Sermon 9-25-16

Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren

Luke 16:19-31

 

Jesus told a bunch of parables. The gospels are full of instructional stories about how to live faithfully – stories that Jesus told to make a point, to hit a soft spot in his listener’s heads and hearts, to translate whatever deep spiritual truths he knew about existence into palatable, bite-size narratives suitable for human ears. Jesus was a master storyteller. His parables are exquisitely structured, using an impossible economy of words, tiny, little punch-packing stories about the meaning of life.

Jesus told a lot of parables. Our parable this morning is unique in a very interesting way: in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, LAZARUS is the one single character in any of Jesus’ parables. In the Gospel of Luke, there are 24 parables – 24 short stories by Jesus, and each parable has multiple characters. Usually, the characters are “a man,” “a rich man,” “a Samaritan,” “a woman,” “a sower,” “a servant.” In all his story-telling, this is the one and only time that Jesus gives a character a name.

Why IS that? Why does Jesus choose to name this poor wretch in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man?

Well, first of all, let’s think about the story a little.

This parable has two worlds within two worlds.

There’s the world of the living and the world of the afterlife – 2 worlds.

And in each of those 2 worlds, there exist 2 worlds: the world of the rich and and the world of the poor man.

In the world of the living, the rich man wears fine linen clothes, throws elaborate banquets and feasts every day of his life. The rich man wasn’t just rich, he was uber-rich, ostentatious, a member of the 1%.

In the world of the living, the poor man has to have a friend pick him up and carry him to the rich man’s gate, hungry, unclothed, covered with sores. The dogs come and lick his sores and he is so poor and sick that he cannot even yell at them to leave. The poor man wasn’t just poor, he was poorer than poor, destitute, wretched.

And.

In the world of the afterlife, the poor man is taken up – carried by angels – right into Abraham’s bosom, to the center of the universe, the most protected and secure place in all the universe.

In the world of the afterlife, the rich man is buried and ends up in Hades, tormented and tortured, as far as he can imagine from the comfort and luxury with which he lived his life.

The parable doesn’t tell us anything about either man other than their economic situation. We don’t know if the rich man was stingy or generous, a charitable giver or a hoarder of every penny. We don’t know if Lazarus was ‘working poor,’ ‘deserving poor’ or a ‘lazy welfare recipient.’

What we know, in the world of the parable, is that Lazarus, wretched and in need, found comfort, care and nurture in the afterlife. What we know, in the world of the parable, is that the rich man, ostentatious and swathed in luxury, ends up in Hades, tortured and confused in the afterlife.

 

Two worlds within two worlds.

This idea is a trope in folklore – it’s a classic story of reversal, one we know and identify with – the rags to riches reversal, the ugly duckling to beautiful swan reversal, the underdog becoming the champion story, the last becoming first and the first becoming last kind of story.

But this idea is so familiar because it is not just folklore – it is reality.

The last few years in America have been filled with news reports of racism, police brutality, riots in the streets, movements like Occupy Wall Street and #blacklivesmatter.

 

We’ve heard about the 99%, we’ve learned about CEOs making 1,000x the average worker in their stores, we’ve been barraged with news story after news story after news story of black people being shot and killed by police in their cars, in their neighborhoods, in their homes.

We’re beginning to understand that even here in America, in our home, in the place we know the most intimately, the land of the free and the home of the brave, the country that provides us with safety, security and endless opportunity, there are also worlds within worlds.

Langston Hughe’s classic poem, “Let America Be America Again” is one starting point for understanding these two worlds:

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,

Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Langston Hughes was, of course, a black man. His poetry speaks to the world within our world, the experience of America for people of color. Too often, the existence of this other world, this other experience, this completely alternate understanding of our country and our society is hidden from those of us who live in the other America – the one where liberty, freedom, justice and opportunity flow freely.

These last few years, if we’ve been paying attention, it’s become increasingly hard to ignore the fact that there are two worlds within our America – that the way I experience the economy, the way I relate to the police, the way I move about on public sidewalks, the way I save and spend my money, the way I am assured of my worth – is not necessarily the way my neighbors do.

A couple of months ago, I walked from my house on the east side of downtown Durham to the farmer’s market on a Saturday morning. On my way home, my re-usable bag filled with expensive local cheese and happy local flowers, the picture of young adult professional hipster strolling through her perfectly gritty urban streets, I noticed four young women on the sidewalk in front of me.

The young women were teenagers – definitely not out of high school, definitely not yet adults. They stood in front of a government building with hand-made cardboard signs. As I got closer, I could hear them shouting out the slogans they’d inscribed on their signs:

#blacklivesmatter

#wewillnotbesilenced

#ilovemyblacknessandyours

#stopkillingus

I gave the women a smile and a thank-you as I walked past, but as soon as I got out of earshot, I started crying. I cried the rest of the way home. These young women – these girls – were literally standing on the sidewalk shouting to the world that their lives had value. They were screaming in the street about their existence. They were using all they could muster – their presence, their bodies, their voices and their pluck – to insist that they belong, that they are human, that they deserve respect, that they ought not be ignored, oppressed, walked by, silenced, shot, murdered.

I have never – not once, not ever – felt that my life was in such danger of being disrespected, disregarded, abused or snuffed out that I needed to literally stand on a street corner and declare my own worth, assert my very existence.

I have never – not once, not ever – felt that my country didn’t value me, that the police were not for me, that the systems of economy and justice in my nation would not favor me or do right by me.

I have never – not once, not ever – been fearful of law enforcement, been shut out from renting a particular apartment or opening a particular bank account or applying for a particular job or attending a particular church.

No one gives me untrusting stares when I enter a store, no one moves to the other side of the street when I pass them. No one assumes I am a criminal. No one arrests me for being in a bad mood.

No one would mistake a book in my hand – a posture I assume every single day – for a gun, which is what Keith Lamont Scott’s family says happened on Tuesday when a police officer shot and killed him in Charlotte.

People with my skin color are not disproportionately impoverished, disproportionately ill, disproportionately arrested, disproportionately imprisoned, disproportionately murdered by the agencies ostensibly created to protect us.

I am oblivious to the other America. I am far too often ignorant of this other world within my world. But I am beginning to pay attention. I am beginning to listen to people who are not like me, who experience this world differently. I am trying to open my eyes and see what is literally right in front of me.

My friends who inhabit this other world within our world call this process of opening one’s eyes and finally seeing what’s been in front of our noses all along the process of ‘getting woke.’

 

The rich man in the parable never got woke. He never opened his eyes. He never saw the other world that was literally in front of his nose – lying there on the pavement at his very own gate. Even when he dies and goes to Hades, the rich man doesn’t get it. There, being tortured in the afterlife, he can see Lazarus reclining in the bosom of Abraham from afar.

The rich man, thirstier than he has ever been in his life, calls out: “Father Abraham! I am so thirsty! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue!”

Even in the afterlife, even in the midst of the flames, the rich man doesn’t get woke. He still refuses to open his eyes and see that Lazarus is not a commodity, not a creature there to slake his thirst and meet his needs. He refuses to see that Lazarus is a person, a human, a fellow man with needs and desires and wounds just like his own.

Abraham answers the rich man: Don’t you see, my child? You received all the good things in your lifetime and Lazarus only received agony. Now he is comforted with good things and you are in agony.

Besides, Abraham goes on, can’t you see this great chasm that exists between us? You are there and we are here and the chasm is so great that no one can cross it. That’s that world and this is this world and never the twain shall meet.

But the rich man, still SO resistant to getting woke, SO oblivious to what has happened, SO unable to process the reality of the two worlds within two worlds, won’t give it up.

“Okay, then, Father Abraham,” he says, “if you can’t help me, at least send Lazarus back to the world of the living to tell my brothers about this whole agony thing!” Do you hear that? Even now, even having given up on the possibility of being saved himself, he still wants to use Lazarus as a prop, as a servant, as a less-than-human slave and messenger to help out his rich, living brothers. He still does not get it. He still refuses to get woke.

Abraham reminds the rich man that his brothers – and, by implication, he himself – do not need messengers from the beyond to get them to start looking around, opening their eyes and crossing the chasm from one world within a world to another. “They have Moses and the prophets,” he says, “and if they won’t listen to what I have already given them, why would they listen any more to Lazarus, the wretched poor man you despised and ignored all your life?”

Here is the irony of this story: the rich man, unwilling to open his eyes and breach the chasm between his world of comfort and Lazarus’ world of agony in the world of the living, is rendered unable to cross the chasm between his world of agony and Lazarus’ world of comfort in the world of the afterlife.

Here is the irony of our story, the brilliance of Jesus’ parable for us: if we are unwilling to open our eyes and breach the chasm between our world of comfort and our neighbors’ world of agony in the world of America, the world of North Carolina, the world of Durham…

if we are unwilling to pay attention to what is literally in front of our noses, at our doorsteps…

if we are unwilling to listen to the voices of those who experience the world differently than we do…

if we cannot bear the pain of getting woke and choose to hide our heads in the sand, choose to ignore the suffering of our sisters and brothers, choose to argue with their experience of the world, choose to chastise them for failing to cooperate, choose to dismiss them as guilty before proven innocent because of where they live or what they look like…

if we are unwilling to GET WOKE,

Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that there are dire, agonizing, unavoidable and irreversible repercussions for us, not just in this life, but in whatever world there is to come.

If we do not attempt to breach the chasm between our two worlds in the land of the living, we will experience an even greater, even more un-breachable chasm in the world to come.

That’s why Lazarus, among all the characters in Jesus’ dozens of parables, is the one who has a name. It’s because the rich man knew him, saw him, literally stepped over him whenever he left his house, knew his name, knew his condition, knew his need and STILL failed to understand.

There are names we know and do not understand today. The list is long, but this week, may we know and understand the names of Terrence Crutcher – killed by police in Tulsa on Monday and Keith Lamont Scott – killed by police in Charlotte on Tuesday. May our prayers for them, for their families, for their cities work to open our eyes and our hearts, work to help us breach the chasm between our world and theirs, work to awaken us to this reality, work to draw us more in line with Jesus’ vision of a world without chasms.

