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.

 

 

Baptism of our Lord and Ourselves

1-19-20

I did something a little bit differently for this sermon - I walked everyone though the baptism liturgy and talked about each part, much like I did last year for A - "Affirmation of Baptism" during our "Season of Baptism" during  the season Epiphany last year. 

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.

Last year, Series on baptism do you remember? B – Born Anew, A -Affirmed, P- EmPowered, T- Trust, I – Inspire, S – Serve, M- Multiply

Baptize infants/ kids vs. “Believer’s Baptism”

The reason we baptize babies - symbolizes that we do nothing to earn God’s love

Part 2: Rite of “Confirmation = Affirmation of Baptism (we can affirm this all the time, not just when we’re in the 9th or 10th grade)

P. 227 - Go through Baptism service 

Opening prayer - Big ticket words - Water/word/ death/ resurrection / saints

Presentation: Parents present, or if older, they can answer for themselves (consent)

Go through each promise

TO LIVE WITH (HIM/HER/THEM) AMONG GOD’S FAITHFUL PEOPLE, Be part of a faith community

(HIM/HER/THEM) TO THE WORD OF GOD AND THE HOLY SUPPER – bring them to church!

TEACH (HIM/HER/THEM) THE LORD’S PRAYER, THE CREED, AND THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, (Self-explanatory)

PLACE IN (HIS/HER/THEM) HANDS THE HOLY SCRIPTURES, AND NURTURE (HIM/HER) IN FAITH AND PRAYER, (pretty obvious)

SO THAT YOUR CHILD MAY LEARN AND TRUST GOD, PROCLAIM CHRIST THROUGH WORD AND DEED, CARE FOR OTHERS AND THE WORLD GOD MADE, AND WORK FOR JUSTICE AND PEACE. DO YOU PROMISE TO HELP YOUR CHILD GROW IN THE CHRISTIAN FAITH AND LIFE?

Parents promise, sponsors promise, then WE all as a community promise (we need all of us!!) You are all responsible for each other.

Profession of Faith = early rite of Exorcism. Greek “Eckballo” to cast out, like throw a ball (renounce = turn your back on, cast out)

If you were to add things to “turn our backs on,” what would they be? What specifically “defies” or “rebels” against God? What other things might you add to the list? I would offer adding:

-         Fear and scarcity thinking

-         Too much consuming / big retail

-         Institutional racism and individual discrimination

-         Sexism, gender-based violence, toxic masculinity

-         Unjust economic systems (to name a few)

Creed = What we turn toward/ what we DO profess (can’t just be against things)

Trinitarian Creed – father son Holy Spirit (3 “no,” 3 “yes”)

Thanksgiving at the Font

-         “Flood Prayer” written by Martin Luther

-         Reviews the “Highlights of “salvation history” – the “big times” that God has saved God’s people, ending with Jesus

Actual Baptism: “sprinkling”

Where did we get baptism? John the Baptist, who we have been hearing about a lot! but also the end of Matthew – Command from Jesus to baptize in the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit (the promise is that Jesus is with us until the end of the age)

Some traditions are (like ours) give the kid a white robe = made into a new person, and given new life in Christ, related to why pastors traditionally will wear a white robe, called an “Alb” (though it’s optional)

We say, “WE belong to Christ, in whom we have been baptized”

Prayer: same prayer that is later said over confirmands – Holy Spirit

Oil and Cross –oil from  old historical ritual from the tradition of anointing for special purpose - Kings, prophets, Jesus when he was on his way to Jerusalem

-         That cross may be invisible, but it never goes away! It’s always with us!

Candle: the light of Christ that is within us

-         Can and should light on our baptism anniversaries

-         Is where birthday candles come from

Congregational welcome! (Move on into service)

Martin Luther’s small catechism wrote “What gifts or benefits does baptism grant? It brings about forgiveness of sins, redeems from death and the devil, and give eternal salvation to all who believe it….”

