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 

"What Does It Mean for Women to Proclaim the Gospel?" ELCA CWA 2019

"What does it mean for women to proclaim the gospel?"

I was asked to be one of three speaks at the banquet celebrating the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women, 40th anniversary for women of color, and 10th for LGBTQIA+ no barriers at the 2019 ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Milwaukee. I spoke first, with the prompt given above.  Sadly, this event was not live-streamed. 

As many wiser women before me have said – none of us would be here, proclaiming the Gospel, WITHOUT women. Without women, there would be neither filled womb nor witnesses at the empty tomb. Women paved the way for Jesus’s ministry with their feet, their money, and with their voices.  Many along the way have tried to silence those voices, both then and now, by telling us we are not good enough or smart enough or tough enough to hack it out there in ministry. But we don’t listen. We won’t be silent.

When the preaching contest for the Lutheran World Federation Assembly went live, I could have listened to the other voices out there, saying: I would never be good enough to actually be chosen. I didn’t listen, and I entered anyway. Because I knew that if I really believed that a woman should be up in that pulpit, I had to put some skin in the game. I had to have some faith that God was calling a woman to do it, and that woman might be me. And my voice seemed more important than ever, once I arrived at that Assembly of global Lutherans, because almost a fifth of the member churches of the Lutheran World federation still do not allow women to proclaim from the pulpit. But. I. Did. And I did it because of all of my women mentors who have blazed the trail ahead of me and nurtured me, and I did it for all the women who will come after. 

When a woman preaches the gospel, God is not calling her DESPITE her higher-pitched voice… but BECAUSE HER voice – whatever octave - NEEDS to be heard. When a woman preaches the Gospel, God is not using her regardless of the chance that it might be “that time of the month” …. But BECAUSE all blood is holy is the source of all life, including hers. When a woman preaches the Gospel, God is not sending her in SPITE of what people might be saying about her ambition or anger or “bossy-ness” but BECAUSE she is passionate for justice, has true leadership qualities, and gets stuff done.

We all know why Jesus REALLY came as a man – not because of something inherently male in the perfect nature of God, but because of something imperfect in how we treat one another. Every time a woman proclaims, she is affirming God’s desire to smash the patriarchy.

When a woman proclaims the Gospel… she puts herself on the line, so that little girls and little boys Can see the face of God through her and hear the love of God through her. When a woman proclaims the Gospel, she breaks the stained-glass ceiling, also pulls to freedom all the women coming after her. When a woman proclaims the gospel, her words can live on in the mouths of other women preachers – and men preachers too.

Someday the sun will rise on a Sunday morning with no more “firsts” to overcome, no more stained-glass ceilings to break - We’re not there yet. But every woman who preaches brings us one day closer. Thanks be to God! 

Bigger isn't Better

8-4-19

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.

Currently I’m addicted to a show on Netflix called “Living Mortgage Free.” Doesn’t that sound nice? People go to some pretty creative lengths to either pay off their mortgages quickly, or forgo living with a mortgage altogether…… and often it involved a large dose of downsizing. One woman converted an old rusty barge into a nice one-person flat (this is a British show, by the way). Another couple got creative with a two shipping containers and reclaimed wood, and still another family completely gutted a double-decker bus to create the perfect handicap-accessible home on a small budget.

While most of the families featured in “Living Mortgage Free” are choosing to scale back, pare down, and simplify, this farmer in the story that Jesus tells SUPER-SIZING. The land he owns is producing the bumper crop to end all bumper crop, and his current barns are filled to the brim. So, he consulted himself – this guy seems to talk to himself a lot! – and came up with a great idea! Built bigger barns! Store the bumper crop away, save it for another day. What a great plan.

Except that this farmer forgot about something. He seemed to forget the rest of that saying we all know… you know, the one that goes, “Eat, drink, and be merry for….. (Tomorrow we die.)” And that’s exactly what happens. God comes to visit him in the night, not necessary to TAKE the life of this man… but to inform him of his own death that very night.