Amen.

Sermon 7-31-16

Peace Covenant Church

Hebrews 4:11-16

11 Therefore, let’s make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following the same example of disobedience, 12 because God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions. 13 No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer. 14 Also, let’s hold on to the confession since we have a great high priest who passed through the heavens, who is Jesus, God’s Son; 15 because we don’t have a high priest who can’t sympathize with our weaknesses but instead one who was tempted in every way that we are, except without sin. 16 Finally, let’s draw near to the throne of favor with confidence so that we can receive mercy and find grace when we need help.

We’re in the midst of our summer series on prayer practices, and we’re getting to try all sorts of new and maybe uncomfortable things in worship. So, this morning, we’re going to start the sermon off by taking a test. No worries – it’s multiple choice, and full of absurdity. No grades, no implications, just a quick, multiple choice test here to start us out. Ready?

1. Which of the following animals does NOT speak in scripture?
   1. a serpent (Genesis 3:1-4)
   2. a donkey (Numbers 22:28)
   3. a dove

2. Which of these is not an insult used by a biblical character? (trick question!)
   1.  Bald Head, Bald Head! (2 Kings 2, Elisha calls bears to eat the boys!)
   2.  Crumb-eating Dog! (Matthew 15, Jesus refers to the Syrophoenician woman this way)
   3.  Brood of Vipers! (Matthew 23, Jesus on the Pharisees)

2. Which of these things did Jesus NOT do?
   1. stop a storm in its tracks (Mark 4:35-51)
   2. bring people back from the dead (John 11:38-44)
   3. make a bird out of clay, breathe on it and make it alive (but it IS in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas AND the Quran)

3. Which weird tactic was not used to save God’s people from annihilation?
   1.  pretending your wife is your sister (Genesis 12, Abraham lies to Pharoah)
   2.  setting a baby to sail in a reed basket in the river (Exodus 2)
   3.  battling an evil wizard so scary that He Must Not Be Named.

 

 

 

There’s an awful lot of weird stuff in the bible. That makes sense, given that this thing we call a book is actually a compendium of sacred writings spanning over 3,500 years. The book of Job, the earliest book in the bible, was written sometime around 1500 years B.C., and the gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – were written no earlier than 30 years after Jesus died. They weren’t compiled until 400 years later.

 

In addition to scripture spanning such an incredible chronology of human existence, the kinds of writing included in what we call, simply, Scripture, are vastly diverse. There are creation myths – grand, cosmic tales explaining how everything came to be; codes of law, detailing how a community lived together through thick and thin; books of intricate, intimate poetry; a record of some of the first liturgies from ancient worship services; history books recalling the giants and saints of a people’s history; letters from a church leader to various congregations spread across a region; sermons that were so powerful they got passed around and around before getting included in sacred scripture; and bombastic apocalypses that laid out a vision for the end of the world.

 

In addition to all this diversity – spanning millennia and every literary genre – the scripture that we hold in our hands today is also several degrees of separation from the original text and the original story. Whatever English version we read – King James or New Revised Standard Version – it has been translated from the original Hebrew and Greek – in some cases, the English translation is actually a version of an earlier Latin translation, holding us out even farther from the original language and meaning.

 

But even before the scriptures got written down in their original languages, the content had been passed around, from generation to generation, as an oral tradition. This isn’t true for every book of the Bible – Paul’s letters in the New Testament probably originated as written material, like any letter. And perhaps the code of law in Leviticus was inscribed somewhere permanent before it became part of the canon. But for most of scripture – ancient stories and poetry – the content comes to us from an oral, storytelling tradition. The grand, cosmic stories and the particular ones of Israelites fulfilling and failing at their covenant with God, the narratives of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection – all that comes to us from a deeply woven and nurtured tradition of oral storytelling.

 

When we read scripture, we are placing ourselves in a wide, deep river of sacred story, told and translated by myriad women, men and children throughout millennia and across the planet. Every time we sit down with our bibles, we are slipping into this flow of wisdom that stretches so far back through history that it is hard for our small brains to comprehend, this flow of eternal truth that stretches equally as far into the future. Every time we sit down with our bibles, we are acknowledging that we are beings who belong to something vastly larger than we are even able to comprehend.

 

There is so much mystery here, in this one small book, so much history and theology and poetry and wisdom. It is impossible to understand scripture as single-minded or easy-to-digest. Time spent in God’s Word will do a number on anyone who dares approach it with an open heart and curious spirit. The Bible refuses to be belittled, corralled, or comprehended. It’s just too big.

 

Which is why it actually pains me when sisters and brothers in Christ demand that we read it as a literal representation of the world, or a word-for-word dictation of what God has spoken to human beings. Language does not work that way, for one: even in English we know how things like metaphor, analogy, poetry, sarcasm and irony work. Even dictation fails to convey the tone of what someone might be saying. How many of us have had to resolve some conflict of misunderstanding that came because text messaging and email don’t have a sarcasm filter, don’t convey the facial expression, body language and tone of voice that we use to indicate our meaning? God’s word is so much more nuanced and alive than printed words on a page.

 

If you don’t believe me, or if you assume scripture is to be taken literally, has all been said already, or easy to encounter, well, scripture itself disagrees with you: This is exactly what the writer of Hebrews says: God’s word is living, active, and sharper than any two-edged sword. It penetrates to the point that it separates the soul from the spirit and the joints from the marrow. It’s able to judge the heart’s thoughts and intentions. 13 No creature is hidden from it, but rather everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of the one to whom we have to give an answer.

 

God’s word is living and active – not frozen in time, not mummified in what it meant thousands of years ago, not petrified in some display case – living and active. And, moreover, scripture is active like a sword – a two-edged sword. It is alive and in action inasmuch as encountering it pierces our hearts, reveals the depths of our brokenness, and exposes all about ourselves that God already knows to our own consciousness.

 

Scripture, according to the writer of Hebrews, is a way toward God. It is a place that we can encounter – through this ancient wisdom tradition, a river so deep and wide that we can barely comprehend all that it might have meant, is meaning and will mean – a place that we can encounter the Eternal One, the God who created all that we know, the Lord of Lords, the one who saves us, sustains us, embraces us and enlivens us with the very breath we breathe.

 

Scripture – what a mystery. What a powerful, spiritual thing to encounter.

 

So, it makes sense, then, that our long tradition would have learned ways to encounter scripture that treat it as this complicated, powerful, mysterious path toward God.

There are plenty of ways to read scripture. If you go to seminary, or even college, you might learn about reading the Bible with a literary lens – dissecting its poetry and plot. Or you might learn to read it with a  historical-critical lens – researching and exploring the context of each book, who wrote it, what was happening in that part of the world in those days, why it made sense to the first hearers or readers. Or you might have learned to read scripture as an instructional manual – that every passage has immediate implication for how your own life is to be lived. Or maybe, just maybe, you really didn’t learn any of these ways of reading scripture, just heard it in Sunday school or worship once a week and thought, idly, “hmmm…that’s weird.”

 

Today’s prayer practice is called “lectio divina,” and it is an ancient way of encountering scripture that allows for the complication, power and mystery inherent in the Bible. It comes from St. Benedict of Nursia in the 5^th century – or, at least, Benedict was the first to write it down in an instructional way. Probably Christians had been practicing reading scripture this way for a long, long time. Lectio is a way of reading – Latin for “divine reading,” and its purpose is to allow the words of the text to work on us in a much deeper way than the words that bombard us from every source all day every day.

 

The practice of lectio assumes that God can be encountered in every bit of scripture, but it does not insist that we know the history or the translation details or the context of the original composition. Lectio Divina assumes that there is great power in sacred scripture, and that by allowing ourselves to encounter the words with that assumption, opening our hearts to God’s living and active word, we can and will be changed.

 

Here’s how it works: The traditional structure of lectio is reading/reflecting/responding/resting. You choose a single passage of scripture, and then you listen to that single passage three times through. The first time you listen, you just hear it for what it is – become familiar with the movement of the language, the content of the passage. The second time you read or hear, you listen particularly for a word or a phrase that strikes you differently than the others, that jumps out at you or seems to shimmer or sparkle. The third time, you reflect: why is THAT word or phrase striking me? How does it connect to my own life right now? What might God be trying to say to me through this word or phrase? To end the practice, you offer a simple prayer of gratitude for God’s word and God’s presence in your life, and rest in the knowledge of the mystery of God’s word.

 

So. It’s pretty easy, and also pretty powerful. Are you willing to try it out, to enter into an ancient stream of active, flowing sacred scripture, right now, together?

 

Lectio Divina Practice: Psalm 19:1-10

unabashed, she calls out to passerby

her friends sitting behind, holding cardboard boxes they’ve sharpie-d over

with the slogans so many of us

are greeting, today, with snark and suspicion and sneer:

 

#blacklivesmatter

#wewillnotbesilenced

#blackisbeautiful

#ilovemyblacknessandyours

 

their pit bull sits, restlessly, at the youngest girl’s side

straining at its leash

lurching forward toward my knee as I pass through

their tiny corner of resistance, existence

and pluck.

 

my market bag is bulging with the spoils of privilege:

organic heirloom tomatoes

fresh-cut peonies

eight-dollar cheese (purchased also, I saw as I stood sweating in line,

by a tired mother wrangling three babies

waving her EBT vouchers at the tattooed cheesemaker,

this tattooed cheesemaker who surely is among the blessed

even if we only know it because Monty Python

deliberately misheard the Savior’s gospel);

and the dog must want to get in a good a sniff.

 

I’ve spent the morning strolling through the streets

of this town where I live.

outside my door, it takes four blocks before I see

someone whose skin pales in comparison

like mine.

it takes four blocks, too, before I meet

someone who refuses to return

my standard, southern greeting:

Mornin’, y’all.

her skin is pale, too, and she also refuses

to look me in the eye.

another four-block first.

