Confronting the Ghosts that Haunt Us

6-23- 19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Monday was the four-year anniversary of the murder of nine members of Mother Emanual AME Church in Charleston South Carolina. As these nine people, including the pastor, gathered for Bible study that evening, they welcomed a newcomer, a young white man, into their midst. For hours this man, Dylan Roof, sat with them, until they bowed their heads in prayer… and that’s when he opened fire, killing 9 people, before driving away from the scene.

On Monday night and also on Wednesday, the celebration of Juneteenth, a new documentary about the event showed in select theaters. It is unfortunate that it only had these 2 showings, and our own bishop Pat Davenport regrets that she herself could not see it. But I did. I made it a point to go, because I think it’s a something especially that all ELCA church members SHOULD see, and NEED to see.

Why? Because Dylan Roof was baptized and confirmed in an ELCA church. Because the ELCA is THE MOST WHITE Protestant denomination in the United States.. Because we as denomination have historically abandoned and neglected our African American churches and pastors, beginning from the very first African American pastor Jehu Jones… who was never actually paid for his work. Because one of our other ELCA synods who a bishop publicly made racist comments… and those comments can still be seen on Youtube…  and just a few weeks ago this bishop was RE-ELECTED.

Because we still hear things like “my old neighborhood in Philadelphia has REALLY CHANGED…” and we all know what it REALLY MEANS.

Because ae are a haunted people – haunted by the legacy and the actions of one of ours, Dylan Roof. We are a haunted people – haunted by our country’s original sin of slavery, Jim Crow, institutional racism, discrimination, and white privilege. Haunted, tormented, paralyzed, controlled, imprisoned by the demons who cause us to torment, control, and imprison innocent people.

The name of the demon that controlled the man Jesu healed was named Legion, for they were many. This man lived in a place where a Jewish man like Jesus would not seek out to go if he could help it – or if he could avoid it. A graveyard, in a city that respectable people did not travel - the first-century equivalent of a place name you would follow with “be sure to lock your car” or “be careful where you park” or “don’t go there at night.”  This place, Gerasa was indeed a location haunted by tragic history – it was the site where a thousand men were killed by the occupying Romans, who then took their families prisoner and burned down the city. Some of the people buried in that very graveyard were those victims. One of these legions of Roman soldiers had a mascot – a pig. More than a little ironic, considering what happened to the demons after Jesus cast them out.

Places haunted by the history of trauma and violence are everywhere. Cities in the South like Charleston may have its history of the Klu Klux Klan, lynching, and the arson of black churches, but we “up here” in the “enlightened North” don’t get a pass. Over the last four hundred years, Philadelphia has its share of racist history: on the corner of Front and Market street, where there is now a bus stop, African human beings were bought and sold, and the first – but not the last - separations of families began in this country. And since then, that history continued with violent white mobs, white transit worker strikes, redlining, not to mention the blatantly bigoted history of Levittown. When the “inner city” and urban areas became somewhere scary to flee from, suburbs like Levittown promised to be bastions of “safety” and whiteness. 

But safety is the exact opposite of where Jesus tends to go. Jesus didn’t think twice to go to a place that others would shrink from in fear, to confront a demon in a graveyard in a place so haunted by death. Jesus cast out those demons and gave this man his identity back. This man had become lost under the sway of Legion, and now he is found.

This healing was good news for this man, but it was not so good news for the people of the surrounding city and country. They saw the man freed from his demons, and it terrified them… so much so that they asked Jesus to leave. This did not win Jesus any popularity contests. Perhaps the people were so used to their demons being made manifest, that they could not imagine life without them. The demons became their identity, and without the demons, there would not be anything left.

The demons that control us are Legion, for they are many. They are racism, white privilege, sexism, xenophobia, transphobia…. which are really just many names for the same thing: fear. And once you know the names of your demons, you can’t un-name them. Like once you see the effects of racism, you can’t un-see them. You can try to hide it, deny it, bind it up, chuck it away, shoving in the graveyard, but it will still be there, prowling around, howling and haunting, present and waiting in the background, ready to claim another victim. Or nine.