This is a parable of warning. Don’t be like the farmer. But… I think many of us would like to be in the farmer’s shoes… except for the end, of course. We would love to see a windfall come our way, perhaps in the form of a tax refund, a raise, or a Christmas bonus, and build “bigger barns” in the form of the newest iPhone or smart phone gadget, the latest Fitbit or video game system… Or a larger house in order to fit all of our stuff and our kids’ stuff…..  or a bigger garage, because we can’t even fit our car in there anymore….. or paying the monthly fee for one of those new storage units that are being built just down the road on 611.

But more and more, I think, our “bigger barns” look like your innocent-looking, common, everyday credit card. Because nowadays we don’t even have wait for that windfall to come in before building bigger barns. Everything around us tells us to spend, spend, spend…”just pay the minimum”…  

It wants you to think they’re helping you. But they are actually digging you a hole. Finance charges and high interest rates, digging deeper and deeper into debt. Our credit score tanks, and the collection agencies come calling, and suddenly our lives become bound to our stuff, to this little piece of plastic, stick in this hole. And this hole just so happens to be six feet deep. Which is exactly where that farmer ended up finding himself.

This farmer was on top of the world, with everything going for him, and so he forgot all about God. He only consults with himself, is only concerned with himself and his own future comfort. He made plans to secure his future without any reference to God… or to other people. He was only rich toward himself. And so, his fate became “death by stuffication.”

This farmer could be a poster child of Luther’s definition of sin- to gaze at one’s belly-button, to be curved in on oneself, until that becomes all we can see, so that we not only miss out on sharing God’s gifts with others, but completely miss the fact that all things come from God in the first place.

Life is not about our belongings and what inheritance is “due” to us, Jesus said to crowd. Instead, life is about WHO we belong TO. We belong to God, who claimed us in our baptisms as beloved children…all siblings in the family of God, who gave us a peek of our true inheritance when Jesus defeated death and was raised from the tomb on the third day.

Our own money, our “real” money, ironically enough, constantly reminds us, “In God we trust.” Not in money. Not in stuff. Not in bigger barns. Not is securing our own future. But we trust in God. Fear, love, AND trust, to be exact, at least according to Luther’s explanation of the first commandment. And God does not demand our life in an unfillable hole of debt and death. God is the source of all life, the giver of OUR lives and all that we have.

I know a little girl who once was deeply passionate about saving her pennies for the St. Jude’s children’s hospital, so when she had her first communion, instead of buying her a gift, I made a donation to St. Jude’s in her name, and she was thrilled.  We grownups forget, as the farmer forgot, the message you sometimes see floating around Facebook the saying you might have heard: “If you are more fortunate than others, it is better to build a longer table than a taller fence.” Or, as Jesus might have added, it is better to build a longer table than to build bigger barns.

As always, Jesus leaves us with some hard things to think about – how we downsize or divest our barns that block our generosity - and instead elongate our tables for welcome and hospitality. We as a nation and we as the people of God have a long way yet to go in the realm of table-building and inclusion instead of fence building.

In the case of the church, our windfall bumper crop was a prominent but unearned place in cultural suburban fabric, balanced budgets and overpopulated Sunday Schools. And what did many churches do in the face of such abundance? We built bigger barns, in the form of education wings and sanctuary expansions, perhaps to the detriment of expanding our “welcome table.”

After all, that’s what you do when the family of God grows, when the building is full… get a bigger building, right? Only we know all too well that growth is not linear or guaranteed. As a result, we, like many churches, are far from “living mortgage free” - burdened under the weight of maintenance projects to keep the building going, draining our time, energy, and our ministry resources…. All so our building can stand mostly unused much of the week. In good faith, we added to the Church Building, but perhaps neglected to add to the CHURCH BODY - the body of Christ. Big difference.

And even pastors make this mistake. Nearly every week at our pastors’ Bible study, the dean of our conference catches at least one of us saying “Church” when we really mean “the church building.” Every time, he reminds us there is a big different between the church – the body of Christ, the people, and the church campus – the location, the building.