An example of what it looks like to live our baptisms – MLK Jr.

Tomorrow we will affirm the life of MLK and all the gifts he had… working for justice and preaching good news to the oppressed – and to accept the cost of doing so, which for MLK was his life.

That was a walk through baptism, which is not just one day – it marks us our whole lives as belonging to God. Which is something of great value that we can take with us in our everyday lives, to walk through the world knowing that we are worthy and loved, and empowered to tell others that they are worthy and loved by God too. Thanks be to God, amen.

Jesus and Justice: Gracious Interruption

8-25-19

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

Every three years, almost a thousand delegates from across the country attend the Church Wide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran church in America, or just Churchwide assembly for short.  Two weeks ago, I traveled with over a dozen other voting members from our synod to spend 5 days freezing in air-conditioning doing the important business of the church.

Just for starters, that week we reelected Presiding Bishop Eaton, and elected a new secretary of the ECLA, Deacon Sue Rothermyer. We voted to support the World Council of Churches’ movement “Thursdays in Black” and approved the new social statement “Faith, Sexism, and Justice.” We issued a public apology to the African descent Lutherans and approved the commemoration June 17^th as a day of repentance and remembrance of the Emanuel 9. We committed to standing with refugees and immigrants, to affirming our ecumenical and interfaith partnerships. And this is not even half of what the ELCA accomplished that week.

It was such an intense week, that it was a very good thing that afterward I took some vacation to honor the 3^rd commandment.  How many of you remember what the third commandment is? Hint – it’s not a “Shall Not!” “Remember the …. Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” According to our small Catechism, Martin Luther explains, “We are to fear and love God so that we do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly learn from it.”

Just as God rested on the 7^th day of creation, we as God’s people need a day of rest. All in God’s creation were commanded to embrace our limitation and be reminded that God created us for life, not for exhaustion. The Sabbath day is a gift, freely and lovingly given for our benefit.

But, what do we humans too often do with things that are free gifts from God? We try to control them, regulate them, create a lot of rules around how to properly exercise this gift. The Sabbath day was no expectation. Enter Jesus, teacher, preacher, and gracious interrupter.

You may remember Jesus’s controversial first sermon, where he proclaimed that through him, God would release the captives, give sight to the blind, and let the oppressed go free. That one was not exactly well received, but here Jesus is again, teaching in the synagogue. We will never know what Jesus was preaching on this particular day, because he stops, mid sermon, for someone in immediate need of that freedom and release.

That woman was literally invisible. Bent over double for as many years as it takes a kindergartner to graduate from high school. She was unable to stand up straight, unable to see and participate in the world around her, in a world where she was already mostly invisible for being a woman.

Perhaps you too have walked into worship feeling much like this woman – feeling physically or emotionally bound and bent over by things in your lives that are heavy and hard to bear. Perhaps you too, have felt unseen and invisible to those around you

When Jesus sees this woman, he stops everything. Her healing cannot even wait until the end of the sabbath day, or even till the end of his sermon! He has to heal her RIGHT NOW….and in doing so, Jesus broke the rules.

The leader of the synagogue was understandably upset that the worship service was being disrupted. These religious leaders were doing their very best to preserve these expressions of their faith in a world that worked against them at every turn, trying to be faithful to the ways that their ancestors worshiped God in the past during a time they were under heavy oppression themselves.

So when the bent over woman became UN-bent, this synagogue leader became BENT out of SHAPE. He could not see that when one of us is bent over, we all are. None of us is free until we all are.

 

Today is an anniversary that we would all much rather forget. Four hundred years ago, in late August, 1619, the first slaves were brought to the shores of what would become the United States of America, Twenty people, stolen from their families and homes from what is modern Angola, arrived to be the first sold into chattel slavery.

