2/25/24 - Called to Listen - Mark 8:31-38

Mark 8:31-38

Called to Listen

February 25, 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=Ap30hs_kksQ

Frederick Buechner says to pay attention to your tears because God often speaks through them. Many of us on the Civil Rights Pilgrimage wept unexpectedly at various moments this week. Even those of us who didn’t actually shed tears felt very strong emotions like grief, anger, despair and hope. Please talk with the pilgrims today and next Sunday.  They might be a little shy to bring it up, so you might give them an opening by asking what was most moving for them.

The most unexpected tears in my week happened at a museum in Birmingham. Among other things, this museum tells the story of the children’s marches for desegregation and of the physical beatings, dogs and fire hoses inflicted on children.  As horrific as that was, it didn’t make me cry.

What made me tear up was one name.  This name kept appearing as I made my way through the museum. The name is Fred Shuttlesworth.  Rev. Shuttlesworth was the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham from 1953-1961.   That church was the headquarters of  a group called the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights, which was formed after the state of Alabama outlawed the NAACP.  The protest movement launched from this church challenged segregation in every arena in Birmingham and inspired people across the world.

Rev. Shuttlesworth was a chapel speaker at my seminary in the 1990’s and I did not know who he was.  I think the shame of that ignorance may have contributed to my tears. 

Bethel Baptist Church was a black church in a black neighborhood in fiercely segregated Birmingham. In 1963, they reached out to 16th Street Baptist Church downtown. 16th Street was a large and prominent church located just blocks from City Hall and the commercial district.  It was the center of the Black Community, serving as church and social center and lecture hall.   Famous people like Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Dubois and Paul Robeson were among the guest lecturers or performers.

When Fred Shuttlesworth wanted to invite Dr. King and the Southern Leadership Conference to come to Birmingham, 16th Street was the logical gathering place, but some church leaders and members resisted. They did not want to link themselves with the civil rights movement. They did not want to attract any more attention from the white authorities than they already had.

That’s an echo from Jesus’ conversation with Peter.  When Jesus tells the disciples about the suffering he will face at the hands of the religious and civil authorities, not for doing anything wrong, but for speaking truth and advocating for the marginalized, Peter pulls him aside and says, “Don’t talk like that Jesus.  Don’t take unnecessary risks.  Keep your head down. The Romans don’t even have to know what you’re doing.” 

That’s human nature, isn’t it?  To protect ourselves, to want to live our lives as normally and as trouble-free as possible. 

We heard similar concerns in Selma. The gathering places for the movement were churches.  Looking back on history, we might assume that connection came easily, but we would be wrong.   The churches often actively resisted.  “Don’t bring that kind of attention to us. We don’t need that trouble.”   

That’s what they said at first at Brown Chapel and at First Baptist in Selma.  When the police chased peaceful marchers off the Edmund Pettus bridge, they ran after them into the sanctuaries of those two churches and continued beating them there.

That’s what they said at first at 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.  Five months after they hosted Dr. King, the Klan placed a bomb which exploded in the building on a Sunday morning killing four little girls and leaving a community traumatized.  The people were right.  The consequences were severe.

But Jesus rebuked Peter for focusing on the wrong things.  Jesus said “If you want to follow me, take up your cross.”  The cross had only one meaning in the Roman empire.  It meant a painful, torturous execution.  Fear of the cross was the way that Rome maintained its power. 

On Thursday, we went to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.  It remembers more than 4,400 black people killed in racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950.  One of our pilgrims said “This was systemic terrorism.”   In Jesus’ day, crucifixion was state-sponsored terrorism, designed to keep occupied Israel under control.  Lynching served a similar function.  Perhaps it was not officially state-sponsored everywhere, but unofficially it was, because the government did not do anything to prosecute those murders.

When Jesus said, “take up your cross and follow me” in 19th century language, he was saying “if you follow me, chances are good you will be lynched.”