 

I live here, but only recently.

I live here, but only uneasily.

I live here, but I do not understand this place.

I am a young, ignorant, hipster gentrifier, I suppose,

luxuriating in the industrial charm of this old

textile factory building that has anchored a neighborhood

through decades of boom and bust,

white and black,

hustle and abandon.

this town is changing so quickly that no one seems to know

which way is up or which

way is down.

 

I do not know if living here is right or wrong,

responsible or reprehensible.

I do know

that every time I walk outside my building,

i am confronted with the reality

that my reality

is not my neighbors’.

 

for instance:

the thin, weighted woman who walks past

the electric-car charging station in the parking lot,

a different man trailing her at a safe distance each time

as she leads them through the hedge and toward

an abandoned lot in the next block

definitely isn’t buying herself any eight-dollar cheese,

EBT voucher or no.

 

and:

the aimless, wandering woman who purrs

and swoons at my dog every time we see her,

who wins a tail wag and a face lick for calling her

‘pup-pup’ and crooning with delight

certainly isn’t carrying home peonies to preen

in a Mason jar on her kitchen table.

I do not think she has a Mason jar to her name,

much less a table or,

lord have mercy, a kitchen.

 

but mostly, living here reveals the thing

that no one would teach me in decades of schooling,

that no one would admit to me in years of

being taught to tell the truth:

my skin may pale in comparison

but, because of the way

we’ve allowed our world to work,

my life matters more.

 

this is a thing so deeply twisted

that I can barely bear it.

and even this, even

my inability to bear its reality

is symptom and shibboleth of its truth.

 

I have never, will never, won’t ever be compelled

to stand on a street corner,

summon every ounce of god-given worth,

wave sharpie-d over cardboard boxes

and shout

to any and all passerby

in an attempt to make it so:

I AM HERE.

I MATTER.

STOP KILLING ME.

 

unabashed, she called out.

I thanked her, smiled at her friends,

bent my knee to give the dog a good whiff

of all that eight-dollar cheese,

and woke.

I walked home, pluck and pain and hope

echoing through the neighborhood.

wisdom cries aloud in the streets.

how long, o simple ones, will you wallow in ignorance?

WE ARE HERE.

WE MATTER.

STOP KILLING US.

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon 7-3-16

Galatians 6:1-18

 

We are still here with our friend, Paul, in the very last chapter of his letter to the new church in Galatia. Still here, still working hard to understand Paul’s fiery and sometimes convoluted preaching. We’ve spent the last few weeks listening to Paul instruct the Galatians in their newfound freedom in Christ. He’s disrupting their entire worldview, talking about how the law is no longer the only way to relationship with God and one another, how the Spirit has led them, through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, to a new way of living in God’s light.

The law was good. It kept the people safe and in order and offered really, really clear guidance for what not to do and what ought to happen when someone DID any of those things that were not allowed.

The law made things – if not exactly easy – very, very clear. And the law was good: it aimed the whole community toward safety and justice. Do not underpay your workers. Make sure you welcome the stranger. Take care of those who have no way to do it themselves. But the law was also very strict: Do not eat seafood. Do not mix kinds of fabrics. Only the priest can go into the holiest places of the temple. If you happen to accidentally touch a dead body or a woman at a certain time of the month or, for instance, a dog then you would have to go through an intricate process of purification described in the Law in great detail. If you commit adultery or idolatry or talk sass to your parents, the punishment is, without trial or mitigation: stoning.

There are certain people you can marry and certain people that you cannot. Men are held to one standard of law and women to another. Slaves are bound to their masters, and masters receive particular instruction for owning other people. If you are under the law, you belong. If you do not follow the law, then you do not.

Paul has been arguing – for this whole letter to the Galatians and for our last month here in worship together – for the setting aside of the clarity, detail and exclusiveness of the entire law. Jesus, he says, has fulfilled it all. And we are no longer bound to it in order to have a relationship with God or with one another.

Here, in the final chapter, Paul seems to suddenly realize the depth of his argument’s implications. “Oh,” I can hear him startling, “that’s gonna be REALLY hard for these people! I’ve just kicked their entire ethical system and religious worldview out from under them. Okay. Well, I don’t want them to go completely crazy, anything-goes, antinomian up in here. They’re gonna need SOME guidance on how to live together in this new world. I better stop with the negative preaching and give them some positive direction.”

Actually, Paul has been doing this all along, but it really seems to me that he comes to a massive internal recognition and his writing switches, all of a sudden, to positive reinforcement. The revelation began in the last chapter, where he listed the fruits of the spirit that ought to be governing all behavior – don’t fall prey to the sins of the flesh, he says, but stick to the paths carved out by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control. Paul, having deconstructed an entire ethical and religious system, is now beginning to move into the realm of constructive theology. If not that, then what?

 

We Brethren know a little bit about this move from critical deconstruction into the constructive decisions of how, exactly, we are going to live with one another outside the strict confines of a prescribed, oppressive, outlived system of religious practice.

In 1708, eight young adults left the confines of the law-filled, government-sponsored, forced-belonging state churches of Germany. They’d been overwhelmed with the lack of openness, the inability to choose a relationship with God for themselves, the ways the church lived on excess and power structure, the difficulty of simply reading scripture together in community. In response, they broke laws and baptized one another in a river near Schwarzenau. It is hard for us to imagine that baptizing one another and reading scripture together in one another’s homes were illegal acts that carried dire consequences, but they were and they did. It was the law of the land.

After their considered decision to live outside the law, after their act of personal conscience borne of a critical deconstruction of the prevailing system, those eight Brethren began to articulate what life would look like outside the law. Just like Paul realized the Galatians would need a positive foundation to build themselves up into a community, these Brethren knew that they would need to start someplace.

You remember the place where they started: unlike the forced faith and legal insistence that each and every person assent to a particular set of creedal statements about God, Christ and the Church; unlike the state that persecuted, oppressed and killed any and all who refused to sign on to the list of statements about these things, they were going to begin their life together by immersing themselves in scripture, together. They would have no creed, they decided; no creed EXCEPT the entirety of the New Testament, as they understood it when they sat together and discerned the Word of God found there in community.

Paul’s move here in the last chapter of Galatians is familiar to us because his move – away from deconstruction and toward a positive foundation for life together – is the same pivot embedded in our own genesis.

I can imagine that the Galatians were a bit appalled. The law, you see, may not be easy to keep, but it is very easy to understand. If this, the law says, then that. Do this. Do not do that. Simple. Not easy – actually, pretty impossible to keep it all, and pretty harsh when anyone fails to do so – but simple.

To live outside the law and under God’s grace, though…well, that is a lot more complicated. There is no longer a system of what to do when, or what not to do where. There is no longer a straight line from “if this” toward “then that.” Instead, living outside the law and under God’s wide umbrella of grace requires a deeper investment of mind, heart, time and relationship. We do not receive ready answers. We are required, instead, to encounter and engage difficult people, difficult situations, difficult ideas. We are required to show up, fully present, with our whole selves in tow, required to wade – together – through the mess.

This is how I understand our Brethren insistence on non-creedalism. Since we do not have an already–determined list of doctrine to which we are expected to ascribe, we are required to interact with all of scripture, to read each book and chapter with an ear toward listening for the gospel in each bit. Since we do not have a handed-down list of beliefs that ancient authorities created, we are required to do this reading and listening in community with those brothers and sisters who happen to be gathered around us. Without a given law or creed, the onus is on us to encounter each situation, each scripture, each person, secure in the knowledge of God’s grace and bold in our attempt to live faithfully to the gospel.

You might be beginning to see why Paul’s words to the Galatians sound pretty familiar to us Brethren. Under the law, there were prescribed consequences for inappropriate behavior, but under God’s grace, each situation requires conversation, compassion and discernment. Paul begins this last chapter of his sermon by admonishing these newly freed followers of Christ: My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. This is not transgression under the law, where stoning was a common consequence. This is the gentle restoration of the Spirit. And it requires attention, compassion, and presence to the people and the dynamics involved.

Paul goes on to remind the Galatians that, unlike life together under the law, the holiness of others does not determine our own holiness. We are to be responsible for ourselves: ⁴All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. ⁵For all must carry their own loads. And, by the way, other people’s holiness is not what makes us able to relate to God: ¹³Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. ¹⁴May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

The law requires all of us to be holy in the same ways. But life under the grace of Christ allows us the freedom to bear one another’s burdens without requiring a holiness test for their actions. In a spirit of gentleness, Paul says, restore the other to fellowship.

 

A lot of the conversation this week at Annual Conference was about very controversial topics. We had queries about climate change, the viability of On Earth Peace as an agency because of their openness to things like #blacklivesmatter, female pronouns for God and LGBTQ rights, and a question about how we should respond to ministers who perform same-gender marriages. Standing Committee proposed that we answer this last query by punishing any minister who chose to perform a marriage by terminating their credential for one year – without exception, without conversation, without trial or mitigation.

I have pretty strong opinions about each of these queries, and found myself questioning the holiness of sisters and brothers proposing these punitive responses. But as I listened to my sisters and brothers around my table and at the microphones and in other conversations in hallways and facebook comments, I began to think more about how we might take Paul’s advice to the Galatians to heart. In what ways was I trying to boast in another’s flesh, trying to pin my holiness and pride on the work of my neighbor instead of my own? A sister at my table summed it up for me when she said, during a particularly tense time of discussion: “I don’t want to be right in order to be right. I want to be right because we’ve DONE this right, together.”

find more photos from Glenn Riegel & the other AC photographers here.

The answers to the queries this week – just like the answers to the particular and equally divisive questions that were dividing the Galatian community – are less important than the ways in which we engage the questions, the ways in which we engage one another.

