Outstretched Arms in the Storm

 6-20-21

Grace and peace to you from God creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ, by the power of the holy spirit. Amen.

I don’t normally do this, but I want you to take out your smart phone, right now… I want you to google “Jesus Calms the Storm painting, Daniel Bonnell.” (I would have purchased the digigal download of his work, but it was the only one that cost $200!) If you don’t have a smart phone at the ready, I’ll describe the painting and you can look it up later. In Bonnell’s stunning paining depicting today’s reading from Mark, the moon is shining, but it looks like it’s pulsating in an ominous red sky. The water is sweeping and black and churning and takes up about the entire the painting. It feels as though you’re looking UP at the moon from the bottom of a whirlpool or from across ridiculously high waves. 

When you do get a chance to look at this picture… try to find the boat. It’s surprisingly hard to find - it’s super tiny, in one corner of the picture, on the top of one of the steep waves, with Jesus and his out-stretched arms a challenge to make out against the red sky. 

I’ve never been on a boat during a storm, but this painting does remind me of how I felt as a kid sitting in the basement during tornado warnings, or when I lived in NJ on the eve of hurricane Irene and or Superstorm Sandy.

Storms in our lives take on endless forms – some physical like nor’easters and hurricanes. Other storms are invisible but deadly, like the pandemic. Some are societal or systemic, like poverty, or racism or sexism or queerphobia. Some are internal and individual. But in one aspect they are all alike: in our every storm, that little figure of Jesus in the boat does not seem to be doing us much good.

In fact, when the storm starts for the poor disciples in the boat trying to cross the lake, Jesus is curled up, snoring away! It seems understandable that the disciples are upset at Jesus. After all, it was all Jesus’ idea in the first place to take this trip across the lake, in the dark, after a LONG day, to a place THEY didn’t want to go - the OTHER side of the lake.

The other side of the lake is where THOSE people live - who look, cook, eat, act and dress differently. Why in the world would Jesus want to go over there? And why do WE have to go with him?

After all, we certainly have a hard enough time worrying about those in our lives we love and care about, and things happening in our immediate vicinity. Why should we concern ourselves with what’s happening on the other side of the lake, other side of the country, other side of the world, anyway?

In that storm painting I talked about earlier, you can’t see the other side of the lake. You can’t see these poor, frightened disciples.  In fact, you can barely see the boat. But what you can see, starkly against the freaky-red sky, are the tiny, but firmly outstretched arms of Jesus. 

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus has one job to do: to usher in the Kingdom of God. Only that kingdom is not going to look like we expect. It will involve Jesus bringing together different kinds of people– People from both sides of the lake. People related, not by blood, but instead by doing God’s will. 

God’s kingdom just might have something to do with Jesus endlessly reaching out to people, to stretch his arms out to encompass and heal and teach and welcome any who come to him – even stretching so far and wide as the beams of a cross, stretching so wide as to even reach beyond death and the grave. All so that you, me, and the people across the lake… across the country… across the world, are all gathered into this beloved family.

And that makes the powers in this world that defy God shake in anger ...and terror. These powers, forces, institutional structures, and ways of sin that pull us away from God will do everything they can to throw obstacles in our way: send others to discourage us. They will make it easier to choose not to see to institutional racism and white privilege. They will paint certain people with broad strokes. Pummeling us with wind and rain and voices and waves to fight against. 

The closer we get to Jesus and the more we try to live as part of God’s Kingdom come near, the worse this storm may actually get. 

The winds and waves and rain and darkness seem stronger.  The winds of injustice and violence … the waves of fear and hate…..  the stinging, cold rain of apathy… All threatening to capsize us. Like in this painting, it seems like a distinct possibility that the storm just might win. 

The 6th anniversary and commemoration of the Emmanuel 9 was this past Thursday. June 17th 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina, Nine African American church members, including the pastor, were killed by a white gunman during a Bible study. That gunman grew up in an ELCA church. 