Though the emancipation proclamation was signed in 1863, the legacy of slavery is still with us today. From the racial wealth gap to arrest and sentencing disparities, from discrimination in housing, job searches, red-lining, the criminal justice system, banking, and education, African Americans face structural and personal obstacles that I as someone of European Descent do not face. Even if my European ancestors never owned slaves, I still benefit from the system and legacy of slavery…. Including in our own religion and denomination. This year, the ELCA issued a public apology to Lutherans of African descent, which was read during the most recent churchwide assembly. While it is incomplete and imperfect, it is a first step in recognizing the complex relationship between structural racism and the ELCA. It is the first step toward honesty and freedom for all Lutherans, white and persons of color.

One of the many books I picked up at the Churchwide assembly is “Luther’s Small Catechism with African Descent Reflections." After Luther’s explanation of the 3^rd commandment, we read that the sabbath “is the first fair labor law” and “is a day of protest against the servitude of work and the worship of money….”  Keeping the sabbath “is about lives that are captured by a God who keeps faith with us and who keeps on intruding graciously into our lives.” (p. 17)

That gracious intruder is of course Jesus. If you recall, Jesus graciously intrudes from birth…. Truly from BEFORE birth, when an angel intrudes on Mary to tell her she would bear a son. And again, AT his birth, when the heavenly host interrupted some shepherds on the night shift. And all during his life, Jesus graciously intrudes, again and again, shaking up our rules and assumptions about God. Until the rule-makers decided they had had enough with this rule breaker troublemaker.

But Jesus wasn’t done graciously intruding. Jesus interrupted death. He intruded on the funeral preparations of the women at the tomb. He appeared incognito and joined the two travelers walking to Emmaus, and interrupted their dinner as he revealed himself in the breaking of the bread.

And his followers have continued to graciously intrude on Jesus’ behalf, because we are called follow Jesus’ example, to raise up the bent over, see the unseen. To break the rules that need to be broken…  and then to rejoice, like the bent over woman, when together we have been set free.

“Ought not this woman, “Jesus asks, “a beloved Child of God, bound for 18 long years, be set free from this bondage on this sabbath day?”

Yes, Lord, yes! Justice can’t wait any more. 18 years is too long. 400 years is too long. Now is the time. Freedom happens now.

We – as Jesus followers, and co-workers in the kingdom - are called to graciously intrude on the processes of evil, sin, and death at work in the world. Sometimes we are just too polite for our own good, and too worried that this intruding grace will be seen as a disrupting disturbance. And you are right… it IS! It is as disrupting as looking up the first time in 18 years. 

It is as disrupting as an apology 400 years in the making. It is as disrupting as hundreds of women clergy from age 24 to 104 processing into worship to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of women’s ordination, the 40^th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman of color in the ELCA, and the 10^th anniversary of the ordination of LGBTQIA+ clergy with no restrictions. It is as disruption as a thousand Lutherans march to local ICE headquarters, or a thousand Lutherans wearing black to stand in solidarity with victims and survivors of gender-based violence, a thousand Lutheran lighting a candle to mourn the senseless gun violence run rampant in this country. It is as disruptive as a “bold little nobody monk” in Germany nailing some theses to a church door. It is as graciously disruptive as a Sunday morning, as an empty tomb, as water, bread, and wine.

It is as disruptive as freedom itself.

Justice can’t wait any more. Now is the time. This is the day to be set free – that YOU are set free - from bondage. YOU are set free... and you can free others. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Processing into worship on Friday of the ELCA Churchwide assembly 

Everyone Knows a Jericho Road

7-14-19

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

If you haven’t noticed by now, this past week, over thirty kids from all over the community blasted off to Mars for an adventure in learning about all the awesome power of God in our lives. Each day had a “power up word” and a Bible story - and imagine my excitement when we got to Wednesday’s word – kindness, and Wednesday’ story – The Good Samaritan.

This parable is perhaps one of Jesus’ best known and best loved stories… but, much like the Garden of Eden and Noah’s Ark it’s not really a story to tell children. Jesus tells this story to a lawyer who wants to figure out the minimum “amount of work” for loving your neighbor as yourself.