These demons bind us and drive us into the tombs, into places of death. We become their slaves, held in thrall by their favorite minions, hate and fear. We are held captive to these demons and cannot free ourselves. We may even feel as though we belong to them.

That day, Jesus crossed the lake, crossed boundaries, and double crossed some demons in order to save a man from this place of death. No lake is too wide, no place is too remote, no boundary that Jesus cannot cross. Jesus shows us the power of the living God - to call US too out of places of death. Because not even death is a boundary Jesus cannot cross.

That day, Jesus looked the demon Legion straight in the eye, said, “Not this one, not today, this one’s mine,” and he cast the demons, by means of pigs, into the lake, to be gone forever. On Good Friday, and every day of OUR lives, Jesus looked sin and death straight in the eye, and said about YOU, “Not this one, not today, this one’s mine.” And three days later, not sin, not death, not even the stone door of the tomb could keep him from crossing back into life, bringing all of us with him, and making us one.

We belong to Christ. We all have been clothed with Christ in our baptisms, and reminded of our true names as Children of God. As Paul wrote, “there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” We are bound and we are free. We are citizens and we are Christians. We are sinners and we are forgiven. We have died and we are alive. We are followers of Jesus, who lived by crossing borders, welcoming strangers, and reconciling divisions.  We are followers of Christ, who died, and lives, and reigns triumphant in the kingdom to which we belong.

When we live into the reality of this kingdom – this “no divisions”/ border-crossing, stranger-welcoming kingdom, we are going to be about as popular as Jesus. Which is to say, not very. Jesus got kicked out of that region for what he did. And our friends and families might be made more than a little uncomfortable when we tell them that the joke they just told or the comment they just made is racist. Or when we refuse to blame people in poverty when they have been made so by the same system that has benefited us. Others won’t understand. But we will know – we will know that we are doing kingdom work, and that is holy, and worth doing. Amen.

You have Entered... The Trinity Zone.

6-16-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our lord and savior Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Imagine if you will a world that contains is a dimension of the imagination, beyond which is known to us, a place where light and shadow meet, where faith and truth coexist, where bread and wine and water are not always what they seem. It is a place where time and space go wibbly wobbly, jumping backward into the past and also catapulting us into the future… while at the same time joining people together around the world faster than any other type of travel. In this place, God is both known AND unknowable, all- powerful AND all-approachable, ephemeral AND embodied, both giving us everything and demanding from us everything, whose loves is both free and costly… with a people who belong to this God, both saint and sinner, gathered in and sent out. You have just arrived to special place. You have entered The Trinity Zone.  (Sound Effects from The Twilight Zone)

…The bad news is, Rod Sterling NEVER said the words “imagine if you will” in any of the introductions to the Twilight Zone. But that line has been quoted and used so many times, that I took thought FOR SURE that’s where I heard it before. But I was wrong. The real quote, which I also borrowed heavily from, is both longer, and actually kind of boring.  

But that tends to be the case with these things, right? You go along in your life, thinking and knowing one thing to be true but without any idea from where it really came from or where you got that notion…  and at some random point in your life, you will be flabbergasted to find out the truth. And, if you’re like me, you’ll be a little annoyed.

Captain Kirk never said “Beam me up, Scotty”

The original Sherlock Holms never uttered, “Elementary my dear Watson.”

Neither Marilyn Monroe NOR Eleanor Roosevelt ever originally said, “Well behaved women seldom make history.” These are all misquotes and mis-attributions that, over the years, have been repeated so often they become true and we never are the wiser. We print them on T-shirts posters and never ask where they came from. Well, now you know the truth.

And the truth is, the Bible NEVER uses the word Trinity. Not. Even. Once. Our three part, trinitarian Apostles Creed isn’t even in there, much less the longer Nicene one. Or the one we never get around to, the Athanasian Creed, which is EVEN LONGER than the Nicene one.

So, that leaves us with: we have a day dedicated every year to an idea that is not actually present in the Bible. Or is it?

