Go with God's Authority

 9-27-20

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.

We all live under some sort of authority, whether we are aware of it or not. Some kinds are obvious – traffic laws, taxes, phone contracts, mortgage and loan agreements, state and local mask mandates. Some of the systems we comply with are less noticeable – who bullies and gets bullied on social media, who is more likely to speak in a zoom meeting, how much the same house is appraised for based on the perceived skin color of the owner, among others.

We have been very well trained. We all know how to navigate the rules of this world, both consciously and unconsciously. We know what scripts to recite and what patterns to follow, from what we see in TV commercials and online ads, from newspaper fliers, from what we see from our neighbors and classmates, from the conversations and interactions we have with our family and friends.

And for some of us, following the rules WORKS. Because some of us were born the right color or with the right biology, or in the right country to the right family. Following the rules of the world comes much easier for some than for others. This is what is called “privilege.” We didn’t earn it or do anything special to deserve it. But it is the air we breathe.

But one wrong move, one misstep, and we will find ourselves with those people, on the outside looking in. There is no room for failure. There is no room for nuance. When a white female Methodist pastor in the Midwest is outspoken for justice, her bishop reserves the right to fire her without recourse. This particular pastor will find out later this week if she will be fired, effective immediately, just because she said “Black Lives Matter” in a sermon.

But, rules are rules, I guess. (heavy sarcasm) 

And when they DO work for us, it can be hard to change them. Those people are those people for a reason...right? We who have done everything right, like those have worked in the vineyard from dawn until dusk from last week, we feel we DESERVE to be first in the kingdom of this world, and perhaps also in the Kingdom of God, don’t we?

How dare this Midwestern pastor take a stand on something that is so clearly at the heart of the Gospels? Like, where does SHE get off, living into what it means to follow a first-century Palestinian Jewish man? … a man who had the audacity to hang out with the wrong people and heals the blind, who rides into town on a donkey in an impromptu parade and kicks the economy of the empire in the teeth… like does she even KNOW who Jesus IS and what he PREACHED?

It turns out she does. And that is making the authorities over her uncomfortable.

Jesus makes us uncomfortable because he reminds us that we are as broken and hopeless as THOSE people seem to be, the tax collectors and sex workers, and people left behind by a broken health care system. These are exactly the kinds of people Jesus chooses to hang out with. He reminds us that we can follow all the “rules” to a tee and still be on the wrong side of history.  

Jesus makes us uncomfortable because he reminds us that there is another kingdom out there, a kingdom with a very different kind of authority. This is the authority of God, shown to us in Jesus.  To live under this kind of authority REALLY makes no sense to the world. This is not a kingdom where rules completely go out the window. This is a kingdom where the rule of the realm is love, condensed and concentrated into the living, dying, and rising of Jesus.

At the end of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus gave his followers a great charge: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations… and I WILL BE WITH YOU.”

And in this text for today, instead of arguing with the smarty pants religious authorities of his day, Jesus told them a story instead – about a man with two sons and two different responses to his charge for them to “Go.”

Our vineyard, where Jesus commands us to go and work, could be far away among those “all nations.” More likely, though, our vineyards are the zoom classrooms we attend, our place of work, the people we sit in the yard with, who we attend worship with and greet in the comment section, and drive on the same highways with. Sometimes our vineyard is right in our own homes with our own families, especially now that many activities are taking place online.

And the work that we do there is not always easy to figure out. God has not left us with a book of easy-to-follow instructions on “how to successfully make disciples of all nations 100% of the time.” In fact, we may not want to go into the vineyard at all! It’s so hard, and I’m not very good at it, and what can I even do, anyway? Especially now, with a pandemic on! We’ve never done this before!

The good news is that we are not alone in this work – we have the whole church on earth, past, present, and future.

The bad news is, the church in a human institution.  Seventeen centuries ago when the church suddenly found itself with authority instead of being on the margins, we lost a potent opportunity. Instead of showing the world a different kind of power and authority, the kind of servant heart exhibited by Jesus, the church instead chose to tread the path of hierarchy and supremacy, copying what already existed in the world. In other words, the institutional church told Jesus “Yes,”… but then we didn’t follow through.

But it is not too late. There is hope for us. While we cannot undo the wrongs of the past, we CAN and SHOULD stop them from happening in the present. We can confront injustices in the name of Christ. As a church, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we can be a servant to those in need and a witness to where the Spirit is at work the world.