 

In the story itself, we have two high-status members of Jewish society, the priest and the Levite, encountering a man so injured to appear on death’s door. Their rational for not helping this man was based on their strict observance of the Law of Moses, which prohibited them from touching the bodies of dead people. If they stopped to help, and he WAS dead, neither of them would be able to perform their duties. Logic told them not to take that chance, so they passed by on the other side.

The Samaritan, on the other hand, was from a shunned ethnic group, a group considered “mixed” from the long-ago mingling of Israelite and non-Israelite families, which settled in a place called Samaria… a place no one went if they could help it. Samaria also happened to be the only way to get to Jericho. This was one of the most dangerous 17 miles of that existed…so much so it has been called the Red Road or the Blood Road. And yet, it is this Samaritan, who live near this road, who helps the injured man, who goes about and beyond the call of duty in loving his neighbor as himself.

During seminary, I was on my internship year as a student pastor in a town in MN, about the size of Easton, PA. Two main industries powered the economy: Agriculture with the help if migrant workers from central America, and a company called Federated Insurance. When I preached on this text, I thought it would be a brilliant idea to recast the story, and so this is how I told it:

“A man was traveling on the highway to Minneapolis when his car blew a tire. A pastor, traveling in the same direction, sees the man pull over, breaks for a moment, but then keeps going. This pastor is on her way to preside over a wedding in Minneapolis and is already running late. Next, a Federated executive drove by. He too sees the man pulled over, struggling to change his tie, and considers stopping. However, the executive is on his way to the airport to fly to a meeting that might lead to a big promotion, so he keeps going.

A rusty sedan pulls over next to the man. Out time a very obviously pregnant Hispanic woman, with three curious children looking on from the backseat. In heavily broken English, she says that her uncle owns a tow truck company just beyond the next exit. The uncle arrives 5 minutes later, tows the man’s car to a repair place, and refuses payment when the man offers him $200.”

The week after I preached that sermon, a member of my internship committee was chatting with me in my office. He offered, what he thought, some very helpful feedback: he warned me to be more mindful about who I used in my stories and what kind of example they were being used for. He told me what I already knew - that most of the people in this town are employed by Federated, including here at the church. Apparently, ‘Some people’ were upset and offended by how I talked about Federated, and he was sure I would not make that error again.

What I didn’t tell him was that I knew exactly what I was doing, and that conversation told me I had been exactly right on the money with my examples.

The truth is, every town and city in the United States has their own version of this story. We all have our own version of Priests, Levites, Jericho roads, Samarias, and Samaritans. The truth is, Jesus’s listeners were terribly offended by his story, and if Jesus would have had an office and an internship committee, he would have heard some “helpful advice” about it too. And the truth is, if we ourselves are not terrible offended by it, we’re not reading it right.

Traci Blackmon, a pastor in Ferguson, preached on this text at the Festival of Homiletics, and she told the story from the prospect of the Jericho Road. We all know a Jericho Road, she told us, and most of them have been renamed “Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.” On Jericho Road, you don’t park on the street, and you clutch your purse…. schools are underfunded, hospitals are understaffed, services are hard to find, and life expectancy is shorter. Pastor Blackmon told us there are thirty-three thousand zip codes in America. Sixty-six hundred zip codes are home to eighty percent of the children living in poverty. Twenty percent of the zip codes are home to eighty percent of the kids in poverty. These are the places Jericho Road runs through, in every city in the United States.

The Jericho Road runs through all those parts of Philadelphia that have “changed over the years,” and we all know exactly what is meant by that phrase. It means that black and brown people live in those parts now because we certainly won’t welcome them here in the suburbs. So, they are stuck by poverty and prejudice, trapped living along the Jericho Road, because of things like redlining, white privilege, and institutional racism.