The Bible may not ever say the word “Trinity.” But if we look hard enough, we might find evidence that something we could call Trinitarian is going on here. On the night of this last supper, when Jesus was eating with his disciples – who, at least the male ones would in just a few hours deny, abandon, and betray him – on that night in John, Jesus, the son of God, talks about his Father, and the arrival of the Holy Spirit, who he calls the Spirit of Truth.

Paul in his letter to the Romans talks about the different actions of Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit.

Proverbs speaks from the perspective of a woman named Wisdom, calling to the people of God to forsake their foolish ways, and to remind them of the Lord who created heaven, and earth, and all of them too.

The beginning of Genesis speaks of a God who hovers over the waters of creation as divine spirit, who speaks creation into being with the divine word, and makes space for creation as a divine parent. At Christmas and Easter, we hear from the Bible of God born in flesh to live among us, to preach, teach, heal, die, and rise again. And on Pentecost, last week, we heard the reading from Act 2 which also heralds the arrival God in the form of wind and flame and a diversity of languages.

The idea of the Trinity may not be literally Biblical… but we honor the theologians and writers and preachers and teachers who have gone before us, and who have attempted to make sense of a mysterious God who is beyond our senses by using ideas like the Trinity.

After all, there are many things that are NOT in the Bible that we Lutheran Christians DO affirm to be important and valuable to our faith – infant baptism, many part of our Liturgical Church Year like Advent and Lent, Sunday morning as the time we should have worship, first communion or confirmation, and coffee hour.

But then again, there are lots of things IN the Bible that we DON’T affirm as important to our faith (or are downright antithetical to it) such as: polygamy, slavery, child marriage, genocide, xenophobia, racism… and wearing clothes that are any kind of cotton/poly blend.

As we ate last Lent at Buckingham Pizza talking about the Bible, we learned the Bible is inspired by God and put together by flawed people. For his Confirmation, I have Kyle a newish book by writer and theologian Rob Bell… who in this book wrote: “The Bible was written by real people living in real places at real times… We dive into THEIR story, discovering OUR story in the process.” (78, 80)

Rob Bell recommends that we not read the Bible literally, but instead to read it literarily. “There are lots of right ways to read it,” (81) he says. You read it, then you wrestle with it, you ask questions, and sometimes you dance with it.

Wedding dance circle in action
(Yes, that's me as a bridesmaid!)

One of the ways that I have heard the Trinity “explained” is that it’s a dance. Dynamic, ever-changing, moving, rhythmic, frenetic…a dance between three, but also a dance that includes us too. We are invited. I imagine one of those “dance circles” at wedding receptions, where everyone is grooving in their own way, and sometimes someone goes in the middle and shows off a rad dance move… and always, always, the circle gets bigger for whoever wants to join it. There is always room on the dance floor... There is always a place for you in the Trinity Zone.

I find that it’s a real shame that we are pressured to find the perfect metaphor to explain the Trinity on Trinity Sunday, when really, the idea of the Trinity was created to help us try to understand God. Because the point of the Trinity is not that it’s like an apple or a raindrop or a three-leaf clover. The point of the trinity is that God is never complete, final, or static.

Bible is also not complete, final, or static, either, because the people who were in it and wrote it were still figuring things out. And we are still figuring things out… in fact, we are never done.  Just like our learning and growing is never over, and fixed, and complete, God is not fixed and finished with us ever either.

The Trinity is not static. And neither are we. God is still very much active in the world, and we are too. We’re not done, and God is not done with us. We are always active and growing and learning and being challenged and meeting those challenges. Because there is always something new to learn about God and one another, and the only time we are allowed to stop is when we at last find rest in our Lord and Creator.

Life in the Trinity Zone might begin here in the building, but it doesn’t stay here. Just like God is not a Trinity on one day only, but always. We can’t explain it. But we can, and do LIVE IT. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Everyone Got Confirmed Today

6-9-19 Pentecost/ Confirmation

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

A few years ago, one of my cousins told me that her daughter, Dana (named changed to protect the innocent), would be starting Confirmation class that fall. I of course shared with Dana herself how excited I was for her… to which Dana kind of looked confused and said, “what is the big deal about Confirmation, anyway?”