 

I know that even here, in our congregation, we are not of one mind regarding each of the queries and questions that were brought to Annual Conference. But I’ll be bluntly honest about that and tell you that being not of one mind does not scare me, especially here with you all. I’ve had, even in these last few weeks, some of the most gracious, humble, and engaged conversations with some of you all about these things. Those conversations could so, so easily devolve into what Paul warns against: chewing one another out, biting one another’s heads off, consuming each other with hatred and vitriol.  They have not. I chalk that up to the gifts of grace and trust present here among us in this fellowship.

 

It will be okay if we think differently.

It will be okay if we relate to God differently.

It will be okay if we practice our faith differently.

It will be okay if we understand scripture differently.

It will be okay if we interact with the church differently.

It will be okay, because as Paul reminds us over and over, our freedom is already won, our unity is already given.

What will not be okay, what Paul will not stand for, what Christ did not die for and what God will have no part in is our deep human tendency to resurrect the law that Jesus has already fulfilled once and for all, our desire for punishment and revenge. What will not be okay is if we turn on one another, refusing the gentle grace of Jesus, casting one another into outer darkness and blaspheming the reality of the unity already given us in the power of the cross.

Paul ends his letter this way: ¹⁴May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

May it be so. Amen.

 

Sermon 6-26-16

Peace Covenant Homecoming!

Galatians 5:1, 13-25

If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.

We are still lingering here in the book of Galatians, with our dear friend, the fiery and tactless Apostle Paul. Paul is one intense dude. He says some seriously offensive things – offensive both to our modern ears and to those of his first hearers.

The Galatians were no exception. Last week, we talked about how the Galatians were totally steeped in their identity as Jewish people – God’s chosen ones who belonged because they kept the law. And we talked about how offensive it would have been to hear Paul preaching such a destabilizing message as he does: that following the law alone is no longer sufficient for living an unblemished life of faith. Paul is just pummeling the worldview of these Galatian Jesus-followers, and he is not holding back.

Paul himself knows what it is to live by the law. He was, by his own admission, a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. He knew what it was to defend the law with a zealous passion, even to the point of violence toward another. Paul knew, intimately, what it felt like to be caught in the midst of great, systemic and cultural transition. He knew what it felt like to see your entire world and sense of identity crumbling around you. Raised on the ancient scriptures and rituals and practices of Judaism, Paul had been their fiercest defender until he encountered God on the road to Damascus, was struck blind and turned right around into the newness of life with Christ.

Which is why, even though Paul remains totally objectionable, tactless, offensive, chauvinistic and ill-equipped to broker compromise among the early Christians (or, for that matter, us here today), it’s also possible to hear in his strident message a word of unfathomable grace – made all the more unfathomable because he is who he is and has come from where he has come.

Paul, the former persecutor of any and all Jesus-followers, is now not only traveling the known world planting churches of Jesus Christ, fundraising and encouraging, circuit-riding and preaching the gospel, but also, at the very same time, committed to widening the welcome of this new body and ensuring that the essence of the gospel be carried on in new and surprising ways.

Paul is as objectionable a saint as there ever could be, but he is zealous in his insistence that anyone called by the Spirit to join this new fellowship of believers is to be admitted without any further test, requirement, background check or hoop jumping. The work of the Spirit, according to Paul, is more powerful than any work of law. He is utterly committed to the spreading of the gospel, the furthering of the message of resurrection, the continued growth and care of this world-shaking truth: that God loves us, calls us, and gathers us together into a life more abundant than any of us can ask or imagine. Listen to what Paul is preaching – and remember who Paul is, where he has come from, all that he’s witnessed and mourned and lost:

¹⁶ Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. ¹⁷ For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. ¹⁸ But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.

Did you catch that last line, there? IF YOU ARE LED BY THE SPIRIT, YOU ARE NOT SUBJECT TO THE LAW. Um, what was that, Paul-the-law-loving-people-persecuting-Pharisee?!

Last week, we talked about how crazy Paul would have sounded to the Galatians, people born, raised, formed and steeped in the knowledge that belonging to God meant living up to the law. We recognized how scary this message would have been for them, how it might have felt like their entire world was crumbling beneath their feet when Paul struck that blow to the law as the Way the World Worked.

But here’s another really interesting thing about the people in the church at Galatia. Paul’s preaching comes a few years after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Scholars aren’t sure of the exact date of this letter, but we know when Paul lived and worked. This letter could have been written anywhere between the late ‘40s to the late ‘50s of the Common Era.

That means that these Galatians, hearing Paul’s crazy word, would have been just edging into the second generation of Jesus-followers. The first disciples and church-plants would have been maturing into communities whose survival had been won and existence had come to a place of firm rootedness. But now, having secured their place in the world, communities like the one in Galatia needed to address some of the stickier questions of what it was going to mean, for the long-term, to be sustainable communities of faithful followers of Jesus.

“Okay,” I imagine them saying to one another, “we made it. We’re here to stay. Now, what does that mean for these new people coming in without understanding all our history? Should we make them take a history course? Should we sit them down and tell them how hard it was for us? Should we require them to do some sort of hazing ritual? Do they have to get circumcised before they can really be a part of us?”

“Oh, and what about all the rest of the things? Do we need to build ourselves a new temple? Do we still keep all the dietary laws? How important are all those old commandments now that we have this new sense of being led by the Spirit into this new, abundant life? If anyone can join us, do we need rabbis or priests anymore? What about all those sacrifices we were making to please God? Can we do away with killing our livestock now that we understand God to be pleased with us?”

“And how about a new building? Should we start a fundraising campaign so we can have a respectable place to meet so that everyone knows that we are a religious group? Maybe we could put an ad out in the paper for a good rabbi who’s looking for something new and creative. Maybe our Torah teaching sessions could use a new curriculum update to include all this new learning from Jesus. Our infrastructure is really going to need some beefing up, here.”

Can you hear that conversation? Things have changed, drastically, and these were people formed and shaped by a religious system that had rituals, rules and practices to govern every part of their life together. If things were changing so much, can’t you imagine that some of their first thoughts would be how they could edit, adjust and restructure the institutional and legal boundaries of the tradition?

 

I can hear it, because I hear it all the time in the church of today.

 

Interestingly, Peace Covenant is also in the position of edging into second generation questions. Twenty years is quite the landmark! Generally, I think, a Homecoming Celebration is a pretty nostalgic time – a time to remember and honor those faithful people committed to the founding and care of an institutional, congregational structure. And man – am I ever grateful to those of you here and those of us elsewhere who caught the vision for a congregation of Brethren here in this place and poured your hearts, souls, time, money and effort into making it a reality. I am one among hundreds of people who have encountered deep and lasting blessing in this fellowship. We’ll have some time, over lunch, to tell some of those stories about how Peace Covenant came to be and what it’s been like over these last couple of decades.

But actually, on this Homecoming Sunday, I am far more interested in the kind of thing that Paul was talking with those Galatians about. I am far more interested in how we will encounter and engage the second-generation questions of what it is to be in community together. I can feel, here, in addition to deep commitment to the fellowship, a stirring among us, a curiosity about where the Spirit will lead us next. It’s here – we are here, God is here, and there is a deep calling here for Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren. I can feel it. Can you?

What I think we will have to bear in mind – along with all our sisters and brothers in the Church of the Brethren and the wider Church universal – is this message from Paul: just because you learned it that way, just because everyone expects it to look this way, just because there are rules and laws and unspoken requirements pressuring us to conform to this old way DOES NOT MEAN that the Spirit is calling us to maintain the old structures, the old laws, the old institutions, the old boundaries. In fact, Paul says,

If you are led by the Spirit, then you are no longer subject to the law.

What a scary place to be. And what a thrilling one, too.

 

I was listening, the other day to a podcast with a Jewish rabbi – Rabbi Sharon Brous – who is the leader of a new kind of Jewish community out in California. She grew up Jewish, went to Israel to understand her roots, came home convinced that she was called into the rabbinical work of leading a congregation, but could not find a synagogue that made sense to her. She could not find a spiritual home or community that understood the deep roots of Jewish belief and practice and at the same time applied all that force of spiritual tradition to the very real and pressing questions of modern life. She found synagogues that did one and synagogues that did the other, but had a very hard time finding a community engaged in both the deep rituals of tradition AND an alert awareness of the modern world.

So, she decided – with the help of lots of other Jewish people who felt caught in the same bind – to begin a new Jewish community. The growing fellowship doesn’t call itself a synagogue – not, she says, because it is NOT a synagogue, but because the people she connected with had such lukewarm associations with the word and the concept. Instead, their community is called “Ikar.” That word – ikar – is a Hebrew word that means “essence.” In fact, when Rabbi Sharon and her community sat down to talk about what, exactly, they wanted this new fellowship to be about, they made a list of words: essence, root, heart, foundation, core. And when they translated their list into Hebrew – a language that has far fewer words than English – every single one translated into this: ikar.

Here’s what Rabbi Brous says about why she and her community are doing this new thing. She talks about what most people call the modern rejection of religion and says that when she talks to people, she learns that:

They are not rejecting ritual – they love ritual. Not rejecting community – they desperately seek out community. Not rejecting the ideas of gratitude and humility and mindfulness…They love the idea of discipline around eating. They resonate with all of these things. What they reject is the twentieth-century iteration of religious institutional life that feels dead to them. They don’t like the container. They love the essence when they’re introduced to it…It’s not the container that’s holy. It’s the essence, the fire inside that’s holy.

This is also, I think, what Paul was preaching to those Galatians, and what he is preaching to us, here at Peace Covenant. It’s not the container that’s holy. It’s the essence, the fire inside, that’s holy. And Paul gives us some really particular ways of discerning what that holy essence is made up of.

If we are to live our lives dedicated to Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, then our lives and our life together will embody the essence of Jesus’ life death and resurrection, the ikar of it all:

 

Love.

Joy.

Peace.

Patience.

Kindness.

Generosity.

Faithfulness.

Gentleness.

Self-control.