As the ELCA we are about to illustrate that difference between church building and church Body, by gathering as voting members on the city of Milwaukee for a week of BEING the church. The theme for our week is “We are Church.” Not a in church building, but church together in our diversity of languages and cultures. Who just all happen to be hanging out in my home state for a week, doing important business of the church. We’ll do more than pass budgets, hear reports, and make amendments to amendments. We’ll do more than lament the state of our buildings. We’ll celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the ordination of women, the 40^th anniversary of the ordination of women of color, and the 10^th anniversary of the ordination of LGBTQ pastor in partnered relationships. We will eat together and have hard conversations together. We will worship together and break bread together. And then we’ll come back home, but we’ll be reminded that we are not in this alone.

THAT’S what it means when we say, WE are church. We are church who expands our tables and not our buildings. We are church who expands our hearts and open our hands. We are church, free despite our mortgage. We are church, a body not a building. Thanks be to God. Amen.

(Children's sermon: cards from game IN A PICKLE, with a "Barn" card)

Lord's Prayer, Our Prayer

7-28-19

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.

When I was a kid, I remember reading a very special book of prayers. I turned to this book over and over again, because they were prayers written on a wide variety of topics, in a wise and profound, but also brief way. This book was not written by Martin Luther or Mother Teresa or Mr. Rogers…. It was written by kids. Some of these prayers are funny and very honest:

“Dear God, are you really invisible, or is that just a trick?”

“Dear God, Thank you for the baby brother, but what I wanted was a puppy.”

“Dear God, I think the stapler is one of your greatest inventions.”

Some of these kids also have some very serious things to say to God. One little girl wrote:

“Dear God, I bet it is very hard for you to love everybody in the whole world. There are only 4 people in my family and I can never do it.”

I wish I could tell this girl that this is hard for everybody, in our own families and in the whole world too, as we have seen all too often the tragic consequences of not loving one another in the news lately.

And lastly, this is my personal favorite prayer from this book:

“Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying.”

Our theme for today, if you haven’t noticed, is prayer. And hopefully you also recognized parts of the prayer that Jesus teaches his disciples. It is, of course, a version of what we know of as “The Lord’s Prayer.” This is actually the only time in our three-year cycle of readings that any part of Lord’s Prayer is comes up.

A more complete version of the Lord’s Prayer can be found in the Gospel of Matthew, and yet, we are hearing Luke’s version today. I like to think it’s because that in Luke, every time the disciples turn around, it seems, Jesus is praying. Like, all the time.

At the beginning of Luke, at Jesus’ baptism, Jesus was praying when the heavens opened, and the spirit descended on him, and God’s voice rang out, saying, ‘you are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ Later on, right before Jesus asks his disciples that big question, “Who do YOU say that I am?” Jesus was praying. Along with Peter, James, and John, Jesus went up a mountain to pray and be transfigured. And even on the night of his betrayal, Jesus spend most of the night in prayer, and encourages his disciples to do the same, though of course they fail miserably.

Here, though, on their way to Jerusalem and on their way to the cross, the disciples are being observant, for once. They’ve seen Jesus praying before, they’ve noticed he does it often. And so, as Jesus’s students, they ask for a lesson in prayer. But what they got was perhaps not exactly what they were expecting.

There is so much packed into this little prayer we call the Lord’s Prayer. And even in this, an abbreviated version in Luke, there is a lot of big requests happening. Each of these petitions by themselves could easily take up an entire sermon. But all put together we paint a picture of the kind of God we pray to. The kind of God whose kingdom does not play by the rules of power that holds this world in sway. The kind of God who cares about our daily needs. The kind of God whose forgiveness abounds. The kind of God that does not send trials to us to see if our faith is “good enough” or “strong enough. A God that Jesus encourages us to call our father as our loving parent.

There are lots of prayers that are recorded in the Bible. And yet, THIS is the one that we as Christians have clung to as the most important. After all, this is the prayer that Jesus taught his followers to say.