As I learned from the board retreat of LAMPa this week, this year is the 500^th anniversary of the most revolutionary essay that Martin Luther wrote called “The Freedom of a Christian.” In this essay, Luther writes about how we as Christians are “perfectly free…. subject to none.” BUT ALSO:  Christians are “perfectly dutiful servant[s] of all, subject of all.”

Luther wrote: "Christian[s] … do not live in themselves but in Christ and their neighbor, or else they are not Christian," "They live in Christ through faith and in the neighbor through love. Through faith they are caught up beyond themselves into God; likewise through love they fall down beneath themselves into the neighbor — remaining nevertheless always in God and God's love."

We don’t serve the world. We don’t serve the economy. We don’t serve institutions, even if it is the church. We serve Jesus, and we do that be serving our neighbor. We serve our neighbors Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, the trans teen kicked out of their home by their parents, the foster child that who has never known a home, Savanna and other the indigenous and native women who have gone missing, singles moms who use SNAP, the two-hundred thousand people who have contracted and died from Covid-19, including members of this congregation. How are we serving them?

These people were made in the image of God… just as we are made in the image of God. We are chosen and anointed in our baptisms and then we are called out – under God’s authority - into the vineyard where the work of justice is always taking place. God is always at work in turning us into God’s people. God is always turning bad news into good news…. God is always turning “nos” into “yesses.” And whether today is a yes day or a no day, at the end of the day we are still God’s children. God still says YES to us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's Heart, Our Heart: Virtual Rally Day 2020

 Sermon 9-13-20

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.

Our Rally Day today looks just a little bit different than it normally does – a year ago in the parlor, adult education class was popping in a new DVD into the TV, the Pray-ground was stocked with new crayons, and the pews were re-populated with summer tans, fresh haircuts, and lots of backpacks to be blessed.

Even if you are no longer a student ourselves at the moment, we all remember what it was like to go to school for the first day of a new year, at least in the pre-pandemic times. We remember how excited or nervous we felt, the night before when we fretted over our outfit and set out our backpack will all our supplies – new pencils and pens, empty notebooks and folders to be filled with knowledge, calculators and rulers and crayons and highlighters.

Dealing with newness and change can make us anxious. And now, we have the added layer of trying to figure out how to navigate a new school year in the middle of a pandemic. Zoom, Canvas, Google Classrooms, Microsoft Teams, emails, hybrid learning, mask, and social distancing – in some ways, we are being taught a new way to BE taught. We are learning a new way to learn.

Teaching is also one of Jesus’s favorite things to do… especially when the lesson that we have to learn will surprise us. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches A LOT, and this week we hear yet another snippet of one of his longer lesson that take up most of chapter 18. Last week, Jesus taught how sin is handled in the community.  But much before that, at the beginning of chapter 18, the disciples ask Jesus “Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus, probably rolling his eyes, bring in a child and says “…unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

But Peter seems to be hung up on verse 15 from last week – “If another member of the church sins against you…” Peter seems to be less interested in the reconciliation that forgiveness would bring, and more interested in how many times he will have to put up with other people sinning. So, Jesus told a story.

The first slave if you recall, owed ten thousand talents, which is pretty much like saying ‘A jillion dollars” - an amount that no person could POSSIBLY work off in their entire lifetimes. The other slave, if you remember, owed the first one va very tiny amount by comparison. But the first slave does not forgive this small amount, even after his enormous debt is forgiven. He did not forgive as he was forgiven.

I want to admit here the discomfort I have with Jesus telling a story that involves slavery, where Jesus doesn’t acknowledge the injustice of slavery. It is true that Jesus used what was commonplace in his parables, the stuff of daily life – growing crops, raising livestock, cooking meals, family relationships – and at that time, slavery WAS a given part of everyday life. Even Jesus’s own people were semi-enslaved themselves, in a kind of “vassal” or serf system, so they may not batten an eyelash about weighted terms like “King” and “slave.”

The people listening to Jesus’s story in real time didn’t hear it in a vacuum… and neither do we. WE hear these words with very different ears, and cannot escape how the institution of slavery has been baked into the legacy of this nation, and is the cause of deep-seated injustice that is playing itself out in our daily news headlines.

In the wake of everything that has happened this past summer, myself and so of my pastor colleagues have been reading books by people of color about anti-racism work. One of the best books I read so far is called “Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation” by Latasha Morrison. We’ll be starting to read and discuss it as a congregation later this month, and I hope you join us. This book weaves together our Christians ideals of faith, confession, and forgiveness to the hard and uncomfortable work of seeing and healing the deep racial divides in our country.