For too long the church has walked by on the other side of the Jericho road, avoiding the wounded bodies of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Too long have we locked our car doors and sped through the Jericho Road, and instead ask ourselves why we ran away and turned our backs on our local Samarias.

Too long have we looked askance at the 17 miles of Jericho Road…. The 17 miles we want to build a wall on to keep immigrants out. The 17 church bullies who have harassed their female pastors this last week. 17 rooms in the nursing home with dementia patients who have no one to visit them. 17 buildings containing children on the border without parents or toothbrushes.

When we ignore the Jericho Road, we are no better than the robbers who beat up the man and left him to die in the first place.

I think Mr. Rogers, of the beloved children’s show Mr. Rogers Neighborhood says it best: “We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It’s easy to say, ‘It’s not my child, not my community… not my problem.’ Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes.”

The good news is that this is a parable, a story Jesus told, and so we get to change the ending… IF we really want to. Jesus invites us into the story. Jesus is in the ditch with us when that’s where we are… but Jesus also calls us to GET INTO the ditch when that’s where his beloved children are. And maybe next time, we can prevent our fellow human beings and fellow children of God from ending up bleeding in the ditch in the first place.  There is still time… there is always time… to prevent another person form falling victim to the Jericho Road.

The Samaritan claimed what little power he had to take care of someone in need, even though he himself probably did not have the resources to spare to spend it on medical care of someone else. 

All week with the kids from the community who joined us for VBS, we talked about learning to trust God’s power at work in us. ALL of us!

What are we thinking??? 

What a dangerous message to be telling powerless children! That they could use the power that God has given them to change the world…. But what if they ACTUALLY believed it? 

And what if we actually believed it? What if we harnessed the power that God has given us… faith, boldness, kindness, thankfulness, and hope…. To quote the theme song for the week: “We are on a mission, we have seen a vision, this is where the journey starts.” And the truth is… if we don’t to it, thank goodness for these kids. Because they will. Thanks be to God. Amen.

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.

Baptism and Betty Rendón

5-26-19

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.

If you haven’t already noticed by now, today’s theme is baptism, Baptism, Baptism!!!! All access baptism, all baptism, all the time!!

And you might have noticed that all through the Easter Season, we have begun each service at the font, with a thanksgiving for baptism. And THIS particular service is just FULL of baptism, between our readings for this morning, not to mention and ACTUAL BAPTISM… and not just ONE but TWO new members of the Family of God both here at this church and becoming our siblings in Christ in the sacrament of Holy Baptism!

The sacraments are where the God’s presence intersect our lives. We Lutherans have …. How many sacraments? (Two) Excellent! We “only” have two because our “Recipe” for a sacrament has two parts: a word or promise from Jesus, and a physical item. Do you remember what the other sacrament we celebrate is? (Holy Communion) That’s right! And for Holy Communion, Jesus said this IS my body and blood, given for you… and the physical item is …. (Bread and Wine). For baptism, Jesus said in Matthew, Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them…. And I will be with you.” And the physical item is…. (water) of course.

Holy Communion is what sustains us on this, often difficult, journey of our Christian life… which all begins at Baptism, the welcome into God’s family, into the life Christian community, as we heard with the story of Lydia.

 I love this story, and not just because we happen to share the same name. Lydia is an extraordinary woman. In some footnotes of history, she is known as “the first European convert” because of where she lived… but she SHOULD be known for so much more. We are limited by what the text tells us about her… but even these few details make her amazing. She was definitely a worshiper of God, likely a Macedonian Greek living in Roman town, which already makes her unusual. She ran her own business in purple cloth, a commodity so difficult and expensive to make that only the very rich could afford it.

In charge of her household, she took the initiative to invite Paul and Silas into her home, after “her” entire household had been baptized. This would have included extended family – aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and grandkids …. also, servants, slaves, and perhaps some of her employees. There is even a chance that Lydia may have been a slave herself at one point in her life. In the ancient world, the common practice was to name your slaves after their country of origin, and Lydia was actually a kingdom in Western Asian Minor, part of modern Turkey.