For just one second we are going to get into our time machines of choice – the TARDIS, Delorian, time-turner, you get to pick – we are going to hop in and travel back to what you might have gone over in confirmation class. In the Small Catechism, in Martin Luther’s explanation of the beginning, or “first petition” of the Lord’s Prayer, he writes this: “With these words God wants to attract us, so that we come to believe he is truly our father and we are truly his children, in order that we may ask him boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father.”

When Jesus prays in the Gospels, he calls God his Father. And here, when the disciples ask Jesus how to pray to God, Jesus wants us to follow his lead. He says, “when YOU pray…” we get to call God “father” too. Because it’s true. God is like a parent who loves us unconditionally and eternally, who provides and forgives and promises to be present with us in all circumstances. All because we are God’s beloved children.

Jesus doesn’t say that God will hear us only if we say the write words or the right kind of prayer, or if our faith is “strong” enough.  God will not refuse to hear the cries of God’s children in need if we don’t send that email to ten of our friends or if that child with cancer on Facebook DOESN’T get ten thousand “likes.”  God will not ignore us if we don’t have our lives put together, or don’t go to church “enough,” or if we let our minds wander during the prayers or hymns or sermon when we ARE at church. God will not discount our requests, even if God disagrees with them. God promises to hear you because God loves you.

As Paul wrote in his letter to the Colossians, the love of God is revealed to us by God making us alive together with Christ, setting aside the record of our sins by nailing them to the cross. And every time we pray, we are speaking to a God who loves us even more than a parent could possibly love their own child. A God who communicate back to us, who reveals Godself to us and is vulnerable enough to create two-way dialogue. Because sometimes even God needs to be reminded of who God is – a God of Justice AND a God of Grace.

Abraham did just that, and in this way is an excellent model for prayer – while Abraham knew of the great sins of Sodom and Gomorrah – sins of greed, lack of mercy, inhospitality, mistreatment of the vulnerable – and yet he also knew that there were might be some good people among them still. Ultimately, Abraham’s petitions of mercy failed, because there were not even 10 righteous people remained in those cities…but that was not Abraham’s fault. He still tried.

Now, not every moment of prayer for us will be a dramatic bargaining with the divine for the sake of a whole city. Our daily prayers will be more mundane, like those of the kids who asked for a puppy and got a brother or thanking God for the invention of the stapler. But maybe those prayers are just as profound.

I think that I love that little girl’s prayer from that book the most, the one that went, “Dear God, I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying.” And sometimes, we even pray when we don’t know we are praying. Like when the disciples ask Jesus to teach them how to pray, their question is a prayer. Our questions, our wonderings, our thoughts, complaints and laments can all be prayers, and can become as unconscious as breathing.

We can pray with our hands – not just in folding them, but also in using them to construct a Lego tower of prayer, or in service to our neighbor, or coloring a picture with crayons to give to someone else…. We can use our voices, in singing our praise to God, and with giving an encouraging word … we can use our feet, when we march for justice or walk toward those who are in need. I dare say that we can even use our time, our money, our possessions, and even our social media to pray as well.

But whether or not we are aware of it, whether or not we are consciously praying, whether we have a set time to pray or pray whenever we have a need whether or not we are thinking about God, God is always thinking of us. And sometimes… when we pray to God… God actually listens. As long as we keep at it. Thanks be to God, amen.

Love Languages and being an Ally

7-21-19

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.

We’re thick in the middle of wedding season. For all the weddings I have officiated, one of the things I ask the couple to do is to take an inventory of their Love Languages. It’s pretty much what it sounds like – similarly to having a primary language we speak in everyday conversations - we all have a “language” that makes us feel most loved. According to author GaryChapman, there are 5 of these “love languages,” - Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receiving Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. According to Gary, we all have a primary love language, and the rest fall in line in order of importance.  

In relationships, it helps to understand that we happen to be most fluent in “speaking” our own love language, but our spouse might feel loved in different ways than feel natural to us. Ironically, Gary writes, most couples do not share the same #1 love language. But with practice, just as you can learn another language, and keep your spouses “love tank” – Gary’s term – full.

While his original book is from the perspective of heterosexual married couples, this applies to all of us in all our relationships – friends, co-coworkers, and our own families – parents and siblings.