The churches were hesitant and fearful but they did it anyway. They came to understand, as the earliest Christians had, that when you pursue the Kingdom of God, even at the cost of your own life, you work on shattering the power of Empire.[1]

After I found myself welling up in the museum, I wanted a closer connection to Fred Shuttlesworth.  A few pilgrims cut their lunch time short and went with me to Bethel Baptist Church.  There we learned the details about one of the three times the church was bombed.

The sign that we read out loud together said this “On Christmas Evening 1956, Rev Fred Shuttlesworth was sitting in the bedroom of the parsonage reading his Bible when a bomb exploded in the yard. The house foundations were blown away and the structure collapsed instantly.  Neighbors who rushed to the scene presumed Rev. Shuttlesworth had been crushed. Soon a crowd gathered and angry voices began shouting for retaliation.  Slowly out of the rubble and confusion, Rev. Shuttlesworth emerged. He assured the crowd that he was unharmed and urged them to return peacefully to their homes. Later he said that at the moment of the explosion he felt an overwhelming sense of peace and assurance that his life would be saved to continue his work.” 

He said to a policeman “you go back and tell your Klan brethren if God could keep me through this, then I’m here for the duration.”

The next year, he was savagely beaten by a white mob when he tried to register his children to attend an all-white school. That was three years after Brown vs. Board of Education had ruled segregation schools were unconstitutional. The year after that Bethel Baptist Church was bombed again. 

Some might argue that the church was doing political work, not spiritual ministry, but Baptist scholar Alan Culpepper says, “Taking up the cross means being at work where God is at work in the world to relieve suffering and injustice, to rescue the weak, and to bring peace and justice to bear in the human community.”[2]

This is the call of Jesus that still sounds for us.  “ Lose the normal life you had planned for yourself.  Discover with others the life that God intends for us and for all people. Take up your cross . . . follow me and get lynched.”

For, Jesus says,  those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Beloved ones, . . . you with ears, . . .  listen . . . and take courage.  Amen.

[1] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, p 247.

[2] Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, (Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2007), p. 288

2/18/24 - On the Edge of the Inside - Mark 1:9-15 - Mike Asbury, Guest Preacher

On the Edge of the Inside  

Mark 1:9-15

February 18, 2024

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Mike Asbury

 Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI5R7vgQLJs

Cover Image:  I Delight in You by Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity

Inspired by Mark 1:9-15 | Digital Painting with collage

The call to worship and prayer of confession by the Rev. Sarah Speed,  A Sanctified Art LLC | sanctifiedart.org

The Lord’s Prayer is from A New Zealand Prayer Book, The Anglican Church in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and Polynesia

In the year 1181, a son was born to a wealthy Italian father, Pietro di Bernadone dei Moriconi, a silk merchant, and to a French mother, Pica di Boulemont.  As a boy and young man, he lived a life of pleasure and leisure, a life newly found among the burgeoning class of entrepreneurs in Europe, with their new economic and political challenge to the landed aristocracy.  This class of newly rich wanted to gain control of the political and economic systems, and they were willing to spill blood to attain it.   Cities were at war with other cities, when this son, a young man named Francis, of his city of Assisi, went to war against the city Perugia.  At the stern encouragement of his father Pietro, Francis went looking for the plunder and romance of war.  Nonetheless, Francis had misgivings about such an accumulation of worldly power and wealth, while he witnessed the lower economic classes bear the cost of greed by the wealthy. In opposition to his father, and encouraged by his mother, he began to question his conscience about the injustice of human greed.  Then on one momentous occasion, he met a suffering leper on the road, dismounted his horse and kissed this leper.   His life and his heart changed forever.  He knew joy for the first time in his life, was moved in his purpose, from controlling at the center of worldly affairs, to living on the “edge of the inside” of his world, to serve those with simple human needs, dropping all pretense from living in greed, shifting to meet human need.  He called for repentance and belief in the Good News of God’s love.  He lived in the wilderness, among beggars, as a beggar.  He found others to follow in this religious life, not an endowed life as a bishop in a comfortable palace, nor as a parish priest in a cottage, nor even as a monk in a monastery, rather he lived among the ordinary ones, the “minores”, the lesser ones, the beggars, suffering in poverty, and yet finding joy from God, on the “edge of the inside” of his religion. 