We as a denomination have begun the work of grappling with our history. We’re nowhere near done yet, but there are signs of hope. 

Juneteenth was on this past Saturday, where all of Vienna gathered as a community to begin the Liberty Amendments Celebration month. Community non-profits, organizations, schools, faith communities - including us at Emmanuel - remembered that formerly enslaved people in Texas were FINALLY given the news of their freedom… two and a half years after it had been put into effect by the Emancipation proclamation. 

One of the amendments we commemorate during the Liberty Amendments month is the 13th Amendment - the formal end chattel slavery…  though the legacy of slavery are still felt even now, and informal slavery still exists in the form of systemic racism and mass incarceration. 

We have a long way to go for real freedom. And we still have a lot of storms to navigate before then. 

But we’re not out there in the storm by ourselves. Jesus is in the boat with us. Jesus is the one calling us out into the lake, steering us in the right direction. Jesus is the one who has command over the wind and the waves. Jesus is navigating us, not us, making sure that we will get where we’re supposed to go. 

God is steering us toward a future of love and freedom and peace, where are of God’s beloved children are loved, where SOMEDAY we don’t have to remind ourselves that “black lives matter,” because we will treat ALL lives as if they mattered. We will no longer need a “Liberty Amendments Month,” because someday we will actually live out “liberty and justice for ALL.”

We’re not in this storm by ourselves, because there are other boats with us. We’re part of Jesus’ armada of peace, crossing the lake to the people on the other side, with wide open arms, just like Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Wednesday - "Pride and Jubilee All Year Long"

 

Reading: Luke 4: 14-21

¹⁴Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
 ¹⁸"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
 because he has anointed me
 to bring good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
 and recovery of sight to the blind,
 to let the oppressed go free,
 ¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."

   

 

Wed. 6-16-21

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

This is the very start of Jesus’s ministry. He has just returned from being baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist, and from 40 days of being tempted in the wilderness. Full of the Holy Spirit, he returns to his hometown. He has only been doing a bit of preaching and teaching, no healing yet, or casting out any demons, or distributing any loaves and fishes. In his home town especially, he was still “just Mary’s kid,” born amid town gossip – even back then, people knew when the math between the wedding and the birth didn’t “add up.”

He was “that kid” who got “lost” in Jerusalem one year when he was twelve. And as an adult, he was turning out a bit off-beat – perhaps “goody-two-shoes,” a John the Baptist groupie, and unmarried adult man … which was unusual that culture. But he was still a very active synagogue attender, and that week when he was handed the scroll to read, he preached his first sermon and maybe even the best one ever. It certainly was one of the shortest – “today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Boom. Mic Drop.  

The passage that Jesus read was from the prophet Isaiah and refers to the “Jubilee year” or the “Year of the Lord’s Favor.” We learned a lot about the mentions of the Jubilee year in other parts of the Old Testament, as we learned during synod assembly from Dr. Ryan Bonfiglio, Assistant Professor in the Practice of Old Testament, Chandler School of Theology at Emory. According to Dr. Bonfiglio -  Just as after 6 days we are to take a day of rest, after 6 years the land and fields get a year of rest, depts are forgiven, and slaves were freed – THAT is the jubilee year.

Jesus came to stand in solidarity to the poor and disenfranchised. Jesus came to release those who are in bondage of any kind. Jesus came to heal and reveal. Jesus came to bring freedom to the exploited and demoralized. Jesus came to make a Jubilee Year forever. All are freed, all are loved, and all are welcomed into the kingdom of God that Jesus is ushering in.

We as a congregation and we as the broader church like to say that “all are welcome here.” But when we say this, do we truly mean it? Do we truly extend the welcome that we ourselves have received from Jesus? Or do we – consciously but usually unconsciously – put caveats on our welcome?

We say, “all are welcome,” but we MIGHT mean – you can come to worship here, but we may not talk to you at coffee hour (in the before times). You can come and sit in our pews (in the before times) but only if you aren’t sitting in MY pew. You CAN come, but you might not find an easy way into our building, or you might not find a bathroom you feel comfortable using, or you might not hear God in a way that feels accessible to your experiences or language.