A powerful moment in this book comes when Morrison visits a very special “Plantation turned Museum.” Whitney Plantation, a once-operational slave camp and farm, now honestly bears witness to “the history of slave ownership in the South and to honor the slaves who once live [there]” (71). When she visited, Morrison was the only African American present in a tour group of people of European descent, including the young white tour guide.

Along the tour, Morrison received the name of a man who had actually live there – Albert Patterson – and later each tour participate was invited to ring the plantation bell in honor of the name they were given. The ringing of that bell pierced her heart and soul… ringing out in the past, present, and future. Through the sound of the bell, through her conflicting emotions and resistance and hurt, the Holy Spirit called Morrison to this work of racial reconciliation.

Later in this book, Morrison writes: “...only when we make space for our emotions, when we’ve honestly evaluated them, can we move into true Christlike forgiveness.” (108)

Unfortunately, we are not Jesus. For many of us, we don’t even have to get to the seventy-seventh time to find this hard or even impossible. Sometimes, one sin against us is all it takes for us to get stuck – and here we’re are talking a “BIG SIN.” Betrayal of trust, assault, spreading a lie, bullying or meanness, destruction of property, infidelity, violence, threats…. Some of us have lived through some very difficult hurts perpetrated against us by other people, sometimes even the people we love.

Does this also mean that if someone sins against me, for any reason, I should do like the song from “Frozen” and “Let it Go?” Even seventy-seven times? This can easily be interpreted as the opposite being just as true – “If I do not forgive those who sin against me, God will not forgive me.”

One of my seminary professors, Dr. Craig Koester, shared this helpful insight: " Forgiveness is not acceptance of the past. . . Forgiveness is the declaration that the past will not define the future. . .” But maybe today is not that day. Maybe today the past is far too present. Maybe you are on your seventy-eighth go-round with a loved one. Jesus tells us to forgive from the heart….. what happens when our hearts have been so destroyed that we just don’t have enough pieces left to be ABLE to forgive?

Only God is in charge of when that moment of forgiveness happens… if it is a single moment at all. Most of the time, it is a series of little moments. One day, you are mad, hurt, and betrayed, and the next day you are still mad, hurt, and betrayed…. But twenty days, a hundred days, a thousand and twenty days, or a bajillion days later, you may find that the anger and hurt are no longer there. It no longer has you in its grip.

There is no time frame for forgiveness. There is no heart that is too broken to be healed. You can’t keep track, and you can’t rush it. Forgiveness can’t be counted toward, only journeyed through, felt when given a healthy space, and built, piece by piece.

Every week we say together in the Apostles Creed, “I believe in (among other things) the forgiveness of sins.” And, as we heard Jesus tell us last week, “…if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus is among us, when we gather to believe in the forgiveness of sins, even when we can’t ACTUALLY FORGIVE YET.

Together we believe in forgiveness, even when we can’t do it yet. Together, we are all Children of God, gathered together here to forgive, encourage, challenge, and love one another. Together, we will stumble and fall sometimes, but we have one another to lift us up, dust us off, and get us back on our feet, dusty heart and all. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Origin Stories and Superpowers

 Sermon 8-30-2020

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.

Every superhero has origin story. Some of my favorite superheroes and heroines were born with their special powers, like Wonder Woman, Black Panther, and Luke Skywalker. Others - such as Captain Marvel, Spider Man, and Harry Potter - got them in all kinds of unexpected ways. And still others were simply chosen to save the world, like the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You might be surprised to hear that we are part of a very special league of super heroes, right here in real life. Part of my origin story is growing up in a group of other baptized super hero people, being nurtured and encouraged in my faith by my family and other caring adults, and working at a Bible Camp in Wisconsin. 

Your origin story is probably different. But we were all chosen in the same way: We all had our forehead splashed with water three times, surrounded by others who pledged to help us on our journey. Then we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. It is a cross that we all carry with us, present every moment of our lives. That is OUR shared origin story.

As we wrap up our 90 Day Bible Challenge today – congratulation! – I hope that you noticed some of the really cool “origin stories” of our favorite Bible Heroes and heroines. The devotion of Ruth. The perseverance of Esther. The dreams of Joseph. The strange call stories of the prophets. The conversion of Paul. And today… we heard how Moses got going with his mission to free his people, directly from God, via a shrub that was on fire!