We can’t know for sure, but it still neat to think about the journey of this faithful women, perhaps from slave to business owner to worshiper of God to baptized follower of Jesus… and eventually the home base of the Christian church in her region which helped to launch the church in Philippi… the community that Paul wrote to in his letter to the Philippians. We have Philippians because of Lydia! All because she – an outsider, prayed next to a river, listened to a preacher, and was baptized.

In baptism, live are forever changed – we are healed, we are made whole, and we become part of the family of God…. No matter what age, social standing, gender identity or sexual orientation, citizenship status, or credit score. All are welcome in the waters of baptism.

This welcoming has just been made real to both Dawn and Stephen this morning, as they were welcomed to THIS Family of God, part of the family of God of all times and in all places. We made promises to walk with them in their baptismal journeys, until, like Kyle in a few weeks, they can claim their faith as their own. But ultimately, we are reminded, every time we see water, of all the ways we are given life… Luther suggests that we recall our baptisms every time we wash our face. And we also remember the promises that GOD has made to US. Not a promise that, once we are baptized, our lives will become all daisies and unicorns. But a promise that we will never have to live this baptismal calling alone.

I want to tell you about a Lutheran Pastor who has been in the news lately, whose life has been very difficult in the last few days and is about to get worse. Pastor Betty Rendón, used to work part-time at Emaus Lutheran Church in Racine, Wisconsin, until she was arrested by ICE on May 8^th.  She fled from Colombia to the US 15 years ago because of violence in her neighborhood and earned her M.Div in Chicago and was appointed by the Bishop of Milwaukee to serve church in Wisconsin until she could become a legal resident, at which point she could be ordained in the ELCA. She, her husband, her daughter, and her granddaughter were dragged from their home in the early hours, still in their pajamas, and later, because the ICE officers failed to secure her home, her house was burglarized. Betty is scheduled to be deported back to Colombia this upcoming week.  

But she is not alone. Pastors and parishioners have been praying for her, calling there representatives on her behalf, and holding vigil at the detention center she is being held at. And her bishop, Paul Erikson, and our presiding Bishop, Elizabeth Eaton have spoken out on her behalf. But it might not be enough to stir the right people to act rightly. But we have to try, and we wait to see if what we have done has been enough. Unfortunately, Betty has had no contact with the outside world, not knowing that she is being fought for and prayed for, and she probably feels completely alone, like the man from our Gospel reading.

This man, waiting, imprisoned by his illness, alone, and friendless, did not expect a man to come along and to ask him an extremely impertinent question – do you want to be made well? OF COURSE, he wants to be made well! He just can’t GET to the healing…. And so, the healing comes to HIM. Jesus tells him to pick up his mat and walk…. And he DOES. No magical waters required.

Another man was also told by Jesus to “take up his mat and walk,” as described in a sermon by Otis Moss III, which I heard at the Festival of Homiletics in Minnesota over a week ago. Pastor Moss reminded us of how important our mats are in the healing process – in both stories the men are healed, but they are commanded to carry their mats along with them – the mats become a reminder – a marker - of who they once were, how far they have come, and who is the one who has done the healing.

Of course, we don’t have physical mats to carry around, as these healed men did. But we do carry a mark, an unseen one, that remains with us after our baptisms to remind us of our identities as baptized and beloved children of God. After Dawn and Stephen were baptized, I drew the sign of the cross on their foreheads, and forever they will be marked as belonging to God. That mark will always be there, and it is still on YOUR foreheads too.  And it will change you forever, like it changed the course of Lydia’s life…. And the lives of those who were baptized as a result of her legacy of hospitality.

We are a people who go through our days both marked by the cross, and still carrying our mats. We are healed, but not made perfect, beloved, but we will still have to navigate the complications of this world. But our baptism mean that we will navigate our daily realities differently. Like the healed man, we carry our mats proudly, unashamed of letting others know that we need God’s help sometimes… dare I say it, even TELLING people about our encounters with Jesus! I like to think that carrying our own mats also gives us compassion to help others carry their own.