Living on the “edge of the inside” of his world and of his religion, Francis was becoming like John the Baptist and Jesus, in today’s gospel, two otherwise very ordinary men, separated from the center of “society”, away from the false constraints of religion, family life, neighborhoods, politics and a greedy economy.  As with John and Jesus, Francis often found criticism that he was not facing “reality”, however “reality” was defined, yet they and he, lived in love and joy, while sharing the sorrows and burdens of those poor in spirit and in possessions. They each lived in wholeness, by first being broken. 

*****************************

In today’s gospel, within only 7 short verses, Mark reports of three unconventional events from the life of Jesus:

1. Jesus was initiated into Judaism with an odd baptism performed by his cousin John, not within the center of religious life, but in the wilderness.

2. Jesus was comforted by angels, after wild attacks by Satan, the Accuser

3. Jesus proclaimed God’s nearness by calling to repent, as did John before prison.

AND in all this...His Father DELIGHTS!!     

AGAIN AND AGAIN, HIS FATHER DELIGHTS

Therefore...Joy lives within John, Jesus and Francis!

John’s challenging message prepared us for repentance AGAIN in Christ Jesus. Today, in part due to John the Baptist, we are disciples of John’s wild eyed and wonderful cousin from Nazareth, Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph.

These two men were told by many that they lived outside of “reality”, away from the center of power and wealth.  Yet we know.... by faith .... that they lived in a true and greater reality, yes, close to being on the outside ...so they were always within REACH... of those outside of wholeness,  ..They touched those in brokenness.... and... they were protected and empowered at the “edge of the inside” by God’s Holy love in Christ. 

Their lives included both challenges and comfort from God. 

·       Where is God challenging and comforting you today?

·       How do we challenge false worldly power?

·       How do we comfort the broken, the sufferer? 

To answer these central questions, as followers of Christ...and in his footsteps along with all those that have walked ahead of us, we must always begin at the same place....you guessed it...AT THE EDGE of the INSIDE by repenting of our own sins, not someone else’s, whether during lent ...or any day of any week. 

Here’s a few ideas how we might repent:

·       May we simply admit we are without the answers to life, since we don’t even know the right questions;

·       May we take time to empty our mind, and listen to another, in our shared emptiness, instead of spouting a self-centered reply to someone with different life experiences;

·       May we claim our absence of compassion for those less privileged, so we may then together identify with each other’s brokenness;

·       May we speak truth to false power, while still coming up empty handed, recognizing that God has claimed us, we have not claimed God; God has found us, we have not found God; so that those in positions of false worldly power may know.... we are the sons and daughters of the Most-High, coming only in love, as we live and move and breathe on the “edge of the inside”, yet next to the outside, prepared to reach out and serve

·       finally, I remain in prayer today with our Emmanuel Baptist family honoring the Christ centered, civil rights advocates from Georgia and Alabama and from across our nation.

My friends, God lives, not at the center of worldly power, not within possessions or shiny objects or historic buildings or even bold oratorical messages.... God lives among the poor of spirit, among the weak and lost, God lives here today, regardless of your burdens, your separation from centers of worldly power and control!  

God continues to shower all of us with love and power from on high, in spite of ourselves.

*********************************

I have told you of my vows in the Order of Ecumenical Franciscans.   Listen now to these words from my fellow Franciscan, Brother John Michael of Rutland, VT, explaining how and why we follow our Father Francis of Assisi and we aim to love as he did, in the footsteps of Jesus, following the footsteps of John the Baptist:

“We exist to provoke the conscience of the church and the world both through our unashamed proclamation of a Loving God and our fearless demonstration of that love to our neighbors. We are called to be so small that we could never make a difference, and so foolish that we are bound to [barely] make a dent. We are called to be hopeful in the mud puddles, joyful in the pouring rain, and grounded in God when all hell breaks loose. We are here to volunteer to be taken next. We are here to let others have the megaphone and we will skip to the margins of the crowd to put ourselves between harm and our neighbors. We are here to love each other without shame and to trust that our Spirit-Chosen family is a testimony to the powers that would splinter us into struggling households. We are here to be as wildly and unreasonably in love with God, as God already is with us.”