You could also say, in our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, that the origin story of the Christian church began here. Jesus is with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, a Roman town full temples to every deity under the sun. It is here that Jesus asks the hundred-thousand-dollar question – Who do YOU say that I am? The disciples take a stab at it, but only Peter got it right – “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Good job. Peter!

Though we heard those words a week ago in our time… only days, hours, or even minutes elapsed before Peter … then puts his foot in his mouth. Peter, thinking he’s on a roll, says: “God forbid it, Lord!” “That’s not how it’s going to be when YOU are in charge! Suffering and death? You’ve got to be kidding!”

News flash Peter: Jesus wasn’t kidding. Jesus is NOT here to set up his own kingdom made in the image of the world, with power, glory, and might. But…. Peter is also not alone in his hasty judgement about the kind of Kingdom that Jesus is bringing. We often have trouble understanding God’s kingdom when we encounter it, too

We are surrounded by messages of the Kingdom of Might – M-I-G-H.T…where power comes from influence and affluence. Those who have it, flaunt it. Those who don’t have it, want it. And the easiest way to get it is to hang out with the powerful people – and hope you get some of it by association. This is, by the way, what Peter is trying to do with Jesus, and is also why he freaks out when Jesus reveals this is NOT the kind of kingdom he’s ushering into being. After all, who WANTS to be in the inner circle of THAT kind of King? Who wants suffering as part of their origin story?

These messages have become the water we swim in - so totally ingrained in how we live that we don’t notice. It is even built into the very fabric of this country. We are taught our origin story as a nation is one of a scrappy band of settlers who valiantly wrestled their rights and freedoms out of the clutches of the most powerful empire in the world. But is that the whole story?  

We don’t have a time machine… but we do have a show from 2004 called Colonial House (found on Amazon Prime and YouTube), an entertaining blend of historical documentary and just good, juicy reality TV. Two dozen people committed to living in the back country of coastal Maine for four months, in an approximation of how a settlement would have operated in 1628. That’s right – no electricity, running water, or privacy.

Instead of the pure and simple utopia that many of the contestants expected, these “settlers” quickly came face to face with the harsh realities that shaped our early days as a nation, besides the daily struggle to survive.

From the very start, religious intolerance, strict social classes and power struggles, homophobia, the never-ending focus on productivity and output, land-theft from native people, rigid gender roles, and racial tension were very uncomfortably present in our national identity. The realization that the “Origin Story” of our country is not simple or spotless was an eye-opening moment for many on this show – and those of us who watched to the show, too.

Some of us are waking up to threads of a story we didn’t know had been woven into our fabric since the beginning, while others have been awake this whole time, seeing our past play out again, and again, and again, the cycle of violence against the bodies of our black and brown siblings, which turn into rage, blame, and more violence, most lately in my home state of Wisconsin, which is so much part of my own origin story.

In the middle of all the memes and rhetoric, I wonder if in this moment, Jesus is saying to us: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take 7 bullets in the back, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will find it looted, and those who loot their own lives, for my sake, will find life.

The source of Jesus’ power - the power of God – is found in vulnerability. It is strength found in weakness. It is might found in non-violence. It is gaining the whole world by throwing our entire lives away. It is following in the footsteps of Jesus, who was called to die for our sake, so that we may die to ourselves for the sake of others.

This is Jesus’s superpower: Resurrection. And it becomes our superpower too: The broken being made whole. Hate turning into love. Death transformed to new life.  Jesus transforming the cross as an instrument of death into a symbol of hope, the symbol that all of us baptized superheroes carry on our foreheads. Invisible, like a secret superhero identity, but still always present.

Only our secret superhero identities are supposed to be public. We are meant to follow Jesus, to carry our crosses, in a way that others can see. Sometimes, like Moses, we are called to work for the liberation of an entire oppressed people. Sometimes, like Moses, we put our bodies on the line and into harm’s way. Sometimes, like Moses, we are sent to speak truth to power.

Moses’s origin story may have involved a supernatural shrub on fire. But his origin story is similar to our own – God calls us by name. And even in the face of all the questions we have, God reveals to us God’s own name – a God who is Faithful, a god who Liberates, the God who Is and Was and ever will be with us.

In our baptisms, we have died to our old selves, and we rise up as part of a new family in Christ. And so, as God’s superheroes, we are sent into the world as a chip off the old boulder…to follow Jesus’ lead. As the affirmation of baptism (or confirmation) liturgy goes, we are called “to follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” In the face of these big tasks, we as a church respond, “We do and we will, and we ask God to help us.”

In the words of Black Panther: "It is time to show the outside world who we are."