Well… boy was she ever talking to the right person to answer that question! She obviously completely forgotten that I was a pastor and was likely not prepared for the rather in-depth answer that I ended up giving her. Poor girl. She give over it though, tolerably well.

So, what IS the big deal about confirmation? And why is it happening today, on Pentecost? Well, almost 10 months ago, we embarked on this experiential and experiential fast-track confirmation adventure, and so here we are, at the culmination – not graduation- of this journey together.

We celebrate Pentecost because it ushers in a new phase and a new direction in the Jesus movement. Much like the rites of baptism and confirmation also signal new beginnings. At Pentecost, the followers of Jesus were given the gift of the Holy Spirit, a constant presence that both comforts and challenges us in our life in Christ. When a person is baptized, that person is forever marked by God’s claim on them as beloved children. At Confirmation, or more correctly known as “Affirmation of Baptism,” the baptized person claims and affirms this faith as their own, like a page break between sections of a book– ending one chapter and beginning another, like any good coming of age story.

I once did a baptism and a confirmation in one worship service, and it was quite an experience… because we were able to see within the span of the same hour, both of these markers of faith, of where our faith live begins, and where our faith can really take off and become our own. It also made the service a little on the long side, but it was totally worth it.

We didn’t get quite the same kind of turn around, but just a few weeks ago we got to participate in the baptism of Stephen and Dawn, and now we are here to witness and support Kyle Campbell’s confirmation. In both of these blessed occasions, it has truly been a group effort on our parts, especially and visibly so for Kyle – we have all participated in his confirmation year, whether it was attending the Eat Pray Learn dinners to explore the Bible, writing your own faith statement to go along with his in the bulletin, taking the Big Conformation Test, or writing your own sermon notes.

As we all know VERY WELL, it’s not just parents who make promises at baptism. We all make promises to every child that is baptized in our font. Remember that part where the pastor says, “Do you promise to support this child and pray for them in their new life in Christ?” we all say, “We do, and we ask God to help us”?

And we make that promise to every child that enters our doors on Sunday morning, regardless of where they have been baptized. It’s been said by some that our youth are “the future of the church.” In reality, they are the church NOW, part of the body of Christ NOW and participating in the mission that we all share NOW. And sometimes we will spectacularly fail in how we try to support and engage our young people, but the important things is that we keep trying and don’t give up. And occasionally, it turns out really, really well.  And I think that this is one of those times.

There are no grades in Confirmation, but if there were, I would give all of you a big A!! WELL DONE, everyone! I kind of feel like we should ALL get confirmed today. But we would run out of robes and corsages, probably.

Fortunately for those of us who are not Kyle, we all can affirm our baptisms every moment of our lives. Just as we can remember our own baptisms every day, we can choose to affirm our baptisms whenever we are able. Not necessarily with confirmation robe and cake, but in our daily interactions and the ordinary tasks we do. And by telling the story of why we continue to drag ourselves out the door every week for worship, long after we’ve been confirmed ourselves.

When we were baptized, we were welcomed into a community of believers who seek to follow the “follow the example of Jesus.” A community that was fully born, commissioned, and sent out when the Holy Spirit alighted on that small group in that shut away room in Acts 2. A community that continued to this day, in this time and in this place. The Holy Spirit showed up that day and has not stopped moving since.

After all, Pentecost is probably the most underrated of Christian Holy Days. Sure, Jesus would not have arrived on the scene if not for Christmas, and Christmas it totally pointless without Easter…. But without Pentecost, Christianity would have remained a very minor Jewish group. But after Jesus ascended to the Father, along came the Holy Spirit, and got the disciples out of the room, out the door, and into the world.