 

If we live by the Spirit, Paul says, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Not bound by the law, forced to a lifetime of replicating old containers in the hope that something new will happen, but open to the surprising, troubling, terrifying newness of God’s Holy Spirit pulling us ever into something both new and utterly familiar, creative and also ikar.

I don’t know what that looks like here at Peace Covenant, but I am heartened by the openness, the curiosity, the dedication and the creativity that live here. I am incredibly excited to be moving into this community’s second-generation, third-decade life together, led by the Spirit and guided by the essence of this life together in Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sermon 6-19-16

Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren

Galatians 3: 23-29

²³ Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴ Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷ As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

 

“The life of the Christian community has as its rationale – if not invariably its practical reality – the task of teaching us this: so ordering our relations that human beings may see themselves as desired, as the occasion of joy.” – Rowan Williams, The Body’s Grace

 

For most of this spring, our Sunday school class studied the book of Nehemiah. When I say “for most of this spring,” I mean that for thirteen weeks – more, really, because we postponed one or two of those due to absence or scheduling – we read, studied, contemplated and wondered about this biblical book that is very rarely referenced in casual conversation. Matthew, who led our class, has a deep love of the book, and if you get the chance sometime, you should really ask him about how Nehemiah makes sense for him, in his own life and in his work with veterans who have survived great grief, trauma, and loss, who are working to rebuild their inner lives after experiencing such great destruction.

The story, if you didn’t happen to be in that 13 week study, is that the people of Israel have been sent away from their homeplace, dispersed throughout other lands. Nehemiah, who found himself in a position of great authority – cupbearer to the King – managed to finagle permission to gather up his people, return to their homeland, and rebuild the temple – the center of all the Israelite’s life together, the center of their identity as Jews, the place and the thing that made it clear that they were who they said they were – that they were, in fact, God’s chosen people.

Nehemiah is quite the character. He has both the position and the gumption to attempt this crazy thing. He’s got the ear of the king, and he has the inner compulsion to attempt a very large undertaking. He’s quite the charismatic leader, all through the story. Nehemiah – at least in this particular version of his life – never does anything wrong. He knows exactly how to maneuver, exactly how to rebuild, exactly how to defeat enemies, exactly how to create community and group unity. Nehemiah is totally a superhero.

And still, at the end of our long study, I am still deeply ambivalent about the character of Nehemiah. I respect him. I aspire to some of his political savvy. I like that he casts all that he did as response to God’s call on his life. I’m on board with what he actually accomplished: rebuilding the walls of the city, restoring the temple and gathering all his people together again, keeping their identity as children of God alive and well, ensuring a future for the Israelites and, eventually, for us as inheritors of that promise to live as God’s children.

Except.

The ways that Nehemiah and all the Israelites he gathered to help him went about rebuilding, restoring, reviving and ensuring their identity required a BOATLOAD of practices that I am so very not in favor of. In order to maintain their sense of identity as God’s children, Nehemiah and the Israelites went to battle against enemies and killed them, prohibited intermarriage, and cast out those among them who didn’t meet their qualifications for purity.

I am so deeply not on board with any of that as a way to preserve, rebuild, restore, revive or ensure identity.

But I – and all of us – are products of our time, a time when our very identity is not threatened, a time when we do not know the pain of being forced into exile, a time when “inclusion” is a buzzword and “diversity” a calling card. The way of Nehemiah sounds offensive to us in part because of the day in which we live. I can extend a sense of graciousness and generosity when I take into account who and where he was, how threatened and desperate he must have been. The benefit of time, distance and a completely different cultural milieu makes it possible for me to appreciate Nehemiah even while reserving deep distrust in his tactics.

 

The first hearers of our text today – Paul was writing to the people in the church in Galatia – would have also known the story of Nehemiah. They knew, probably by heart, the story of how their identity had been gifted to them through a long, ancient series of events just like that one – heroes of the faith standing up to defend and restore the possibility of this group of people claiming the right to live as God’s children. They knew the story of Moses, who led all the Israelites out of slavery and into the promised land, perpetrating some pretty serious crimes and murders along the way. They knew the story of Abraham, who was ready to sacrifice his own son in order to preserve his identity. They knew the stories of multiple exiles, of the ways their ancestors would be brought to the very brink of being wiped from the face of the planet only to be pulled back just at the last minute by some hero of the faith willing to do something very drastic and, maybe, even a bit objectionable.

The first people to hear this sermon were people formed deeply by the sense that their identity as Jewish people, as a chosen people of God, as a people meant to walk through the world as God’s own beloved – this identity, understood especially through the Law, was the Most Important Thing in the world. We belong to God, they knew, deep, deep in their ancestral bones, because we uphold God’s laws.

This was not just the cultural context. This was not just the prevailing conversational custom in Galatia. This was not just what these early Christians were hearing on talk radio or facebook newsfeeds, not just the topic of chatter around the first century water coolers. This idea – that we belong to God because we uphold God’s divinely imparted law – was bestowed upon this people through a long, long, long history of genetic, traditional, formative, ancestral, spiritual, religious and cultural heritage. This was The Way The World Worked.

So, imagine, then, that you are one of these Galatian Christians. Imagine that you are a part of this community struggling to integrate something so entirely new and transformative – the resurrection of Jesus Christ – into your experience of being a person of faith, a child of God. Imagine that you are a Galatian Christian, steeped in this knowledge of belonging to God as a fastidious and faithful adherence to the code of law, recipient of a certain tonnage of lore about the heroes – Moses, Abraham, Nehemiah – who have laid down their lives to preserve this identity by following the law at all costs. Imagine that you are here, in Galatia, a member of this burgeoning community of Jesus-following Jews and their friends, and here comes…Paul.

Paul knows how hard it has been for you and your community to integrate this new thing into the tried and true old patterns of life together. Paul knows, because he himself has been doing the same sort of negotiation, both in his own soul and with so many other growing communities like yours. You trust him, because you know he’s been out and about, preaching and teaching and proclaiming the gospel all over the known world. You trust him, but he has come here and is preaching some really hard truths.

What Paul is preaching is that the law is no longer the only surefire way to belong to God. The law, he says, served a hugely important function. It was the best and most proper way to belong to God. It was exactly what everyone used to need. It functioned as a guardian, a keepsafe, a “disciplinarian.” That word, in the Greek, translates roughly to something like a nanny or a nurse: a caregiver for children who might not know, yet, how to navigate complicated human situations. Paul, who we know to be rather fiery and not exactly tactful, is being incredibly offensive, here. He’s saying that the law was what God gave us in order to grow us up. But, Paul says, the law is no longer the safe place that it once was.

Can you imagine how TERRIFYING this would be to you, were you a member of the church at Galatia? The backbone of your people’s worldview for thousands of years has just been kicked right out from under you. The entire world has been summarily upended.

But if we keep listening to Paul – if we’re able to hear this terrifying thing and keep our ears and our hearts open to what else he has to say to us – we find out that there is a really, deeply, intensely good reason for the upending.

The law, says Paul, functioned well. It preserved us for such a long time. It kept us together and in existence. But the law also had some awful consequences. Maybe as an unavoidable side effect, maybe as a part of the plan, but the law kept us together and in existence by KEEPING OTHERS OUT.

And this, according to Paul, is no longer necessary.

²⁵ But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶ for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. ²⁷ As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. ²⁸ There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ²⁹ And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Those categories – Jew/Greek; slave/free; male/female – are the categories of the law. They are not random examples from off the top of Paul’s head. They were the governing categories for all of life. Depending on which category you fell into, you’d be subject to different parts of the intricate system of law. Depending on who you were, you would belong to a lesser or a greater degree.

Paul says that the reality of baptism into Jesus Christ blows each one of those dichotomies to bits. Every one of those distinctions that order the world into more or less worthy, more or less included, more or less a member of this community, more or less belonging to God IS NO LONGER.

All of you – ALL OF YOU – all of you are one in Christ Jesus, he says. No more law, only the infinite grace of baptism into life with Christ.

Can you see how this might feel so utterly terrifying to that church in Galatia, schooled and soaked in the idea of law as way toward belonging? Can you see how it might throw every thing they’ve ever known into a complete tailspin? Can you see why they’d be so resistant to the very idea?

And: can you see how incredibly beautiful, world-shaking, universe-transforming and full of grace, grace, grace it is?

Were you born Jewish? You belong. Were you born a gentile? You belong. Were you born a rich slave owner? You belong. Were you born a poor enslaved person? You belong. Were you born a man with privileges and excuses and power? You belong. Were you born a woman intended only as property and childbearer? You belong.

I don’t think there’s a very long jump to make from the Galatians struggling with Paul’s interpretation of ancient law to the conversations we are having right here and now: in North Carolina, we’re arguing about who belongs in which bathroom. Next week in Greensboro, our church will talk about who belongs in our fellowship, who belongs in lasting covenanted relationships, who belongs in leadership, who belongs to God. Last week in Orlando, a very angry young man killed 49 people because he clearly believed that not only did they not belong in his community; they did not belong upon this earth.

This word from Paul is a word of grace for each and every one of us. I’m convinced that if we can open ourselves up enough to the truth of it; if we can open ourselves up enough to let go of the law that we are holding so tightly to; if we can open ourselves up enough to relinquish the deep fear we feel about death and destruction and change…if we can open ourselves up to the scary truth of the gospel that Paul preaches so fervently, then I think we will find ourselves on the other side of this painful, narrow moment that we’ve forced ourselves into. Because the truth of the gospel is this:

 

Were you born Brethren? You belong.

Were you born Mennonite or Methodist or Catholic or Buddhist or Muslim or into no faith tradition at all? Through the grace of baptism into Christ, you belong.

Were you born rich, privileged, middle class, American? You belong.

Were you born poor, marginalized, oppressed, neglected? You belong.

Were you born a man with privileges and excuses and power (notice this category still exists in our own modern-day versions of that ancient law!)? You belong.

Were you born a woman, told constantly that you were not fit or able to do or be any of those things? You belong.

Were you born straight? You belong.