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

 

Jesus and Open Carry

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.

If you are a fan of the reality TV show Queer Eye – as I am – you may have noticed that the first episode of this new season (which is set in Philly, by the way) features an ELCA pastor. If you are NOT familiar with this show, I’ll clue you in. Five Fabulous gay men travel the country “making over” people’s lives. The council members of Atonement Lutheran in Fishtown nominated their beloved pastor, and last summer Pastor Noah spent a week being showered with love. Seriously, get  the free promotional month of Netflix and watch it as soon as you can… and get ready to cry.

But actually I want to focus on the 2nd episode in this season. Rianna is an African American businesswoman who lives in Norristown. Over three years ago she had started her own dog grooming business, but she was barely staying afloat amid many challenges. In typical Queer Eye fashion, the Fab 5 gave her a wardrobe, provided business know-how, and of course, outfitted her with a brand new “Doggy Grooming Mobile Vehicle.”

As an African American business woman in this country, Rianna was less likely to have access to the resources necessary to make her business successful by herself – it is well-documented that persons of color have less access and fewer resources at their disposal, whether we’re talking small business loans, generational wealth, or access to knowledge and role models. In other words, in this country, based on the color of her skin, she has been given fewer things in her “bag” to travel this road we call life than a white person who is the same age and born in the same location.

We like to think that when we are born, we all start out equal. After all, every one of us arrive into this work with literally “nothing.” But in reality, we all inherit things – the skin color of our parents, a particular economic status, generational trauma… all which can help or hinder us in our path in life. It’s not unlike being given a bag for the beach but not having sunscreen, or shoes to protect your feet from the hot sand – without being provided some basic necessary things, you are not going to be ready for your summer beach vacation.

Of course, life is not quite the same as enjoying some time “down the shore” as they say.  Right now, we are we at the beginning of the summer season, when normally we would all disperse to the four winds and we wouldn’t see some of you until September. But we are also at the start of a new season in the Church year. This is “Ordinary Time,” or the “Time after Pentecost.” – or the Big Long Green Season. The season of major events – Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, is behind us, and the weeks of counting the seemingly hundreds of Sundays after Pentecost has begun.

We have jumped back into the middle of the Gospel of Matthew, back to the start of Jesus’ ministry in Palestine. Jesus realize that this whole “Preaching the Gospel” thing is bigger than just one person can do, so he calls on the twelve disciples and gives them their marching orders.

Jesus given them detailed instructions on what to DO, but not on what to PACK. Or rather, he is very specific on what NOT to pack. All the disciples going out were to enter each town exactly the same: no bag, no change of close, no money, no extra snacks… instead of being the “Fab 5” (as much as I love them), the disciples were to be the RECIPIENTS of grace, not just providers or suppliers of it. Life is not a one way street, and a person can and should both give and receive with our God-given humility. An empty bag reminded the disciples of that as they traveled.

But it’s not just “summer season” or just “the season after Pentecost.” We have also entered into another type of season…its Pride Month… but also a season of tragedy and lament, especially for the ELCA. On June 17th, 2015, five years ago, we remember and lament that a white man attended a Bible study at Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. He opened fire and killed nine people, including their pastor, Clementa C. Pinckney. Reverend Pinckney had graduated with his masters of divinity from an ELCA seminary with a friend of mine. And the shooter, Dylan Roof, a self-admitted white supremacist, had been brought up in an ELCA church.

Two days after June 17^th, on June 19^th is a holiday called Juneteenth. Before President Lincoln signed the emancipation Proclamation, it was legal for human beings to be enslaved on southern plantations, generating wealth for free for their white owners. However, in yet another perversion of justice, the news of their freedom took two and a half years to reach many of these enslaved human beings. They did not find out until June 19^th, 1865.

Tragically, every year (both before and since) has brought more violence around this time: The shooting at the Pulse in Orlando, being just one example. As I went back to all my sermons for the last five years, ever time I have mentioned Dylann Roof and the martyred Emmanuel 9, I have always mentioned some other tragic event that just happened. Why are we like this? Why do we have this legacy we have inherited,  where we say our baptismal vows out of one side of our mouths .....and raise up and teach Dylann Roofs with the other side?

We certainly have a long way to go in our own journeys as disciples following Jesus’s directions. And the way seems overwhelming at times. But once we listen to Jesus and follow his packing list, I think we may find the way to be a little easier. We have to do more unpacking than packing. So, we leave behind our fear, our hate, our apathy, our white privilege, our need to be needed. When we let go of those things, we’ll find that our hands are empty… and open. THIS is the type of “open carry” that Jesus approves of and calls us to duplicate.