You might have imagined, based on this response alone, that instead of lighting a fire on their HEADS, instead the Holy Spirit lit a fire under their behinds!! At least, by the way they were acting – so excited and animated at such an early hour, that the rest of the population of Jerusalem thought they must have been drunk. As one friend told me she was going to title her sermon today, “It’s 9 O’Clock Somewhere!”

We don’t always seem to be this animated when we are out in the world, affirming our baptisms. At least, it’s not quite to this extent, here, at somewhere around 10 in the morning, Eastern Standard Time. So, in the words of my cousin’s kid, “just what is the big deal, anyway?”  

As we learned in our series on Baptism this last winter, it’s a big deal because in our baptism we are Born anew, Affirmed, Empowered to Trust in God, who Inspires us to Serve our Neighbor and Multiply this Love. That’s kind of a big deal. That is the kind of life we are called to affirm, celebrate, and embody. Which is a pretty tall order.

As I shared in my sermon in Namibia, the response “I will and I asked God to help me,” we say when we affirm our baptisms, should be instead “I won’t, and I ask God to help me.” We won’t always be able, or willing, to do it, nor will we we always do it successfully, but that’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. With the help of God. With flames on our heads…. Or sometimes flames under our butts. And THAT is something that we can affirm. Thanks be to God, Amen.

Dreaming in the Maundy Thursday Moments

6-2-19

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Risen Lord and savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

When I was in seminary, I remember reading a very long and complicated article on the history of the Lutheran church in the United States from eighteen hundred to the present day. I know, really fascinating stuff. It went something like this: these two Lutheran groups formed a synod, but later a small group left and joined this other synod, which after a while split into two, but a few years later rejoined, teamed up with another synod, but soon after another group left and formed their own group, who joined up with this other group, who later split….

And on and on this went, for pages upon pages, decades upon decades. As boring as that article was, it taught me one thing – human beings, yes even Lutherans, find it difficult to get along with one another.

And if you keep going back in the history of God’s church on earth, you will find schisms and splits and fighting and conflicts, going all the way back to the early church, all the way back to Jesus’ own disciples.

Within a few years of Jesus’s resurrection, different factions were embroiled in conflict over things that we would now find very strange – eating practices, circumcision, the rapture, and others.

In our day and age, we are caught up in our own conflicts, such as the inclusion of those who are gay, lesbian, transgendered, queer, and non-binary, the ethics of abortion and women’s reproductive rights, the status of immigrants and refugees, our struggle to curb the tide of gun violence, just to name a few of our current hot-button issues. Things can get pretty nasty between those of us who claim to follow the way of Jesus.

This prayer of Jesus comes during the “Maundy Thursday” moment for the disciples. They didn’t know it yet, but they were on the cusp of the worst – and best – weekend of their lives. Maundy Thursday, if you remember, is the day before Good Friday. Maundy Thursday is the day Jesus is betrayed, arrested, then charged and tortured under false pretenses. Good Friday is the day that Jesus was nailed to a cross and died, with the day ending with the darkness and finality of a tomb.

THIS what Jesus knows is coming, for both he and his disciples. Easter, yes, Easter IS coming… but not before Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Resurrection is coming… but not until death has its way first.

Jesus had to have foreseen that we really struggle to get this “oneness” thing. But still he prayed for his disciples… and he prayed for us too. He prayed that we would all be one, just as he and God the Father are one. Because God is Love, and oneness is the sign of this love.

The ultimate expression of that love was when Jesus, who was one with the Father, became one of us. He would be born of poor parents and grow up to teach love and peace.  He would heal the sick and feed the hungry and talk to the outcast. He would pray for his followers, even when he knew that the moment the “amen” left his lips he would walk out the door and into the garden, right into the waiting arms of Judas.

Jesus became one of us so that we would become one with one another. And though we are still far from fully living into this calling, every so often God gives us glimpses of what this can look like, if we are really paying attention. Some may call this visioning, some may call it dreaming, others, imagining or aspiring. No matter what we call it, Jesus dared us to look beyond our Maundy Thursday moments, to see the big picture, as he could see it. To break the tombs of minutia to the great wide world that might await God’s people… if we raise our eyes to see it, born in our minds eye at the planting of the Holy Spirit.

