Waves, storms, presence – sermon from 6/20/21

First, read the texts: Job 38:1-11, Mark 4:35-41. Here’s the sermon:

In all three scriptures we just heard there are waves.  Big stormy waves.

One of my favorite things to do at the ocean is find that spot where you can easily jump the waves – where you can stand or sit in a float and gently go up and down with them, have a conversation with others, knowing you’re in that sweet spot before they break on you. But every once in a while, a bigger one will come along and you have to make the decision – go under and through, or over, or take the risk of it breaking on you and either riding it or enduring its crash. 

Whatever you choose, afterward you pop up and look where the others ended up. 

The crash of a wave… making it through the storm…

In the gospel story, the sky darkens, a storm happens at sea, the waves rise and the disciples, though most of them fisherman, become increasingly afraid. 

They make it through, but the sky looks different.  They are different – dead calm.

We are not the same on the other side.  We realize other boats did not fare as well, and some that used to dot the horizon are gone.  It’s a little detail, but this gospel rarely includes details at all, it says at the beginning of the story as they set out on the boat, “other boats were with them.”  What happened to them?  I’ve been thinking a lot this week about how this story may have been told differently from a different boat, without Jesus at the stern.

Civil rights veteran and public theologian Ruby Sales says when we seek reconciliation or right relationship, between humans or between people and God, we must always start by asking “where does it hurt?”

Job starts there. Job tells God all about it.

The disciples start there.  They tell God, and each other, where it hurts.  It hurts that it felt you weren’t awake with me.  Through this storm – it felt like you didn’t care.

We start there too.  Before any good news about how God is with us can be credible and we go skipping off into the sunset, we have to have safe spaces to say where it hurts, even to admit it to ourselves, to hear how we’ve hurt others. We start each service with confession, so that as we settle into our seats we first notice our hurt, our stress, our heavy burdens and ignored wrongs we’ve done – so that we can let them down and let them go.

Where does it hurt?  It hurts that I haven’t gotten to hear the creak of these pews or sing with you, these are months we won’t get back.  There were months and prayer concerns and stresses for which I wish we could have met in person, gathered the community, shared hugs. I know there are other boats which didn’t fare as well.  I’m the only pastor I know who hasn’t led a pandemic funeral.

We have individual hurts, communal hurts.  But in the tumult of the waves – in being flipped upside-down, maybe we were shaken out of our routines, learned new postures.  

Like sitting to say the confession.  Preaching to a small light instead of your eyes.  Having some good bread, or crackers for communion – or not having it and waiting to return.

New habits like giving people space and being more cognizant of consent, public health, and who is most vulnerable – these are good.  Like any storm, this pandemic has at times ripped us open raw, or made us realize the strength and resources we already had on board.

It’s not “everything happens for a reason,” something I do not believe in and can be harmful to folks, but rather, to paraphrase Joseph in Genesis 50, what was broken, God used it for good.  God takes the pieces. 

Job, the main character of the book in our first reading, feels broken in a million pieces.  God shows up to Job in or as a whirlwind – a good metaphor for where Job finds himself.  In the middle of a storm.  The book of Job is not meant to be taken literally, but is written as a kind of theological think piece, an envisioned courtroom drama playing out on a big stage.  Job loses everything and is distraught.  His friends have tried to console him, but got tired of it, and try to “help” for an seemingly endless number of chapters by suggesting all the possible reasons he finds himself in a terrible state.  Job just keeps saying “no,” remaining resolute that he didn’t do anything wrong to cause this, and continuing to ask God, “why.”  It’s not until today’s reading, here in chapter 38, God finally shows up and speaks to Job.  

And God’s response at first isn’t very comforting.  God essentially shows up and says – so, if you think you can or should understand everything, where were you when the stars were made?  Who do you think you are?