WE CARRY OPEN HANDS, so that we can reach out to our neighbors in welcome: our black neighbor, our white neighbor, our police neighbor and our military neighbor, or Jewish and our Muslim neighbor. Our brothers and our sisters, transgender, straight, gay, rich, poor, citizen, and immigrant neighbor.

WE CARRY one another, so that we never have to carry our burdens alone. And through it all, GOD CARRIES US. Always. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Lament and New Languages on Pentecost

Link to the video of this sermon here: Pentecost.

May 31st, 2020

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.

About a week and a half ago on Facebook live I sat in my yard on a sunny, breezy day to tell the story of the Ascension of Jesus to heaven. It’s one of the more minor, underrated festivals of the Church year, but this year it actually brings a special meaning, if you think about the story as Jesus leaving to “work from home.” If you missed it, you can go back on our Facebook page and check it out. You may remember that the music I was using almost blew away, and my paper airplanes didn’t fly very far. I also read the story from the Spark Bible, which ended with the disciples excitedly explaining, “We have work to do! Let’s get going!” Only…. They didn’t, not exactly. At least, not yet.

In the Book of Acts version of the ascension, Jesus’ last words are a promise, that the Holy Spirit would arrive, and that with the power of the Holy Spirit, they would be witness for Jesus both near and far. And what we heard today from the book of Acts is the fruition of that promise – while the disciples were still huddled together, waiting for something unknown to happen, in world that was newly unrecognizable… the spirit arrived. And. How!

Wind.  Loud rushing sounds. Tongues of fire. Sudden language proficiency. So many words and so much noise. But even in all that noise and confusion, suddenly everything made sense, and the disciples were no longer scared – they were ready to face the world, to carry on the work that Jesus began.

To interpret these events for the bewildered disciples and bystanders, Peter quotes from the prophet Joel… “In these last days it will be as God declares, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh…” Portents and visions and scary signs like blood, fire, darkness, and mist. You see, the prophet Joel is the perfect prophet to guide us and help us make sense of this Pentecost moment in a pandemic, because Joel is well acquainted with disaster.

As Joel wrote, plague upon catastrophe was happening in the land – not unlike what is happening around us on a daily basis, right here, right now. Not just with Covid-19, but with literal plagues of locusts happening in Ethiopia, floods in Michigan (and also the continuing Flint Water Crisis), epic storms bearing down on India exacerbated by Climate change, riots and property damage caused by white supremacists in the streets of Minneapolis… and the never ending list of black and brown Americans Like George Floyd who have been murdered at the hands of the very people who are charged to protect them.

By this time, Pentecost 2020, it certainly feels like our world is falling apart around us.

Joel is a prophet familiar this feeling. Peter quotes from Joel Chapter 2, but right before this, the first chapter is Joel lamenting the state of the land, lamenting the death of innocent people, lamenting the suffering that is all around him. Then, Joel writes in hope that as a sign that God will not abandon God’s people – the spirit being poured out indiscriminately: on all genders, on all races and stations, on all ages and abilities.

The first Christians lived in that hope as well. But before they got the completion of that hope in Pentecost, the community travels through the trauma of Good Friday, the new and scary reality of the Resurrection, and the confusion of reorientation and reordering this new way of being. And then it seems like Jesus ups and leaves us just when we need him most!

However, Jesus promised that we would not be alone as he left – body and all – to go “work from home.” That promise is the Holy Spirit, the most “freaky” part of the trinity, which arrived in a completely unexpected way and bestowing gifts on Gods’ people to equip them for ministry in their time and place.

We certainly have a lot to lament, along with Joel. We have experienced the loss of what we knew – loss of jobs, loss of income, loss of movement and in person connection. It feels as though every week, every day, every hour, bring news of a new change, a new way that the world will be different. But one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit is language – the language to mourn, and the language to remember. To remember: all the ways that God has been faithful in the past. And the language to RE-Member – to put ourselves back together again when the world has ripped them apart.

On that original Pentecost Day, the birthday of the Christian Church, the disciples got to leave - no they were PUSHED OUT! – of the little room that they were gathered in. We may not have that luxury, but the Holy Spirit is still arriving in ways we do not expect, but perhaps is preparing us in just the very ways that are necessary right now.