Were you born lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer,  none of the above? You belong.

Are you, right this moment, nodding your head fiercely in agreement with Paul and with me?  You belong.

Are you, right this moment, disagreeing vehemently, your stomach lurching into your throat in resistance? You belong.

All of you – ALL OF YOU – all of you. All of us – ALL OF US – all of us are beloved children of God. We all belong – to God and to one another. May it be so. Amen.

 

I have three stories for you this morning: a story from a long, long time ago, a story from a short time ago, and a story that is happening right here, right now.

First, a story from a very long time ago:

Paul and Silas, with whom we’ve been traveling for the last few weeks, are still in Philippi, where Paul’s dream propelled them into Europe and they met the wealthy woman, Lydia, at the place of prayer outside the city.

Once again, Paul and Silas make their way outside the city gates to the place of prayer, and they meet another woman. This woman is not a wealthy, independent woman like Lydia. In fact, she is a poor, enslaved girl afflicted with some sort of demon that gives her the ability to tell people’s fortunes. Her owners have taken advantage of this demon-possessed slave, selling the fortune-telling for huge fees to the people of Philippi hungry for some spiritual nourishment. This girl, the text tells us, made her owners very, very rich.

But as is standard in scripture, the demon inside her recognizes the power of the Lord residing in Paul and Silas, and this girl – she has no name remembered in scripture, just the girl – follows them around for DAYS, crying out “these men are slaves of the most high God, declaring to you a way of salvation!” That seems like a fairly helpful thing for a demon to shout over and over, but Paul seems to get very annoyed with her. Something in the way the girl was yelling at them was mocking or sarcastic or…something. Paul, finally annoyed enough to do something about it, turns around and says to the demon: “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her!” And the demon departed, immediately.

You would think that this would be the end of the story: Paul has proven by exorcising a demon in Jesus’ name that he does, in fact reside in the same Holy Spirit power that enabled Jesus himself to cast out demons. We get it, Luke: the disciples are carrying on the work of Jesus, peacefully, simply, together – preaching, teaching, healing and casting out demons.

But that is not the end of the story. It turns out that exorcisms have serious consequences. Paul was only acting out of annoyance – the word “annoyed” is right there in verse 18 – but what he’s done has not only freed this possessed slave girl of her demon, it has also mightily disrupted the economic advantage of the men who owned her. No longer could they profit off her fortune telling. They were out a lot of money, because Paul, in his annoyance, had – according to the law – destroyed their property.

And the slave owners were ANGRY. They were so angry that they went beyond the immediate legal complaint of destruction of property, a straightforward, open and shut case that they would surely have won, receiving restitution and reward, and push onward to make the complaint that in their exorcism, Paul and Silas are “disturbing the city.” “They are Jews,” the slave owners say, “advocating customs that are not lawful for us Romans to observe or accept!”

And surely, their complaint has validity. Paul and Silas WERE disturbing the city, advocating customs that disrupted Roman custom – not in the ‘raising a ruckus’ kind of way, and not in the ‘disturbing the peace’ kind of way that these men complain about, but in way that was causing deep, deep disruptions of economics and social practice. The gospel was liberating the people that the Philippian society had agreed to be bound. The gospel was insisting that people not be used for profit. The gospel was cutting across boundaries of race and class and gender to free anyone who came to believe in Jesus – to free them for lives of community and service and abundance. Paul and Silas WERE disturbing the city.

And the crowd, sensing what a huge disruption this actually is, turns on Paul and Silas. The crowd, with the full cooperation of the governmental magistrate, present and giving the orders, beats them, flogs them, strips their clothes off, and throws them in jail, where the prison guard is ordered to keep them in maximum security cells.

While they are in prison, Paul and Silas sing and pray and sing some more. All the other prisoners are listening. Suddenly, a violent earthquake shook the foundations of the entire prison, shaking open every door and breaking every chain on every prisoner. The earthquake shook the guard awake, and when he opened his eyes, he saw that every cell door was wide open. Assuming the worst, and knowing that his life depended on his job keeping all these prisoners bound and chained, he drew his sword to end his life then and there. His whole identity rested on his ability to do this job, and he knew that the systems outside the prison – the cruel magistrate, the violent crowds, the wealthy slave-owners that insisted on the sub-human punishment for the ruination of their income would kill him as soon as they found out that he’d failed.

But Paul, seeing what the guard was about to do, shouted from his cell: “Don’t do it! We’re all still here!” The guard called for light, saw that it was true, that none of the prisoners had escaped, that his life had been spared by some strange, inexplicable turn of events, and fell down on his knees in front of Paul and Silas, asking what it was he needed to do in order to be saved. “Believe in Jesus,” they said, and he did. He took them home with him, washed their wounds, and his entire household was baptized into this new reality on the spot.

 

Second, a story from a short time ago:

Bryan Stevenson spent his career as an attorney working with juvenile offenders sentenced to harsh adult punishments and prisoners on death row, clients whose cases no one else would take. He founded the Equal Justice Initiative, which works on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment.

In his recent book, A Just Mercy, Stevenson tells story after story of mercy, redemption, and the horrific consequences of our unjust criminal system, stories like this one:

Early in his career, Stevenson took the case of a severely mentally disabled man named Avery. Avery had been convicted of a brutal murder and sentenced to death. When Stevenson met him after agreeing to take his case to appeal, Avery had been in prison for a while. In researching the original case, Stevenson discovered that – although Avery had a long, disturbing history of neglect, incomprehensible abuse, and severe mental disability, none of that had been presented as evidence by Avery’s original court-appointed defense lawyer. Stevenson and his colleagues began collecting research about Avery’s history and went to meet him in a prison several hours from his office.

Stevenson, like many of his clients, is a black man living and working in the deep south. When he pulled into the prison parking lot, he noticed a big truck plastered with Confederate flag decals, racist bumper stickers, and threatening symbols. Stevenson says that he’d lived in the south his whole life but hadn’t ever been so shaken by such a conglomeration of hateful symbols. He tried to shake the feeling, and walked on into the prison.

A correctional officer he hadn’t met on any of his many trips to this particular prison met him at the gate – a big, tall, white man with a military haircut and a cold stare. The guard snarled at him and asked what he was doing. “I’m here for a legal visit,” Stevenson replied, expecting the routine pat-down usually given to lawyers. Instead, the officer insisted, in an intensely hostile way, that he go into the bathroom, take off all his clothes, and submit to a strip-search before he could proceed.

Stevenson, shocked at this proposition, replied as politely as he could “oh, no, lawyers don’t have to be strip searched.” The officer became very angry. “I don’t care who you are, this is my prison and you abide by my rules! Get into that bathroom and strip or get on out of here!”

Wary of the long drive and the packed schedule in coming weeks, knowing that there wouldn’t be another opportunity to visit his client, Stevenson gathered his wits and submitted to the strip search and the following disrespect and nastiness from the officer, and made his way to the visitation room. When they reached the door, the officer grabbed Stevenson’s shoulder and growled in his hear. “Hey man,” he said, “did you happen to see a truck out in the visitation yard with a bunch of bumper stickers, flags and a gun rack?” “Yes,” Stevenson replied. “I want you to know, that’s my truck.” And the officer released him and let him into the room.

Shaken from the encounter with the guard, Stevenson finally sat down with Avery, his new client. HE began to ask questions about his life and history, but Avery was clearly disturbed – kind and polite but also clearly mentally ill. Every question was met with a single request: Can I have a chocolate milkshake? Avery asked over and over, until Stevenson finally replied: “I didn’t know you wanted one but I will try to get you one if I can next time.” That seemed to satisfy his client, and they moved on to business.

Every time he visited Avery after that, Stevenson says, Avery would begin the interaction with the request for a chocolate milkshake. No other question would be answered until Stevenson assured him that he would try to bring one next time. The officer was never on duty again when Stevenson visited Avery, but that wasn’t the end of the story.

When Avery’s case finally went to trial, Stevenson showed up and there was the big, burly, cold officer sitting in the hallway in front of the courtroom. He had been assigned, it turned out, to accompany Avery on the long-distance trip to his trial. For three days, Stevenson argued in the courtroom for Avery’s appeal. He presented evidence about Avery’s difficult childhood, the neglect, the abuse, the severe mental disability – all of what he called over and over again in court the “mitigating factors” relevant to the rescinding of Avery’s death sentence. The evidence was clear that Avery had killed the man in question, but no one had presented any of the evidence of his mental state and traumatic childhood, no one had made any mention of these mitigating factors that should have been taken into account in sentencing.

In the end, the judge granted the appeal, and Avery’s sentence was commuted. But the story doesn’t end there. When Stevenson returned to the prison to discuss the results of the case with Avery, the same old officer from before was there to greet him at the gate. This time, though, his stare was warm, and he addressed Stevenson with polite respect. Stevenson immediately prepared to head to the bathroom and be strip searched, but the guard dissuaded him. “Oh no, Mr. Stevenson, you don’t need to do that. Just sign in, here.” Surprised, Stevenson did, and headed toward the visitation room.

But before he unlocked the door, the officer stopped him. “I need to tell you something. I’m real sorry for the way I treated you before. I sat there in that courtroom for three days and listened to you talk about Avery’s history and all that mitigation stuff. I came up in foster care, too. I got out and went into the military and I’ve been doing all right, I guess, since then, but I think I’m still really angry about what happened to me. I came up in foster care, too. And I listened to you talk about how all of us need that mitigation stuff, and it just touched me. I’m sorry for how I treated you.”

The officer unlocked the door, but once again put his hand on Stevenson’s shoulder. “Oh. And I probably shouldn’t tell you this – I might get in trouble – but you know how ‘ol Avery is. On the way back from court, I pulled off at an exit off the highway and got him a big chocolate milkshake.” The officer grinned. Stevenson shook his hand and walked into the visitation room to talk with Avery. As had become his custom, he started off with an apology: “I know you want a chocolate milkshake, Avery, but I couldn’t bring you one this time. Maybe next time, if I can.” But Avery immediately replied: “Oh, no, Mr. Stevenson, I got my chocolate milkshake. I’m all right, now.