Jesus’ answer to the disciples is not really any more comforting – “Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

But both snap them and us out of their fear to remember their humanity – that if we are afraid because we are creatures then we must remember that we have a creator.  If we are afraid because we do not have all the answers, we must remember that we never did before and we aren’t supposed to.  If we feel like we cannot hold the world up, we must remember that someone holds us.

I pray that this pandemic did change us. To not return so quickly to thinking that we are in control.  To give each other more grace, and remember the vulnerabilities we carry – how fragile we are, and how some of those things, like poverty, classism, racism, and division – we actually can fix.

When I’m scared or upset or angry – I might ask why, seek out the reasons, fixate on the problem.  But what I actually need is to tell someone who cares where it hurts, and to know that I’m not alone.  You have done that for me in these months, dear church, and that is our mission – to hear the hurts of each other and the world, to repeat God’s echo – do not be afraid.  Not because there’s nothing to fear, but because you are not alone.

Leanne Pearce Reed writes (in Feasting on the Word), “In all of this beautiful, lyric response, God’s rebuttal never actually answers Job’s question.  God never explains why Job has suffered as he has.  

“[Job] comes to recognize that despite the existence of chaos, the world rests on a secure foundation.  Despite his pain and loss, God’s creation will support and sustain.  Job’s question is never answered.  He is comforted not by an explanation, but by a vision. Ultimately the content of God’s answer to Job does not matter nearly as much as this: God answers. That is the miracle.  The chaos is still there, but so is God.  And that is enough.”  Amen.

For all the birds of the air to nest – sermon from 6/14/21

First, read the scripture texts: Ezekiel 17:22-24 and Mark 4:26-34.

After worship, someone sent me this fitting piece, “Be the best of whatever you are,” which begins with these lines: If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, Be a scrub in the valley — but be The best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if you can’t be a tree.

Here’s the sermon:

When I was growing up, out in the field, and along our driveway, my dad planted apple trees.  Sometimes he would take cuttings from the trees, the top of a branch – just a few inches, and start a new tree from that. A cutting of a tree – is just a stick.  It can look dead, feel dry. Maybe in some way you’ve felt like a dry tree, or cut off…

Not just in traffic, but in many conscious, subconscious, and systemic ways, we do cut each other off.  Individuals, families, and friendships are separated by boundaries, borders, fear and phobias, politics, racism, classism, and even how we sometimes get segregated early in school to groups and levels. We end up living in completely different worlds – all seeking shade and safety, but ending up under very different trees – sometimes cutting people out when they don’t fit, or realizing how cut off we are from each other.

It can be hard when you’re cut off and trying to find a new place to flourish, but God’s promise is that it will come. Perhaps God’s promise through this imagery in the scripture is that God holds all those who are cut off in God’s hand, waiting to find a new place to plant them.

In both scriptures this morning the whole purpose of these tree/shrub images was not to grow the biggest tree, or the prettiest, or the most powerful plant.  We lose our way when we make that the goal.  God acknowledges the lofty cedar – but as a means to an end: God uses the one that is large and tall not to keep increasing its riches, or to show off, but to break some off and create new by sharing.  

The Sunday that GLC voted to call me as pastor here four years ago, the appointed text and my call sermon was the Matthew version of this gospel reading.  It is close to my heart and I feel like a fitting description of our congregation, and sets a vision and goal for our ministry together. (Some of you have heard me say,) I love the paradox and endearing description of “greatest of shrubs!”  What a delicious, confounding image that God’s hope is for the kindom to be like the “greatest of shrubs.”  Not the biggest or the prettiest, the most perfect or where everyone acts the same, but it is a calling to be like a tree in which every kind of bird will live; in the shade of its branches will nest winged creatures of every kind.  Both in the Ezekiel and the gospel text, through millennia, God has been saying, this is the whole point – the tree is just a tool for the safety and inclusion of ALL!