And like Lydia, we open our homes and our lives and our buildings and maybe even our country to help further spread this Jesus movement, open to where the Spirit might be leading. So that no one is made to feel abandoned and alone.

I can’t wait to see where God takes Stephen and Dawn as they start their baptismal journeys. But no matter what, how easy or how hard, we all will be with them, and helping them along the way. And God is with us too. Thanks be to God. Amen.

I is for Inspired to Talk about Things We Don't Normally Talk About In Church.

Content warning: This sermon contains references to sex, sexual violence, abortion, and purity culture. 

Sermon 2-10-19

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.

The good news is that we are over half way through our season of baptism! We’ve covered a lot of ground so far, so let’s do a quick review of all the letters we’ve done:

B = Born anew, A = Affirmed, P = EmPowered, T = Trust.

Today is… Inspired. I thought of the word Inspired way before I read Rachel Held Even’s great new book about the Bible by the verysame name. I will be using it heavily during Lent for our “Eat, Pray, Learn” series on the Bible every Thursday night. In her book, Evans writes about the Bible’s inception –it did not fall out of the sky in perfectly complete English. The Bible was actually written by imperfect people over a period of centuries, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Bible is inspired, or “pneustros”, a Greek word meaning “God breathed.”

Evens explains, “Inspiration….  is rooted in the imagery of divine breath, the eternal rhythm of inhale and exhale… Inspiration is not some disembodied ethereal voice dictating words or notes…. It’s a collaborative process… [and] God is still breathing. The Bible is both inspired and inspiring.” (xxiii)

In the beginning, God soared on the wind over the raging waters of creation… and breathed creation into being by saying the words, “let there be life…” At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended upon the first followers of Jesus in a great rush of wind and mysterious tongues of flame. Jesus the son of God came to earth as a person with a body – with lungs, a windpipe, and a diaphragm, and used his breath to tell people the good news, teach about the kingdom of God, to cast out demons, and to heal.

When God breathes and speaks… stuff happens. That’s inspiration… IN – SPIRE… IN – SPIRIT…. The spirit of God dwells in us, gives us life, and creation responds.

Imagine, at that lakeshore, Peter and his fellow fishermen huffing and puffing, out of breath as they ended a long and unproductive night of fishing – exhausted – literally with their breath drained out. Along comes Jesus, who tells them to go into the deep waters and try again. They do, somewhat reluctantly, but then are shocked at the size of their catch – so big, their boat starts to sink from the weight of all that fish!

At this miracle before their very eyes, Peter makes a correct assumption – this man must be from God. When Jesus commands, stuff happens. But this realization terrifies Peter. Jesus is holy. Peter is not. Sacred does not mix with profane. Pure does not mix with impure. Jesus should not be hanging out with Peter, or Jesus will get tarnished by association. Surely, this man of God wants nothing to do with a sinner like Peter.

This makes me wonder – what kind of sinner was Peter? We are given exactly zero details. Was he a gambler, did he drink to much, was he a compulsive liar, did he steal, was he a murderer? We have no idea.

And yet, just a few chapters later, in Luke chapter 7, we meet another person who is ALSO deeply regretful of her past sins, like Peter. Jesus is at a dinner party, and a woman described as “living a sinful life” prostrates herself at Jesus’ feet, sobbing. The hosts of the party are aghast. They agree with Peter – Jesus should not hang out with “sinful” people!

I would like to point out that nothing is said about the woman’s sin either. And yet, in many commentaries and sermons throughout the centuries, this WOMAN was describes as having a sinful SEXUAL past, and Peter is not saddled with this stigma AT ALL. That is a big problem… and says more about US than it does about Peter or this woman.