This Pentecost morning you may not have woken up to the sound of a rushing windstorm, or with scorch mark on your pillow from a tongue of flame hanging out over your head. And over breakfast, you probably didn’t ask your family members to pass the eggs in Hungarian, Amharic, or Mandarin Chinese.

But you did tune into this worship service through little miracles that we might take for granted – through the unseen waves of the internet, translated into light and sound by strange metal boxes, or zapping through miles of phone cable right to your ear. Maybe in OUR Pentecost Moment, while it is necessary to stay in place, the Holy Spirit speaks through electricity and waves and social media and apps and keypads. … in order to reach out to people who are down in Buckingham Springs, all over Pennsylvania, and beyond. Miracles upon miracles, all at 10 on a Sunday morning.

I wasn’t planning on attending the Festival of Homiletics last week, as I did last year in person when it was hosted in Minneapolis. But this year, the organizers gave us a gift – free streaming live. Through this event, I heard about Joel’s lament. And how tragic, that just about one year after I was last in Minneapolis, we have so much more to lament – the senseless murder of George Floyd, the destruction of property by white supremacists for the purpose of violent escalation, and the continued suffering of our siblings of color.

The miracle of electricity and wifi and social media gives voice to the suffering, for those who care enough to hear and to act. And it also gives us voice too, in order to speak out, perhaps in a new language, with words we might not be used to saying: White Privilege. Systemic Racism. Black Lives Matter.

Equipped with this new language with the “tongues of flame” we have at our disposal, we cry out in lament, and we also speak out for justice. We speak out, here in Buckingham and Philadelphia, throughout the East Coast, to the ends of the Earth, and may we – with the help of the Holy Spirit – never stop -  not until justice for all is a reality, and God’s kingdom arrives where all can breathe. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's "Fuzzy Math"

9-24-17

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

Jesus is clearly terrible at math. But more on that in a minute.

Martin Luther is also terrible at math. One of the revolutionary thoughts that came out of his reformation writing is the idea that we are at the same time both sinner and saint. The fancy Latin way to say this is simil iustus et peccator.  It means at the same time saint AND sinner. Not transforming from one into the other like Jeckle and Hyde or the Incredible Hulk. We are both at the same time- one hundred percent sinner in desperate need of God’s grace. And one hundred percent saint saved by that grace in our baptisms. One hundred percent and one hundred percent.  

Once I was trying to explain this idea to a Catholic acquaintance of mine, who also happened to have a background in engineering. He looked at me like I had three heads and said dismissively, that’s FUZZY MATH!

It IS fuzzy math, my friends, but it is also God’s math. Its math that doesn’t make sense to us and the world that we live in. Here are some more examples of God’s fuzzy math, adapted from a post a friend of mine shared on Facebook:

1 + 1 + 1 = 1 (that’s the trinity, by the way – Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three in one and one in three at the same time)

God's love (minus) love that you give away = MORE of God’s love than what we had to start with. (Which we saw a moment ago with the invisible purple blob).

Your grief (plus) my grief, shared = less grief!

Jesus equals One whole human nature + one whole divine nature

This one is from two weeks ago:  where 2 or more are gathered (or “n”) always equals another guy is there or “n” + 1.

One sheep (greater than sign, or more important than) ninety-nine sheep. Also, one coin is greater than 9 coins.

And then from this week we get a couple of whopping examples of “Fuzzy Math.” Twelve hours of work equals one day's wages… but then one hour of work ALSO equals one day's wages! One twelfth equals to twelve-twelfths!  The last will be first, and the first will be last! This is certainly some “fuzzy math”!

Perhaps then it is not so surprising that Jesus used stories and not math as a teaching tool over the course of his ministry. These stories he told are called “parables,” which comes from a word that means “to cast alongside,” something thing to more easily learn about another. These parables of Jesus are often hard to swallow, because they resist easy comparisons. They are not really analogies or allegories, where one thing clearly stands in – or equals, if you will – another thing. It’s not a one-to-one relationship. They are vignettes and snippets of sorts combining elements of real life, more like the little cartoons and picture graphics that you might find shared all over Facebook. For better or worse, we are in for quite a few parables in the next few weeks.

Every so often this story will make the Facebook rounds that goes something like this, a social media parable if you will: “An anthropologist proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put together a basket filled with fruit, placed the basket under a tree, and said, “Whoever gets there first will win the fruit.” When he told them to run, they all took each other’s hands and ran together to the tree. Then they sat in a circle enjoying their treats. He asked why they would all go together when one of them could have won all the fruits for themselves? A young girl looked up at him and said, “UBUNTU, How can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?”’