 

And third, a story going on right here, right now:

On January 19, Matthew McCain died in his cell at the Durham County Detention Facility. The government and groups supporting the inmates differ in their accounts of his death, but this is not the first incident of inmate neglect or mistreatment here in Durham. In December, two guards were fired after holding an inmate down and reportedly punching her in the head, and the NC Department of Health and Human Services has deemed the jail’s medical plan “not in compliance with state rules.” The medical provider for the jail, a private company, is being sued by another family for refusing to provide an inmate’s medication, leading to another death in prison. Last year, there was a seven month lock-back in the Durham jail, a state where prisoners are confined to their cells regardless of behavior, and at one point, only had two hours every other day for exercise, showering, socializing etc.

The criminal justice system in Durham is undergoing an intense scrutiny and forced overhaul these days. Former chief of police Jose Lopez was forced to resign last year, and the city has just announced the hire of a new chief. The Inside-Outside Alliance here in town exists to support inmates inside Durham’s jail and does this in several ways but most interestingly: they believe what inmates say. They maintain a blog dedicated to amplifying the voices of those in jail, and advocate for more just carceral systems. Durham Congregations in Action, an organization that this congregation has supported since its beginnings, is making it a point to learn about what’s happening in our criminal justice system.

I am still learning about how things work here in Durham, and trying to listen to as many diverse voices as possible. But I do think that this story about policing and incarceration here, today, what’s happening in the jail literally blocks away from my house and only a couple of miles from here cannot be separated from these other stories.

Paul and Silas – apostles, disciples, preachers of the gospel and heroes of our own faith were prisoners. Their stories of incarceration teach us, at the very least, that God’s mercy and grace are astoundingly present in such spaces. Bryan Stevenson’s work with inmates on death row and those wrongly convicted or those whose sentences failed to take into account the realities of their lives is a shining example of what he calls “just mercy:” an unexpected, inexplicable grace that shows up where its least expected and breaks not only the physical chains of incarceration or slavery but also the invisible shackles of systemic cycles of victimization and victimhood, retribution and suffering.

The power of the gospel is the power of liberation. But we are not really experts at knowing what it is we need to be freed, or who it is that’s bound. Paul and Silas were in prison, but they were free to sing and pray and praise God, free to remain where they were when the doors were shaken open, free to witness to their jailer and to receive his tender mercy when he washed their wounds.

The officer that Bryan Stevenson had a run-in with was ostensibly the free one in the scenario, but as the story unfolds it becomes clear that he is the one shackled by his own anger, bound by the racist systems that promise him power, enslaved to the need to come out on top and grasp some legitimacy by threatening those deemed less worthy than he is.

And us? Are we, here in Durham, the free ones or the bound? Clearly, we aren’t in jail. But if we choose to ignore the voices of our sisters and brothers who ARE, where does that leave us?

The power of the gospel is a power of liberation. But there is “freedom,” and then there is FREEDOM. If the gospel sets us free, if we profess to believe in the freedom of Jesus Christ, we are pressed to ask ourselves: what is it that we are freed FROM? And what is it that we are freed FOR?

 

 

God, our Mother,

You tell us that your love for us is like a mother hen – gathering us all under the shelter of your wings. Your servant Paul speaks to the churches whom he loves as one who has given birth. The early church thought of the sacrifice of your son, Jesus, as nourishment akin to the milk from a nursing mother’s breasts.

Mother-love is powerful, God, and we walk this morning into the mystery of that kind of love that is able to conceive and birth, feed and nurture, comfort and compel.

We lift up our praise and thanks for the way you love us like this, for the images we find in earthly life of birthing and nurturing that remind us of how deeply you love us, how you yourself created and conceived us, and the ways you continue to love us beyond that moment, through our whole lives.

And we thank you, God, for those people in our own lives who have mothered us – mothers of biology and mothers of circumstance, the women and men who offered themselves to us in such a way as to provide places of safety and growth.

And, just like any other reality of depth and intimacy, God, we remember and lift up all the infinite ways that the idea of ‘mother’ can cause pain. For those whose relationships with their own mothers was not the most nurturing; for those who struggle with infertility; for those mothers whose children are no longer living; for those orphaned and abandoned; for those whose lives have led them to relinquish motherhood; for those who deeply desire to become mothers and cannot; for those who struggle with the constricting insistence that only women can mother or that women can only BE mothers…God there are so many ways we walk past pain on this day. Open our eyes and our hearts to the sisters and brothers around us who are struggling.

Yet and still, God, your word to us is that your love for us is like a mother’s, like the love of one who labored long and loved deeply. And so this morning, we lift up to you all in our midst who need the comfort of your gathering, healing, sheltering wings:

And we celebrate the mystery of your maternal love made evident among us:

God, our Mother, walk with us through the mysteries of this day. All of it – all the joy and all the pain – are yours. Amen.

Sermon 5-1-16

Peace Covenant CoB

Acts 16:9-15

 

The only time I’ve ever heard God speak to me – audibly, as in a vision from on High – it was a pitch perfect imitation of the voice and cadence of comedian Louis C.K. I’m not kidding.

I’d just landed in L.A. after an early morning cross-country flight, picked up a rental car and drive through rush hour traffic to a retreat center on the top of a cliff overlooking the Pacific. A group of clergywomen was there to plan a big event, and overtaken by jetlag and the incredible beauty of the place, we decided to take a few moments to walk the labyrinth on the property before getting down to business.

 

I don’t remember all the details of what was going on in my life and the life of the church in those days, but I do remember feeling really, really raw. I remember feeling like I was in need of some direction for what to do or how to respond next. And I remember that I’d read an in-depth magazine interview with Louis C.K. on the long flight out west.

A labyrinth, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is an ancient Christian spiritual practice. It looks like a maze, but with one big difference: there is only one path. You never have to choose which way to go, because the path never diverges. You simply walk back and forth through the labyrinth until you arrive at the center, pause for a few seconds, and then venture out again on a return journey.

The idea for walking a labyrinth is that as you enter and walk toward the center, you lift up all that weighs on you, shedding the weight of worry and anxieties, praying all the pain and lament and grief out to God. You lift it all up and lighten your own load. When you reach the middle, you pause, pray again, ask for God’s guidance and care, stand still for as long as you need in the presence of God’s Holy Spirit there in the center of this twisting, winding path that has only one possible ending. And then, having emptied yourself, and opened your heart to God, you begin the journey back out, receiving the gifts God has to share, to fill you back up with spirit-filled graces.

And, while we’re introducing things, Louis C.K. is a whip-smart comedian whose observations about modern culture dive straight to the heart of things in a way that makes you straighten up, pay attention, and laugh ‘til your guts ache. Some of my favorite riffs of his are from appearances on late night shows: you can google his name and you’ll find an eye-opening rant about our use of cell phones as a way to avoid the reality of our mortality and a jeremiad about complainers, where his money line, after decrying the entitled grousing of grumpy airline passengers complaining about a flight delay when they are about to sit in a chair in the SKY and fly across the country is: EVERYTHING’S AMAZING AND NOBODY’S HAPPY!

 

Louis C.K. gets it. But he’s also incredibly funny and, warning, incredibly vulgar. His jokes pack an existential punch.

So. Back to the southern California labyrinth, where my jetlagged brain was unloading who knows what all pain and frustration built up from the simple practice of living life. I walked slowly through that labyrinth, one step at a time, careful to not bump my companions as they walked their own walk, and railed a bit at God. I unfurled a ton of anger and disappointment and frustration. And as I walked, the simple possibility arrived in my consciousness: “Perhaps, Dana, just perhaps: You are being refined.”

And, oh, I was mad. That is NOT the answer I wanted. I wanted to be comforted, to be soothed, for all the pain that I was unloading to be swept up and far away from me, for life not to hurt so much in that moment. I did not want what was happening to be part of some kind of conversion or transformation or long, painful process of “refining,” whatever that meant.

And so, I stood there in the center of that labyrinth and prayed, angrily, BUT GOD, WHY DOES ALL THIS REFINING HAVE TO HURT SO MUCH?

And I swear to you, the voice of God in the guise of Louis C.K. flew as if on angel wings into my ears and said – and I quote, with a little profanity because that’s how God said it to me, so please excuse the language. It’s God’s, not mine:

“Because it’s FIRE, you asshole!”

 

And I couldn’t help it. Right there, in the middle of that labyrinth, in the quiet early morning California sunshine, I laughed out loud, long and hard. All my companions looked up from their contemplative walking with questioning looks but I was laughing so hard I couldn’t get another word out to explain to them that God had actually spoken to me, and that it turns out that God is freakin’ FUNNY.

There are plenty of other times I’ve felt God’s presence – moments of great pain and great joy, singing with a gathered community, communing with nature on a mountaintop, all the usual suspects. But that moment in the labyrinth is the closest I’ve come to an actual, honest-to-God spiritual vision. And I cannot tell you how relieved I was to discover God’s sense of humor.

 

These days, it seems like we don’t talk much about hearing God’s voice or seeing spiritual visions. But recent cultural polling tells us that even though Americans are less and less likely to participate in organized religion, we are more and more willing to confess to having spiritual experiences. Diana Butler Bass, in her book Grounded: Finding God in the World, cites a recent study from the Public Religion Research Institute, who has compiled something called a “spiritual experiences index” that says that 65% of Americans score in the moderate to “very high” range of spiritual connection.

I’m pretty convinced that it isn’t that people are more or less likely to HAVE spiritual experiences like hearing Louis C.K.’s divine advice while walking a labyrinth, but that depending on the cultural assumptions and compulsions of the day, we are more or less likely to recognize them as such, more or less likely to ADMIT to them.