In this encounter between Jesus, Martha, and Mary, we can interpret these  miscommunications through the lens of Love Language and see it play out in spades, both between the two sisters and between the sisters and Jesus.

We hear about Mary and Martha from Luke’s perspective, and there is no mention of a brother named Lazarus, who shows up in John’s Gospel a lot. Here, it’s just the women, and Luke very clearly says is MARTHA’S house. She may not be that well of – no slaves for hospitality and food prep like Abraham, but she holds her own, along with her sister Mary.

We might be able to say that Mary’s love language is Quality Time –giving Jesus her undivided attention to show her love to him – since she sat at his feet and listened to him so attentively. She sat as his feet in the way that a student would sit at the feet of a Rabbi who he was studying under. I said “he” as pronoun just there very deliberately. The role of a student was not a typical one for women at the time – normal the husband would study under the Rabbi, hoping to become one himself, and his wife would stay home and do all the domestic chores to support him. As an unmarried woman with no brothers (at least according to Luke), Mary taking on the position of student – disciple – would have been shocking. But perhaps Mary understood the truth that, with Jesus presence, the world is turned upside down, the result is that those marginalized and having low or no status – such as an unmarried woman such as herself - do not need to be defined by socially determined roles.

If Martha had taken the Love Languages quiz, I’m guessing she would REALLY rank high in “Acts of Service.” As a model of extreme hospitality, Martha was caught up doing so many tasks for Jesus, to show how much she loved and appreciated him – too much really, because, she got exasperated, especially with Mary. Mary and Martha were speaking different languages. Perhaps Martha thought that the most appropriate way to show love to Jesus in that moment was to make sure that he had a delicious and hot dinner ready for him after a long day. Perhaps she resented the way Mary showed her love and didn’t understand that Mary was showing her love to Jesus in her own way… and perhaps Martha was not feeling loved by Mary because of the “Language barrier.”

Of course, this story isn’t really about Love languages. It’s also not a story about “Women’s discipleship.” (Because we would never say a story about Peter and John were about “Men’s discipleship!”) It’s also not about Contemplative Faith practices being “Better” than active or service-oriented faith practices. There is not a Better or Best Way to be a disciple of Jesus. And it’s not a story that pits sister against sister, though it has long been interpreted in that light – with Mary the “Winner” and Martha the “loser.”

Just as there is no “best” Love Language, discipleship with Jesus is not a zero-sum game. Both sisters are showing us very admirable qualities in a follower of Jesus – a spirit of hospitality, and the desire and eagerness to learn. But BOTH sisters make mistakes we can learn from as well. Where Martha trips up is not in her “nagging,” but two other ways – first, Martha triangulation. She roped Jesus into her conflict with her sister instead of talking to Mary herself.  Why didn’t Martha just ask Mary herself?

Second, Martha is caught in the patriarchy and misses Jesus’ message - her allows social assumptions to take precedence of the urgency of the kingdom that’s sitting right in front of her. As the Reverend Dr. Elizabeth Quick wrote in a devotional called, “We Pray With Her,”: “It’s always easier to remain in our predetermined, comfortable, status-quo safe places rather than hit the road with Jesus; but only in following him can we truly find the better part.” In fact, a better translation of the original language – talking of fluency and language again – is “Mary has chosen a GOOD” – not BETTER – “part.”

But what if Mary isn’t the “hero” in this story? What if there is something big about Jesus’ message that Mary missed as well? Mary may have chosen the patriarchy-smashing role of a student, disregarding the structures that her culture has placed on her based on her gender and status. And that will not be taken away from her in God’s Kingdom, the Jesus Regime. However… Mary was not a good ally to her sister Martha. Instead of inviting Martha to join her in her claim at the feet of Jesus… Mary seemed to stand by, just as other men have done before her, and allowed her poor sister to bear the brunt of the rigid roles of women all by herself.