But when we are REALLY welcoming to people, we are doing it in the name of Jesus, in our language, symbols, and actions. Stating our preferred pronouns. Advertising our “Reconciling in Christ” designation. Emmanuel should be proud that we chose to do the work, and it tells the whole world that WE MEAN IT when we say ALL are welcome… but it does not mean that our work is done.

A few of us on staff are reviewing the new book “Made Known Loved,” about creating an LGBTQIA inclusive youth ministry. The author reminds us that Jesus knows what it’s like to not be welcomed, even in the hometown of his youth. Jesus was born from a woman who was not yet married when he was conceived. Jesus grew up with two fathers. As far as what the Gospels tell us, Jesus was not married, but instead surrounded himself with a “chosen” family, as we heard a few weeks ago, when Jesus referred to his followers as his mothers, sisters, and brothers.

Right after Jesus preaches this sermon today in that synagogue, some people are amazed, but some wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff. This turned out to be the pattern for Jesus’s ministry – Jesus going viral, but also making some people very angry.

If Jesus’ message of freedom and love makes you feel glad when you used to feel sad – blessed are you! The kingdom of God is yours. If Jesus’s message makes you feel uncomfortable – great! That means you’re growing! Let’s keep exploring together. If Jesus’ message makes you feel angry – don’t leave. Jesus preached freedom to those who are in bondage, and he cast out all kinds of forces that draw us from God, and Jesus is still doing this even now to you and to me.

This is how Jesus chose to embody God in the world – announcing release, recovery, freedom, good news.  Then Jesus embodied it, putting his body, his life on the line. As his followers, we welcome and invite in Jesus name, because all parts of us are welcome in Jesus name.

We join our bodies with that of Jesus, pray the Spirit of God rests upon us and live compassionately and justly. We don’t “just” love and honor our welcome our LGBTQIA siblings just during pride month. Like sabbath isn’t just one day, we should not just love and show solidarity with our LGBTQIA siblings for one month out of the year. Share your pronouns all year long. Wear your rainbows all year long. Proclaim the Lord’s favor to everyone, all year long.  Because you are freed, all year long. Jesus said it, so we believe it. Thanks be to God.

New Family in Jesus

 6-6-21

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. 

It’s sort of comforting to know that in Jesus’s own family, Jesus was the “black sheep” …  that even in Jesus’ family, things are complicated. 

We are back in the Gospel of Mark after a really long time in John. Remember, this is THE year of Mark’s Gospel, the snappy, fast moving gospel with a sometimes grumpy Jesus.. .and today he definitely seems grumpy with his family.

It’s early in his ministry, and Jesus has gone viral. Jesus was already preaching, teaching, healing, and gathering the 12 disciples, wandering here there and everywhere followed by huge crowds. His family must have though they lost control, and were after him to reign it in. Presumably with Joseph absent, Jesus would be the male head of the household, expected to behave in a certain way in the highly patriarchal hierarchy of the ancient roman world. But, here, as Jesus proves again and again, Jesus is very bad at upholding the patriarchy.

Actually, Jesus is pretty bad at maintaining societal rules at all. In fact, in exasperation of his less-than-supportive family, he declares all the women and men present in the crowd to be his family, based on their commitment to God, rather than affinity by a heteronormative family unit, as was normal both back then and now.

It’s Pride Month, and from what I have heard over and over again from my gay, lesbian, trans, and queer friends is this familiar familial story. Rejection, lack of support, or grudging acknowledgement from family, is all too common.  Instead, some gather around them a “found” family.

This is what Jesus is modeling for us here – a new type of family system, where our siblings do not necessarily share our genes, but instead share our passion for the gospel.  A new family where our siblings might not be related by blood, but instead united through the blood of Jesus. A new family brought together not by the waters of a mother’s womb, but by the waters of our baptism and the promise of an empty tomb. A new family that is not bound up by strict gender roles or hierarchy norms that claim to be Christian that actual does harm.