If you follow the news, you may have noticed that Lutheran Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber has made the news again. She just published a book called Shameless: A SexualReformation, where she lays out a new kind of sexual ethic within Christianity, based on grace, that is inspired by Luther himself. If each one of us was created with a body that is infused by the breath of God, our bodies are created good. Her manifesto challenges the prevailing notion that sex is a dangerous and terrible thing outside of heterosexual marriage, but WITHIN THAT TINY CORRAL it’s great!! But the experience of many faithful Christians tells us this is a one-size-fits all approach does severe damage to those who do not fit this mold.

Uncomfortable yet? Bolz-Weber takes on all kinds of topics in her book we don’t normally talk about in the church – sex, abortion, pleasure, pastors who are transgender, birth control, and body-shaming. But her book is also filled with things that we DO talk about in church… stewardship, holiness, purity, grace, creation, sin, and the Bible. She is very clear on one point though: purity is not the same as holiness, and for two long the church has conflated the two.

She reminds us that purity is the separation FROM something, and there is no way that any kind of purity system makes us holy and worthy of God’s love. Not the purity codes of Leviticus, nor the purity codes of books like“I Kissed Dating Goodbye” and the “True Love Waits” movement. Purity of any kind does not make us Holy… Jesus does. Over and over again Jesus is extending grace and holiness into places and to people that others deem to be “impure.”

Because the truth is, no one is really “pure” in any form. We have all been tainted in some way or another by the sin and brokenness and realness of the world. Life is complicated – a mixture of both good and bad, sin and holiness, imperfect people doing the will of a perfect God to the best of their ability.

But when institutions perpetuate to vulnerable people that certain actions are beyond even God’s redemption, this flies in the face of who our God has revealed Godself to be.

You may have heard a couple of other things in the news lately. The state of New York recently passed a law to decriminalize legal abortions after 24 weeks performed by medical professionals when it has been determined that either the woman’s life is in imminent danger, or the fetus has no chance of survival beyond birth. 24 weeks is the “magic number” because that is the point in a woman’s pregnancy that a fetus can likely physically live outside of the womb. This has been a struggle for many Christians, because of our mandate in the 10 commandments, “though shalt not murder.” Which seems self-explanatory.  As Luther explains: “We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life’s needs.” 

But life is complex, and so is the magic moment of when life begins. When is that, exactly? At conception? At 24 weeks when the fetus is “viable,” .... when a fetus can feel pain?  The Bible is not actually clear on this. In fact, In the ancient rabbinic tradition, life begins at birth, when a baby takes his or her first breath. That is when they believed that the soul entered the body. And before 1968, that is when conservative evangelical Christians agrees. It’s not until after the 1960s that the Pro-life movement even got started.

Nadia Bolz-Weber in her book writes about her own experience with abortion. According to her: “There are so many varied experiences of conception and pregnancy. Some of us long to conceive and never do; some of us have babies we did not want, some of us miscarried babies we desperately wanted…. There are many ways to view the issue and remain faithful.” 

But I think that everyone can agree on one thing, related to something ELSE that has just come up in the news: when a religious institution looks the other way as their leaders take advantage of female adherents and then force them to have abortions, and yet single-mindedly promotes Pro-life as one of its most cherished tenants, this is a level of hypocrisy that Jesus would have no problem vocally opposing – loudly and vehemently.

Nadia writes: “Jesus kept violating the boundaries of decency to get to the people on the other side of that boundary, who had been wounded by it….. the motherless, the sex workers, the victims, and the victimizers.”… and here I would add, fishermen. Jesus “cared about real holiness, the connection between the human and divine, the unity of sinners, the coming together of that which was formerly set apart.” (28)

In our baptisms, we are both set apart for the holy calling of God’s kingdom, and united with our fellow saints and sinners in living out this calling in a complicated world. The breath of God is present in each of us, enlivening and inspiring us. This cannot be diminished or removed, no matter how hard our fellow humans try. Thanks be to God. Amen.