Mary missed the opportunity to put her learning into action. Mary did not use her new-found privilege as a student of Jesus to widen the circle. And so, Jesus had to step in for poor Martha. Jesus stepped in, not to tell Martha to be more like Mary…. But to do what Mary should have done: invite Martha into the circle. Jesus calls her by name and tells her, you can be a disciple too.

May we learn from the mistakes of both Martha AND Mary. How often do we say, “Jesus, don’t you care that the we have been left alone without resources to do all the work by ourselves? We have to worry about the roof and declining membership and budget deficits and differed maintenance and having an excellent hospitality plan! Tell the synod… the ELCA… SOMEBODY to help us!”

TO which Jesus might reply: “FOG, FOG, you are worried and distracted by many things. There is need of only one thing.”

And what IS that ONE THING? Make room at Jesus’s feet. Like Mary failed to do.

As followers of Jesus, like Mary AND Martha, we each have different gifts and strength to offer. But when we sit at the feet of Jesus, we all hear the same message: We are ALL beloved Children of God… we are part of the same Family of God… And there is a place for YOU here… at the feet of Jesus. But there is also a place HERE for all the other beloved Children of God as well. But how are people going to know this unless we tell them…. like Jesus, call them by name, and invite them to sit with us at the feet of the ultimate host, our Lord and Savior Jesus.

Learning to speak Jesus’ language of Love is hard… we don’t need a book or a quiz to tell us that…. but it gets better with practice, like learning and perfecting any important skill. Love is work, and it doesn’t always feel comfortable or easy.

Perhaps, instead of “having a Mary heart in a Martha word,” we have both a Mary AND Martha heart in a divided and scary world. We can learn how to speak love to this world from both Mary and Martha. They both broke social norms, and perused justice in different ways, and in OUR different ways, we can join them. And heaven knows, there is no times to lose. Amen. 

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.

The Boy Who Wasn't Alone

Sermon 7- 7-19

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.

There is a game on an improv show called “Whose Line is It Anyway,” that is based on the cast members borrowing two handbags from unsuspecting audience and creating a skit based on what they find in there. Shoes, dental floss, cardigans, earbuds, q-tips, sun hats, empty water bottles, bags and bags of snacks. It’s like one of the usual games you play at a baby or wedding shower – a scavenger hunt all in your purse! The point is to laugh at all the ridiculous things that other people carry around them… but really, are any of us much different?

It’s only fair that I pick on myself for a moment…  Besides the usual car keys, church keys, wallet, and cell phone, in my own bag I carry tissues, hand sanitizer, some pens, lip balm, extra charger, and usually at least on book that I’m reading, of course!  This week I also have with me a VBS CD, so that I can get ready to teach the kids songs about God and going to Mars! So, for the most part, pretty standard stuff. But still. It’s a lot of stuff in there. And sometimes it gets a little heavy. All in the name of “Just in case… “

Being ready and prepared is a good thing, but there comes a point where we can be TOO prepared, which can hinder, rather than help us. Because if we wait until we are absolutely the most prepared we can ever be before we agree to do anything or go anywhere, we would never actually get started, and we would miss out on the adventure that God has in store for us.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus is on a mission, and is getting people on board, though as we witnessed last week some would-be followers were more ready than others to get with the program. The upside is that this week, we hear that the harvest is at hand, the people are ready to hear the good news of God’s love and forgiveness, but there is so much work to do to get ready that even Jesus needs help. Jesus has already called his core group of twelve disciples, but he needs all hands-on deck, people. This is getting big, FAST, and Jesus needs even MORE people to help him, seventy more to be exact.

Jesus chooses them, buddies them up two by two, gives then their marching orders, and then recommends a packing list for them too. Only… Jesus’ packing list is very, very short. Too short for our liking, in fact. We also have to remember that in Jesus’ time, there was no Motel 6 or Hilton to sleep at… no Chipotle, McDonald’s, Panera, or Acme to get food along the way, or a local Target in case you forgot to pack your toothbrush.