This kind of family Jesus is forming is not bound up in the patriarchal interpretations of the Bible, including Genesis. Genesis 1 and 2 tells not just one story but TWO stories of creation, culminating in God creating Adam and Even to partner in their care of the earth. Later, In Genesis 3, the snake convinces Eve to try the fruit from the forbidden tree. Eve eats, then Adam eats. Their eyes were opened, and they knew they were in big trouble.

Throughout history, Eve usually gets the whole blame for The Fall, which became the justification for sexism in Christianity – in one book I read during my “Reading Week” last week, said “They take Eve being deceived by the serpent and claim that if the man had been the ‘head’ of his wife… or had lead his household… the fall would not have happened” (p. 22, Dialogues on Sexuality).

BUT, If you recall, Adam was RIGHT THERE, and, when God questions Adam about what happened, he passes the blame onto Eve AND God, then says, “The woman WHOM YOU GAVE ME, SHE gave me the fruit.” Not like a “head of household” at all.

Eve is not perfect, she but doesn’t deserve all the blame. Genesis does NOT state that Eve was a seductive temptress and therefore all women are inherently more sinful than men. This story has been used and abused as a reason to mistreat women. Similarly, Genesis is also not a science textbook. AND Genesis is NOT a primer on WHO IS ALLOWED to get married – there is no mention of vows, a white dress, cake, or the chicken dance is mentioned. 

Instead, Genesis tells us that love, and relationships are messy and problematic and broken and full of mistakes and blame. Sometimes we are passive like Adam, to stand by and watch while objectionable things happen and make no attempt to stop them. Sometimes we are Eve - curious, testers of limitations and seekers of knowledge and risk takers, who sometimes goof up big time.  

The Adam and Eve in all of us all too often trust the words of the crafty serpents around us, rather than the incredible promise that we are loved and claimed as God’s children in God’s family. When our own families reject or question us, when the rest of the world tells us the opposite, God tells us that we are worthy, we are loved, and we are enough. 

We belong to this new family because of Jesus. The family that Jesus creates is not created around a husband and a wife. It’s created around mentors and nurturers like parents, and equal relationships between siblings, caring for one another… a family that is beyond blood ties and clan affiliations.  Jesus calls this new family – still full of imperfections –to be a new kind of kingdom, a kingdom where everyone is treated with fairness and respect, where all feel safe, welcome, and valued, both within our buildings and out in the world. Every Sunday, every day, every moment, is a “family reunion,” minus the potato salad. It’s a RE-UNION as “members of the Body of Christ.”

Jesus breaks this boundaries and constructs because hierarchies harm the people with privilege as well as those without. Then, when he breaks down these building blocks of society, some people felt threatened at their loss of power, and accused Jesus of being possessed by demonic, evil powers. Here, Jesus shows us that in following the vision that God has for the human family will cause some loss – loss of respectability, loss of relationships, loss of influence, loss of stability. But to ignore or compromise on Jesus’s message of radical inclusive love means turning our backs on who we belong to and who we are called to be.

Jesus embodied his message until the very last – even giving up his life on a cross in order to create this family. Yes, Jesus own mother Mary was there. But Jesus was also surrounded by his by his new family – faithful women surrounded Jesus to bear witness, to stand by him. And in standing by him, they saw for themselves that death, rejection, and sin does not have the last word. And they shared this with the rest of God’s family. So that NO ONE is EVER left out again. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Wednesday - "The Faithful Work of Smashing the Patriarchy"

 6-2-21

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

At the seminary I attended in Minneapolis, at the end of every semester was something called “Reading Week.” While it was a week of no classes… it was right before all of our final papers were due – a time to catch up on all our reading and writing. Ever since then, every so often I take a “Reading Week” for continuing education, to catch up on some of the books that I have become quite a tall stack.