May this be so for us today, and every day, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...AGAIN AND AGAIN, here, on the “edge of the inside”.

2/11/24 - On the Mountain - Mark 9:2-9

On the Mountain

Mark 9:2-9

February 11, 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=RLZshuEBS9c

We come to the end of the Epiphany season today.  Our worship theme has been “Wandering Heart” and we have wandered widely from one gospel to another, tracing some of the story of Simon, also known as Peter.  Because of last Sunday’s FOCUS service, it has been two weeks since we heard about Peter, so let’s do a very quick review.  We started with an incident on the Lake of Galilee. Simon and some other local fishermen had fishing all night with nothing to show for it. The next morning, Jesus had asked to use one of their boats as a floating stage so that he could teach the crowds standing on the shore.  Afterwards, he told Simon to go back out fishing.  Simon was reluctant because he had fished all night and caught nothing, but he did it anyway. And then he caught so many fish, it almost broke his nets. His first reaction was awe.  He told Jesus to get away from him, because he, Simon, was sinful.  But then, when Jesus invited all of them to follow him, Simon dropped his nets and did so.

The next week, we wandered to the incident where Jesus commanded the disciples to get in a boat without him and row for the other side.  But then he came walking toward them in the midst of a storm and they didn’t recognize him.  We recalled how Simon chose to get out of the boat and walk towards Jesus, sinking after just a few steps. I suggested that I think it is somewhat of a toss-up about whether he was being brave or stupid, but that Jesus stuck with Simon and kept him safe regardless. 

Two weeks ago, it was the identity question – Who do you say that I am?  Kathy Moore offered a sermon that asked who we are and who Jesus is to us.  In that story, Simon seems as confident as he ever is about anything.  He says to Jesus “you are the Messiah.” “You are the Christ.”  Jesus answers “I’m changing your name to Peter, the rock solid one on which I will build my church.”  

This is the push and pull of Peter’s relationship with Jesus.  One minute its “get away from me Jesus.”  The next it is Peter abandoning the family business to be with him.  One day it is walking on the water and sinking when he sees the waves. The next it is being so sure, so insightful that Jesus gives him a new name which is the Rock.

And then we come to today’s story.  Leaving the rest of the disciples, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up on a mountain. On the mountain, something spectacular happens.  Something that is really hard to put into words, unless you were there, and even then.  They know the story of Moses going up a mountain to talk with God.  We know that story too.  We know that it is dangerous to see God face-to-face, dangerous and deadly.  So when Moses went up the mountain, he only saw God’s back, and even then, the glory of God scorched him.  When he came back down, his skin was shining and he had to cover up so as not to frighten anyone.

That same glory appears on this mountain.  God lets all God’s glory loose in Jesus, making hm one big light, shining from every pore, dazzling in his brightness. 

Barbara Brown Taylor says  “The . . .word for what happened to Moses and Jesus is transfiguration – another word we rarely use outside of church vocabulary. While people who knew them both very well watched, they were changed into beings of light, as if their skin had become transparent for a moment and what had been inside them all along shone through for everyone to see.”[1] 

Sometimes, God shows up in ways we cannot deny.  Halfway between Jesus’ baptism and his resurrection, something is revealed. In this moment, Peter, James and John see who Jesus really is. Not all is as it seems on the surface; there is a hidden glory waiting to be revealed for those who will see and believe. 

It is not enough that Jesus turns into a human light bulb; Moses and Elijah also appear.  What are we supposed to make of that?  One standard interpretation is that they represent the Law and the Prophets, the ways that God has revealed God’s self in the past.  The presence of Moses and Elijah puts Jesus in a context of continuity with religious tradition. 