Scripture does not have this problem. In scripture, people are forever having visions, seeing angels, hearing God’s voice directing them to immediate next life decisions. And usually, those people are not the least bit loathe to admit what has happened. In fact, usually, these people can’t help but share the good word that has come to them in such strange ways.

In our text for this morning, Paul has received one of these visions from the Spirit. In the book of Acts, this is no surprise: the Holy Spirit – invisible but immensely powerful – is behind every important plot point in the story of how the church came to be. For Paul to have a vision is entirely consistent with the world of Acts. The Spirit blows where it will, and carries the first Christians right along with it.

Still, this particular vision is an interesting one. Paul has been journeying through the ancient world, within and around what we think of today as the Middle East. His circuit riding is beginning to expand as the gospel spreads farther and farther, and Paul is convinced that he needs to go East, to take the good news of Jesus Christ into Asia. He makes plans, picks companions, and plots out an itinerary. He’s ready for this next missionary journey, certain that Asia is the way to go. But before he can get on the road, we learn that “the Spirit did not allow them” to go where they’d planned to go. The path being so blocked, Paul and Timothy settle in at Troas, on the Western coast, to spend the night and regroup. And during the night, Paul receives a vision.

He sees a man from Macedonia – a place in the exact opposite direction of where he’d been headed, in EUROPE, not ASIA – pleading for them to “come help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, two things happen.

First: Paul, Timothy and Silas immediately act on what Paul had seen. They immediately set sail across the ocean toward Macedonia, through Samothrace to Phillipi – you know that place, because later on Paul will write a beautiful and enduring letter to the church there. They do not hesitate, they do not linger on their old, dead-end plan of heading toward Asia, they do not bicker about the veracity of the vision, they do not wait to secure funding for the voyage, they do not even send back to the Jerusalem church to make sure that the larger church, the church that sent them, is okay with this radical move. They just GO.

Second, a weird grammatical thing happens right here. Up ‘til now, the book of Acts has been written in third person – Paul did this, Peter did that, then they all did such and such. But here, in verse 10 of chapter 16, suddenly the perspective changes to first person: “When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.”

Scholars aren’t sure exactly why this happens – maybe the author of Acts is meaning to convey that he was in fact a companion of Paul, maybe one of his sources for the tradition that had been shared orally for so many years was finally written down in first person, maybe there’s another reason entirely. What we do know for sure, though, is that HERE, after this vision that turned Paul around in a 180, the narrative becomes much more immediate. We are in the story. WE immediately set sail. WE went to Phillipi. WE went looking for a place of prayer and WE ended up outside the city gates where we met a rich businesswoman named Lydia.

 

And while we were sharing the gospel, Lydia – who was a merchant selling purple cloth to the richest people in that important city of Phillipi – listened to us intently. We knew that her heart had been opened and that God had moved her to hear the gospel. We baptized her and her whole household, and she prevailed upon us to stay with her in her home. We knew that there was something special about this because Lydia was…a woman. And not just any woman, but a woman of means, a woman in charge of her own business and her own household and her own self. Lydia, whose heart was opened, became the first European Christian: a rich, self-reliant woman of means who worshiped God and allowed her heart to be opened.

Think about that for a little while: if Paul hadn’t had this vision, who knows when or whether the gospel would have made it into Europe. Who knows whether our spiritual ancestors – cathedral builders and radical reformers alike – would have ever become Christians. Who knows whether Brethren would have existed, who knows if that gospel would have made it to America, who knows if we would be sitting here, rich, self-reliant people of mostly European descent, ourselves. Who knows?

The vision that the Spirit granted to Paul was, it turns out, an important one. It changed not only the direction of his travels but also the entire scope and history of the Christian tradition. It is one among the many faithful decisions that makes this very gathering this morning possible. It’s hard to imagine what life would look like here, for us, if Paul had ignored that vision and pushed ahead, bullheaded, with his own plan.

Which brings me back to the experience of the Labyrinth. One of the reasons walking a labyrinth is a SPIRITUAL practice and not just a fun experience is that the labyrinth path itself is an expression of faith. Unlike a maze, where we’re faced with left or right decisions every step of the way, the labyrinth allows us to rest in the knowledge that we are not in charge of the ultimate outcome. We follow the path. We trust that we will eventually end up in the middle, no matter how twisted or inefficient the journey feels. We arrive there, in the middle, soaking in God’s presence, and are able to depart confident that we will find our way back out into the world, no matter how long or confusing the journey is. The labyrinth is a practice of trust and faith.

Paul was able to experience this vision and turn on a dime to act on it immediately because, as the first person narrator tells us, “we were convinced that God had called us” this way. Even though it was directly opposed to the direction they’d planned for themselves, even though it required sailing instead of walking, even though it took them to a place and a culture even more foreign than the places they’d planned to go. Paul and his companions trusted that God was leading them, that they were on a path with a single destination, that if they let go of the desire to be in control and direct their own steps, they’d end up where they were meant to be – in God’s presence, with God’s people, acting as agents of God’s grace and preachers of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

So, I wonder. What if we began to think of our lives and the decisions we make – both big and small – as corners in a labyrinth instead of a maze? What if we began to trust that God is, in fact, in charge of the world and that God will, in fact, guide our feet if we pay attention? What if we began to put more stock in the Holy Spirit’s movement, experienced through prayer and encounter and scripture and, yes, even inexplicable dreams and visions?

Certainly that’s how Paul and his early church companions encountered the world. The depth of faith that allowed them to turn on a dime when presented with God’s plan for their next steps is mind-boggling to me. But they were from the fresh tradition of Jesus’ resurrection. They knew that Jesus was Lord and that God was in charge in real, immediate, visceral ways. So when they encountered God’s voice, they listened, and followed suit. I sincerely doubt that the man in Paul’s dream sounded like Louis C.K., or any ancient comedic equivalent, but who knows? The Spirit blows where it will, and God’s plans rarely sounds like what we expect them to.

 

Amen.

 

 

 

Eulogy for Mary Jo Flory-Steury

3-12-16

Dana Cassell

 

Mary Jo was – in the best possible way – a badass. There are probably a few of you here who don’t particularly care for that word, but then, there are probably a few of you here who didn’t particularly care for some of the decisions Mary Jo made, or some of the things Mary Jo did. But I bet you loved her – her smile, her joy, the way she shone with the delight that can only come from a life lived in the light of walking with Christ – nonetheless. That is the best possible way to be a badass, I think: to remain faithful to God’s calling and to love God’s people, to do both of these impossible things at once.

 

Mary Jo’s call was to serve Christ’s church, and especially those beloved people called to serve as leaders in the church. I don’t know if you’re aware, but the Church is not exactly a pleasant place to be called as a leader these days. Dissension, strife, ugliness and argument often permeate the conversations of our institutions and structures. God’s people are not doing so great at loving one another. Mary Jo knew this – knew it perhaps better than any of us, as she worked day in and day out not just with congregations or districts in conflict and in need of guidance, but also in the chaos of a denominational structure enduring massive cultural and institutional change.

 

And yet, she persevered. She knew who she was, and she knew what God had called her to do. She served through times of trouble and rancor with a steadfastness of purpose, a lightness of being, and an attitude of care and concern for the people as well as the systems. Part of that was, certainly, the way Mary Jo was made – her background, her personality, her formation. But I’m convinced that the lion’s share of it was her groundedness in a life lived as a Child of God, walking in the presence of the Holy Spirit, following in faithful discipleship toward Jesus Christ.

 

One of Mary Jo’s favorite scripture passages is the passage we just heard from the book of Isaiah – about exactly this kind of grounded identity and trust:

 

But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.

 

Mary Jo lived this way. She knew who she was, and whose. She heard God’s call, and followed it. She was not afraid. And that kind of life lived in Christ is what inspired and enabled her to encourage so many of us to listen for and live into our own callings. She didn’t do this forcefully or didactically. She didn’t push or demand. She did it by being who she was, sure of her identity as a child of God and determined to follow her call as a servant of Christ.

 

Mary Jo was my boss and my mentor (in both official and unofficial capacities) for more than a dozen years. I learned so much from her: how to be a pastor; how to lead a meeting; how to hold my own as a woman in a room full of men; how to move a discussion toward productive discernment; how to cultivate joy; how to make work more worshipful; how to disagree with grace; how to love the church; how to value people over process, even while keeping the stubborn gears of institutional systems slowly turning.

 

Mostly, though, what I learned from Mary Jo was the fierce skill of discernment: how to listen for God’s voice in the midst of the rising clamor of dissent and disagreement, how to attend to the Holy Spirit’s movement in our life together, how to tune my ears to the particular timbre of Jesus’ ever-present call.

 

A constant theme in our conversations was the interminable nature of discernment: Mary Jo would share a new question or decision or fork in the road that she was praying about, often coupled with her awe and delight at the ways God was moving.

 

This was encouraging to me: God is always moving! Even this wise mentor of mine is still engaged in wrestling discernment with her call! And this was also incredibly frustrating to me: God is ALWAYS moving? Even this wise mentor of mine is STILL engaged in wrestling discernment with her call? I want things to be decided once and for all, to have discernment exist as a thing of the past, something God and I did and then moved on. But Mary Jo’s witness was that life with Christ is an unending adventure – and she loved it. So, I’m struck that just a few verses beyond what we just heard from Isaiah 43, we are reminded of this reality:

 

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
¹⁹ I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
and rivers in the desert.

 

God is always doing a new thing. Resurrection is always springing forth. Ways are appearing in the wilderness, rivers in the desert. And the wisdom I have learned from Mary Jo is this: we get to join in, for all the joy and pain, for all the grief and delight.

 

Do not fear. I have called you by name, and you are mine. A new thing springs forth – can you see it? Mary Jo knew who she was, knew to whom she belonged, knew what she’d been called to. She was constantly on the lookout for God’s newness, scouting out paths in the wilderness for herself and for all those she was called to love and to serve. She lived a life of joy and adventure in Christ, and she was not afraid.

 

And that is badass, y’all.