This is one of the books I recently picked up after hearing about it on NPR – “The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth.” Now, granted, may seem like an unnecessary book to read for an ELCA pastor… after all, the ELCA and her predecessor bodies have been ordaining women for more than 50 years! Emmanuel has a few women pastors, and we even have a woman bishop – Bishop Leila Ortiz! AND we have a woman Presiding Bishop – Elizabeth Eaton! We are SOOOO Enlightened!!

Perhaps… but we are also swimming in a sea of other Christians who perhaps aren’t so…. “enlightened” let us say. There are plenty of LUTHERAN denomination that do not ordain women. 18% of the Lutheran denominations that make up the Lutheran World Federation DO NOT ordain women. Additionally, many women pastors IN the ELCA even now find themselves the first woman pastor ever called to the church they serve and face less respect and are paid less than their male counterparts would be.  

It also happens that some of the loudest Christian voices out there tend to subscribe to a very narrow view of women’s roles in and outside of the church and baptize these ideas in the name of Christ. Using the Bible, and more specifically the writings of Paul, certain branches of Christianity don’t allow women to: preach, teach mixed gender Sunday school classes, and live fully into their identities as beloved children of God.

Dr. Beth Allison Barr, the author of the book, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, knows this all too well, and tells her stories of being a Ph.D. in Medieval Christian history, and yet, needing special dispensation from her pastor to teach Sundays school when no men where available. Her book reminds us that the patriarchy existed well BEFORE Christianity… she writes: “Patriarchy may be part of Christian history, but that doesn’t make it Christian.”

Lots of the letters of Paul ARE used to make the Christian Patriarch into some kind of Gospel – that part I was well aware of. But in reading Dr. Barr’s book last week, I was also astonished that Paul didn’t always mean what we think he meant. All those “wives should submit to their husbands” clobber passages might actually be counter cultural. It turns out, ancient pre-Christian Roman society was SUPER patriarchal – no huge surprise there – but early Christianity was seriously shaking things up. For Paul to directly address wives at all in these “household rules” as he did was radical and unheard of.

Paul also wrote for Christians to not be conformed to the world. Do Christians really want to look MORE like the world, meaning MORE like patriarchy? It’s just as rough out there in the “secular world” for women as it is inside Christianity, between sexual harassment, the pay gap, lack of affordable childcare, and lots of old men in the government telling women what to do with their reproductive systems.

It was not PAUL who told my mortgage lender to send mail to our house in MY HUSBAND’S NAME, rather than mine, even though I was the primary point of contact through the whole process. Paul did not stipulate that upon marriage my name MUST BECOME “Mrs. Husband’s First and Last Name.” It confuses Christians AND non-Christians alike that I still go by my last name of origin.

You see, the same man who wrote “wives submit to your husbands” also wrote the passage from Galatians 3… words that I image would also be just as likely to come from the lips of Jesus. After, all it was not Paul who died and was raised for us, it was Jesus. And Jesus talked to women, healed women, were sponsored and supported by women, were friends with women, and called women to share the good news of his resurrection with all.

In the era that Dr. Barr knows best- the medieval period in Europe, plenty of women preached and taught. Instead of moving forward, Christianity as a whole has gone backward. And when one of us is not free, none of use are free.

A long time ago, Jesus set women free… why has it taken us so long to do the same? In baptism we have been set us free… why are we holding hostage the potential of any who has been called to do the work of God’s kingdom?

Dr. Barr ends her book as she ends each of her classes in Medieval History – Go, be free! She writes: “Once again, I propose that we stop making Christianity look like the world around us, and starting fighting to make it looked like the world God inspired Paul to show us was possible” – I would add, a world where there IS no longer Jew, Greek….slave, free… male, female… rich, poor… citizen, immigrant…. Housed, homeless… outsider, insider… for all of us are one in Christ Jesus. One, Free, Empowered, and beloved. So, go, be free! Thanks be to God. Amen.