The Church finds herself in a Maundy Thursday moment. Anxious and fearful of the future, certain that hard and scary times are about to come our way, but not yet sure what they are going to be like. We wonder how we will ever face this Good Friday. What we forget sometimes… and what the disciples forgot too, in the face of the FIRST Maundy Thursday and Good Friday... they and we forgot that we aren’t facing this scary night alone. I’m not just talking about the “We always have Jesus with us bit” which sometimes feels like an easy answer with no teeth.

The real presence of Jesus IS a real and true comfort, don’t get me wrong… but what I’m taking about is that is that OTHER CHURCHES are sitting around the table with us, shut away in the upper rooms in our Maundy Thursday, passing a cup that seems to get emptier and emptier, gathering crumbs as best we can. If we concentrated our gaze only down at the table, this would be all we would see. But if we looked up, we might catch a glimpse that the door to this upper room is actually open, and that Jesus is pointing us to what is lies beyond.

At the Festival of Homiletics, I attended in the middle of May, I even heard about a pastor who developed a church and “raise” it from 4 people in her living room to thousands of members. Her name is Pastor Cynthia Hale, and she revealed to us that in her 30 years of ministering this church, things weren’t always constant. After reaching a peak, they dwindled back … ten thousand… eight thousand… four thousand… two thousand….. six hundred hundred… over the years, she said, they had a few Maundy Thursday moments… which always seemed to occur the moment they stopped dreaming as a church.

“Dreams get differed when we are too busy maintaining,” Pastor Hale informed us. We tell ourselves - we’ll dream and figure out a vision after we get all our ducks in a row, when we get some more members in the pews and dollars in the plate, when we can see our way out of this Maundy Thursday Moment on our own.

But the only way out is through. The only way through is to follow Jesus out that door of that upper room and out into the night of unknown and travel until you get to Good Friday and death… and keep going… because we know that Easter and resurrection is on the other side.

Family of God is having a Maundy Thursday moment, the same as many other churches. And the only way through is to listen to the words Jesus prayed for his disciples that night, and now that they are for us too. They are meant to encourage us to keep going, and to keep dreaming.

How do we do that? Hopefully by now many of you have signed up for one of our “family chats” and if you haven’t, please be sure to on your way out, or call the church office to get yourself signed up. Because this is exactly what we’re going to do together. We’re going to dream in the name of Jesus. We’re going to “what if” in the name of the Lord.

What if Family of God took a risk and dreamed BIG. Beyond coffee and deficits and maintenance projects? What if we put all of our God-given time, energy, resources, connections, relationships, drive, and passion into doing one big thing for the Kingdom of God and the Buckingham community before our time is done?

Photo Credit Jess Clarke

Joyful Noise Service, Hamilton NJ

What if …. Family of God started a worship service that was specifically tailored to the needs of children on the autism spectrum and their families? And what if … we held it in our newly repainted, newly sound-dampening-curtained multi-purpose room, fully fitted out with air-conditioning for the summer, and with folding chairs that are actually comfortable? And if a ton of people of all ages and abilities came, and we outgrew that space and decided to host it in the sanctuary? What if we decided to retire our pews, throw them a big party to thank them for their faithful service… and then put in movable, cushioned chairs instead…. So that we can have room for the parachute songs and the dancing and the noise and the instruments that come when children worship together with their “church grandmas and grandpas”….?

And what if, after this huge influx of energy and excitement, people are falling over themselves to join us for our next task: crafting a welcome statement specifically for the children of God who are gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual, queer, gender-non-binary, and intersex, so that we can join hundreds of congregations across the ELCA in becoming a Reconciling in Christ congregation?

These dreams may seem too big…. But do you really think that the disciples on the night of Maundy Thursday could have come close to imagining where the church is at NOW? 

Eventually they DID dream big… taking the gospel on road, baptizing people and spreading the word…and here we are...  and now we are going to do the same. So, lets get moving. There is no moment like now. Amen.