Who really knows if this story really happened or not. The idea of UBUNTU, however, is very real. Ubuntu, very roughly translated, is “I am because we are.” I first learned about Ubuntu when it was the theme of the an amazing week I spent at the 2003 ELCA youth gathering in Atlanta, where Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a keynote speaker.  Desmond Tutu is of course well known for his reconciliation work in post-Apartheid South Africa.

He says this about Ubuntu: "Africans believe in something that is difficult to render in English. We call it ubuntu, botho. It means the essence of being human…. It speaks about humaneness, gentleness, hospitality, putting yourself out on behalf of others, being vulnerable…. It recognizes that my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together." (From the book The Words of Desmond Tutu)

“Ubuntu” is fuzzy math. “I” equals you, and me plus you equals more than we started with.  I can only, truly live a life full of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” only if MY NEIGHBOR can also do the same.

Unfortunately, though, we live in a culture that convinces us that scarcity is the name of the game. If you have more, that means that I have less. We are constantly looking at what our neighbor has and we lack. If another group gets something that we thought only belonged to us, we feel like something is being taken away. If we see our neighbor being blessed in some way, we are tempted to feel resentful and left out. Much like the workers who labored all day, as they complained against the others who worked fewer hours than they did, but got the same about of pay. Instead of being satisfied that the vineyard owner gave them a fair daily wage, they peeked over the shoulder of the other workers, and felt cheated.

There is even an acronym for this that is floating around social media: FOMO. Fear Of Missing Out – the anxiety that comes with missed opportunities that often happens when we are too occupied with what other people are doing. My favorite “example sentence” from Urban Dictionary that illustrates this is “the brothers had last-slice-FOMO as they stared at what was left of the pizza.”

The workers hired at dawn are like the brothers staring at the pizza - full and sated with their fair share, yet resenting missing out on the figurative “last slice” and envious when the “less-deserving” late comers get it.

God’s love cannot be divided up like pizza. “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” and “Mattering” to one another is not pizza either. This should not be a zero-sum game. Saying one person matters does not mean that other people matter less. It just means that some people are being treated as mattering less and we are bringing it to everyone’s attention, so that we can take corrective action together and right the injustices in our world.

Right now many people are treating some lives as less important, so until we live in a world where all lives are treated the same, we who have privilege and voice must speak up. Until we all ACT like ALL lives really DO matter, we HAVE to say, on behalf of our African American brothers and sisters, that Black Lives Matter.

We could say the same thing about the lives of trans youth who live in a safe house in Ewing New Jersey because they are not welcome in their own homes. Their lives matter. * at the writing of this I did not know about the Rainbow Room program right here in Doylestown.  

Or the lives of people who live in poverty and are homeless right here in Bucks County. Their lives matter.

Or the lives of those who are addicted and in recovery, working to get sober. Their lives matter.

Or the lives of those who have to choose between paying the bills and feeding their children. Or the lives of any vulnerable population that has been given less power in our society and world. Their lives matter.

These people are invisible in our society, but they matter to God, and they should matter to us too. At the end of the day, we all need to eat, whether we worked one hour or twelve. And we all get the same amount of God’s love – all of it – not that we have done anything to deserve it. We each get an infinite amount of God’s love, and there is still an infinite amount left over. T.W. Manson says, “There is no such thing as 1/12 of God’s love.” That’s God’s fuzzy math in a nutshell. And a different spin on UBUNTU too – I matter because WE ALL MATTER.

The world doesn’t want us to live by God’s math. And the sinner-ness in all of us doesn’t want to live by this math either. And yet, God has the saint part of us has this congregation neck-deep in hunger ministries – in a massive effort for Feed My Starving Children in October, in addition to the weekly and monthly things we do around here – Aid for Friends, Soup and Sandwich, the shopping cart in the narthex, the monthly Dine & Donate, which we do WHILE EATING and having fellowship with one another. Not to mention the ways we support Code Blue homelessness ministries and the ways we support Silver Springs, Hurricane relieve, and so much more. With our actions, we are saying “these people matter too.”

And our synod, the South East Synod of the ELCA, just send a thousand dollar check to eleven synods - around the ELCA that are facing natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires - for a total amount of eleven thousand dollars - with the promise of more to come in the future, with the help of generous congregations like Family of God.

Take a look around. The world’s math would have us believe that we are small in number, and so not worth much and can have no way to change our world for the better. But GOD’S math says otherwise. Amen.