We might also remember that Moses and Elijah each encountered God on a mountain at a crucial point of discouragement.  For Moses, it was after the people made a golden calf to worship and he got so angry that he broke the tablets on which God had inscribed the law, so that Moses had to go back up the mountain and ask God for forgiveness, again. For Elijah, it was that time when he ran for his life with Queen Jezebel pursuing him.  When he could run no longer, he hid in a cave on the mountain and God found him there. 

Moses and Elijah each beheld God on a mountain at a crucial moment, a moment of fear and discouragement, an experience which the disciples are now sharing. What happens for Moses and Elijah, is that God sends them back into the struggle.

Peter doesn’t pick up on that clue right away.  He wants to prolong this experience.  He says “let’s build some booths.” It’s a reference to a the Feast of Booths, a week-long religious festival which recalled the wandering in the wilderness.  Peter is saying, “Let’s stay up here together for at least a week.”

Verse 6 immediately follows.  It reads “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”   Who is the He being referred to in that verse?  It might be Peter.  It might an explanation that Peter blurts out the thing about building booths because they are all terrified and he doesn’t know what to say.  That would be on brand for Peter. But the He might also be Jesus.  Jesus doesn’t know how to respond because he knows that he is shining and the disciples are terrified.

A voice from the cloud takes over. It is the voice heard at his baptism and it says “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 

Now you have seen who he really is.  Now you know that he is the glory of God covered with skin  -- listen!  Listen to him.

Six days earlier, Jesus had told them something they didn’t want to hear.  Six days before this, Jesus told them that he was going to be rejected and killed and be raised from the dead.  They did not want to hear that.  In fact, Peter had pulled him aside to tell him not to say things like that. But Jesus had insisted and now the voice from the cloud makes the same demand – “Listen! 

He told you what is coming.

Believe him.

Listen and follow.

Listen and go. 

You can’t stay here. 

Get back into the struggle.” 

Sometimes God shows up in ways we cannot deny.  Sometimes we have an experience with God we can’t easily share with others.  We call that  a mystical experience.  Now, I have just done what you probably shouldn’t do with mystical experiences.  I have examined it, taken it apart, trying to make sense of it on a logical level.  Mystical experiences aren’t intended for that kind of analysis . . . but since I’m in this far already . . . here is my take-away:

There may be moments of spectacular awareness of the presence of God, but they are not ours to initiate; they are not ours to prolong, and not every one gets them.

These moments are not ours to initiate – Jesus took the disciples up on the mountain.  They did that often and only had this experience once.  And they had no expectation that it would happen until it did.

These moments are not ours to prolong.  We cannot extend the God-moment.  More likely than not, we will sent back into the struggle, back out on mission.

Not every one gets them.  There were at least 12 people following Jesus around Galilee and often more than that.  Only three people were privileged to have this experience.  Everyone else kept listening and following without the benefit of it. I am not a mystic.  I do not have these experiences.  I try to lean hard into the mysticism of others.

And Peter?  Peter keeps wandering.  Even after this, he will fall asleep in Gethsemane. Even after this, when Jesus is arrested, he will deny that he even knows who Jesus is.

On the way back down the mountain, Jesus tells the three of them “Don’t speak of this until after Easter.”  It won’t make any sense.  You won’t begin to understand it until then.  And maybe not even then.

This is my other take-away.  This journey takes a lifetime.  Even Peter, the Rock, wanders.  Even Peter, who has what seems like one revelatory, faith-confirming moment after another, has his doubts and fear.  At no point does Peter have it made.  His understanding is always limited.  But somehow, he keeps showing up.  He keeps failing to read the room, keeps leaping before he looks, keeps being stupid or courageous – sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. He keeps yearning.  He keeps exploring.  He keeps following, in spite of the cost, because he is one of the imperfect people whom God claims and calls. 

Just like you and me.

Just like you and me. 

Thanks be to God.

[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Glory Doors”, in Bread of Angels, (Boston: Cowley Publications, 1997),  p. 6

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