summer heard an amazing sermon on this text by Rev. Frederick Douglas Haynes. The sermon was entitled “Too Woke Not to Weep”.  In it, Rev Haynes implored us to stay awake to the realities of poverty and injustice faced by people around us, even if our privilege shelters us from them.  That was what Mordecai did. He woke Esther up to the reality that her people were suffering.

Esther comes to understand what is happening. She agrees it is a serious problem.  But her first response is to be overwhelmed. It is a huge thing, under the control and machinations of powerful men.  She comes and goes at the king’s bidding. She cannot even talk to him unless he summons her, and he hasn’t done that for a month. She may be considered the queen, but she is one of many women in the king’s harem. What can she possibly do to change the situation? 

Mordecai replies with the most quoted words in this book “Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”   Maybe you are in the place you are for this particular moment in history.  Perhaps you have more power than you think. 

For such a time as this.  For a time of potential genocide, for a time of blatant injustice and oppression. That was Esther’s time. What might it be for us?  A time of war, when major world powers are again choosing war,  a time when old toxic ideologies which we might have thought long defeated are popular again, a time when families are divided over politics and worldviews and faith, a time when most of our institutions are being challenged and many seem to be failing.   “Who knows, perhaps you have come into the kingdom for just such a time as this.”  That’s another translation of that verse.  

Who knows?  This phrase is repeated throughout the Bible in response to the realities of life that are hidden or uncertain or beyond human comprehension.[2]

When King David was told that the child Bathsheba was carrying, his child, would die, he fasted and prayed and said “Who knows?  The Lord may be gracious to me and the child may live.”

When Jonah took a message of impending destruction to the people of Ninevah, the king proclaimed a fast and ordered the people to pray and he said Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

So Mordecai says to Esther, “Who knows?  Perhaps you are where you are for just such a time as this.”

The implied answer is “Only God knows.”  Is this a time when peace might prevail over war?  Is this a time when we will radically re-invent our institutions or must we continue to suffer through the brokenness?  Only God knows. 

The ambiguity, the uncertainty, the not-knowing are part of the faithful risk-taking that Esther models for us. 

The First Baptist Church of Albany launched Pearl Street Baptist Church at a time when First Baptist was going strong. Who would have thought that the time was ripe to plant a new church?  Who knew that they were in the kingdom for such a time?

Pearl Street was only thirty-four years old and struggling when they raised the motivation and the money to move up the hill to State Street and build the building that we are worshipping in right now. Who knew that it was the right time for that?

The 1960’s were a time of great social change including the civil rights movement and anti-war movements.  The city of Albany was being radically reshaped by the building of the plaza. In that moment, we joined together with others to form FOCUS Churches.  Who knew?

Only a few Baptist churches were grappling with the questions of sexual orientation and the ever widening circle of grace and inclusion in the 1980’s and 90’s.  Who knew that Emmanuel would be called to join that ministry at such a time? 

In each of those pivotal times in our history and others, we were blessed with some Mordecais and some Esthers.  There were some Mordecais to wake us up to the reality around us, the urgent human needs from which we might be sheltered. Those Mordecais also remind us that we are more than we think we are.  They break us out of our paralysis, our temptation to think that there’s nothing we can do about it anyway.

And there were some Esthers.  Some people who listened to the Mordecais and rallied the community and led with decisive action.

Esther offers us a model that is inspiring and instructive for such a time as this.  We should notice that she doesn’t act alone.  She calls for others to pray and fast.  She looks to her community for support.  Earlier I referred to additions to the book in the Greek translation.  One of those additions is her prayer which ends with the words “and save me from my fear.”

She feels the fear and resolves to act anyway.  She knows the risks, but says “If I perish, I perish.”  “If I die, I die.”  Sometimes what we are called to do looks foolish or reckless. And it might be. That doesn’t mean it is not faithful.  For people of the Resurrection, death has no ultimate power.  So, there are occasions when we might say with Esther, we will do what we believe God is calling us to do and if we die, we die.

Esther resolves to act.  She summons her community for support. And she takes action. She seeks an audience with the king and when he grants her permission, she invites him to a dinner party.  As she wines and dines him, he asks to hear her request, which he ultimately grants.  She has no political power. She has no economic power.  She has no leverage to convince the king to rescind his decree.  But she uses her specific gifts which included her relationship, her charm, her gifts of hospitality and words and strategy and imagination.

Esther might have continued to believe that she was powerless, that her gifts were inadequate, but instead she took a faithful risk and changed the story of her people.

This story stands out because people and churches often don’t act and the story doesn’t get changed.  We may not take action because  

·       We feel our gifts are not enough to make a difference, or that we don’t have the right gifts, or that we have no gifts at all.

·       We feel that we have to do everything the way we have always done it, even when the situation has dramatically changed.

·       We think we have to do things the way everyone else is doing them, and we compare ourselves to other churches and find ourselves wanting.[3]

This story, which has endured for centuries, is a reminder that we are more and we have more than we think.  It is a call to creative courageous stewardship, to giving our time and energy and finances to risky faithful action in this time and place.  If we die in doing so, then we die faithfully. 

And who knows? Maybe we have come to this place, to this community, to this challenge, to this moment for just such a time as this.

[1] Dan Clendenin, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/373-queen-esther-unedited

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Who Knows?  https://churchanew.org/brueggemann/who-knows

[3] These bullet points and much of the flow of this sermon comes from the work of the Rev. Dr. Rochelle Stackhouse in For Such a Time as This:  A Bible Study for Stewardship in Challenging Times published by the United Church of Christ https://www.uccresources.com/

10/8/23 - Gratitude - Ecclesiastes 3:11; John 1:1-15

Note: A recording of this worship service may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBGHchvWs0A

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.