So, when Jesus told the seventy NOT to pack a bag, NOT to bring an extra change of clothes, or even a pair of shoes, NOT to bring extra snacks or food…. This is a huge leap of faith, and a giant act of trust. Jesus UN-equips them, to make then totally dependent on the hospitality of those who are hearing the good news. Which seems pretty foolish, like he’s setting them up for failure.

Why would Jesus do that?  Because he is sending them to be physical embodiments of what is means to be totally dependent on God. They will be waking the GOD-WALK and TALKING the GOD TALK, so that when amazing things start to happen, the only explanation possible is that it was God’s doing.

And amazingly, it worked. Like that tweet that unexpectedly goes viral, the seventy came back reporting with great joy that even the forces of evil were responding and getting out of the way of the kingdom. The harvest is being gathered, the good news spread, and the kingdom is coming near. All this they accomplished WITHOUT being prepared to the gills with floss, hand sanitizer, or extra snacks. All this they accomplished while bringing absolutely nothing with them. All this they accomplished without any special training. All this they accomplished with the help of God. It’s not about what you bring, but who.

That’s why Jesus send out seventy people do to the work of the kingdom… and he sent them out TWO by TWO. No one was alone in this work. They had a huge support network of others to lean on, and someone else physically with them, so that they could care for each other when things got tough, like when they entered a town where they were not welcome. And they also had someone else along to share in the joys as well.

Because Jesus didn’t promise that the following him would make our lives stress-free and comfortable, or that doing his work would be easy. But Jesus does provide people along the way to help us through when (and not if) times get tough.

Too often though, we get caught up in thinking that we’ll be successful at making it through life depending on how prepared we are, if we have enough, and what we bring along with us. But what we own can often weight us down and hold us back. Even as the culture around us tells us the exact opposite – all the time we are told to had bigger purses, bigger wallets, better cars, nicer houses, more storage units…. all in the name of “just in case.” And as a reward, we are held back and weighted down with car payments, mortgages, credit card bills, and sore muscles.  

Non-physical things that we carry with us can weigh us down, too – Fear, anxiety, worry, depression, despair, impatience, addiction, apathy, anger, sexism, white privilege…  all these things are HEAVY to carry around with us, and take a toll on us on a daily basis. We need each other, as Paul writes, in order to bear one another’s burdens. We don’t need more things or to be more prepared… instead we are to pack light….  and share the load. Even when things are challenging… especially when things seem at their most bleak and hopeless.

Lately I’ve been watching through the Harry Potter movies again, which tells the story, over 8 films, how an unsuspecting 6^th grade boy learns how to be a wizard and grows up to defeat the one of the most powerful and evil villains in all of fiction – the evil wizard Lord Voldemort. In one of their confrontation, Voldemort enters Harry’s mind, and calls him weak for caring about his friends and family, which made Harry vulnerable to attack. Instead, Harry Potters tells him “You're the weak one. And you'll never know love, or friendship. And I feel sorry for you.”

Earlier in the same movie, The Order of the Phoenix, other students are in awe of all of Harry’s adventures and decided to gather together to learn how to defend themselves from the coming evil that Lord Voldemort is sure to bring. To their accolades, Harry responds, “it all sounds *great* when you say it like that. But the truth is…  I didn't know what I was doing half the time, I nearly always had help.”

We might not be a well outfitted or have as many resources as the powers of evil in this world… but we do have something they don’t: Jesus, and one another.

God is calling us on a journey to spread the news that God’s kingdom is here.  When we refuse to pack some of the things that can weight us down: fear of the future, our belief in scarcity, and our longing for security – then we have so much more room for the things that ARE on Jesus’s packing list: things like vulnerability, trust, courage, compassion, kindness, empathy, and love for one another, which always makes us stronger.

This doesn’t necessarily mean for us to get rid of the all stuff in our purses, wallets, cars, or homes. But perhaps we should start asking ourselves if what we HAVE helps us or hinders us along the way.

Because the stuff we bring with us doesn’t give us strength. Nor does always being 100% prepared for whatever might comes next. But we know just was DOES give us strength: Faith in Jesus and in one another. The seventy disciples could do all things set before them, and we can too, because we bring Jesus WITH us along the way. Amen.