“World’s Smallest Seed” by Jim Janknegt

We aren’t called to be every different bird but make space for them.  American artist Jim Jankengt envisions the parable this way (see picture).  We’re called to notice the beauty of another’s plumage.  To notice places that look like this: where the birds all look different – like out on the streets of DC last night – beautiful rich diversity celebrating Pride.  When we see all different kind of birds together – we should say – ah, there’s God’s kindom.  We can recognize the different groups that flock together, how the families that nest together on the same branch or pew all look different.  This is God’s intent: the kindom of God is like a tree where every kind of bird can rest in its shade.  

In the grand scheme of things, GLC, we’re just a shrub, but we’re making space, like opening our doors tomorrow and each week for GMC and FP to welcome neighbors in need – all kinds of people coming in, staff, volunteers, and guests.  Last week as a gentleman left with his warm, clean laundry he got done here, he said to me – “thank you so much.  I’m going to tell everybody about this wonderful place.”

An empty fellowship hall, words on a page in a worship book, can look dry and even dead – but with life of the people, remembering God’s promise, they make space for all the birds to come. 

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote, “Bless the things we mistakenly think are already dead. Bless what we call insignificant, and you call magnificent.  Bless it all and love what only you can love: the ugly, abandoned, and unsanitary in the wash of humanity upon which you have nothing but a gleaming compassion — when we have none.

“God of compassion, we thank you for seeing us.  For seeing our loneliness and our bravery.  For seeing the ones who have never felt like they are enough, but whom you know already are and always have been.  For seeing the moments when we are more than we thought we could be.  For seeing what no one else can or will. Thank you for seeing as beautiful what we call ugly. In your compassion, teach us to see each other.” (in A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal)

Greatest of shrubs – may it be so among us, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Samuel and the kindom – sermon from 6/6/21

First, read the texts: 1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20 and Mark 3:20-35.

Here’s the sermon:

Other than Jesus, y’all ever seen a king save us?  Nope.

Samuel knew that truth, in today’s first reading.  But Samuel’s community – they want a king!  So they go to Samuel – God’s prophet.  He has the most respect and power in the community, and the people are weary and just about numb from lack of trust in their leaders. I’m sad to say that they might fit in well today – disenchanted by the news of corrupt leaders, like “oh, what’d they do now?  Yeah, sounds about right.”  And maybe, like today, God’s people of Samuel’s time have even gotten so tired of it that in large part they’ve become disengaged, complacent and hence complicit.  Overwhelmed, tired, and poor, God’s people who are supposed to be set apart become part of the machine itself, rather than as Bonhoeffer said, trying to “drive a spoke into the wheel.”

You see, at Samuel’s time they were ruled by judges – not like a courtroom, but more like regional chieftans, who ruled the 12 tribes of God’s people.  But just a skim through that book of the Bible, Judges, tells you how that went.  It’s one of the most disturbing and violent books of the Bible, with a lot of scriptures never read on Sundays or put on a plaque.  The book of Judges tells a tragic history of a failed experiment of theocracy: it is ironically moral corruption and a complete loss of an ethical compass by these God-appointed judges that devolves into Samuel’s terrible time.  God’s people have become just as corrupt, no different than anyone else.  That never happens, right? It’s sad but often true that when societies put religion as center, it gets easily co-opted. Religion then loses its ability to critique when it gets aligned with power.

It’s all gone wrong, and this is where it picks up, in our first reading in 1 Samuel 8: God’s people are like – ok – what do we do when it’s not working? Let’s try what’s working for someone else!  The people say to Samuel, “Judges aren’t working. Give us a king!  That will make us happy!  That will make things better!”

Samuel’s between a rock and a hard place, so he prays about it (which is good advice for when you feel like that, by the way, even if you don’t get an audible answer like Samuel).  God says to Samuel, basically, this isn’t your fault, you’re trying and they’re not listening to you or me – the best you can do is warn them.  So Samuel warns them, and yet – they are still like – “no! We want a king!  We want to be like everyone else” (which may actually be the real problem here – God’s people are meant to be different, weird even)!  So, they get a king. There are ups and downs, but ultimately it doesn’t work out and everything Samuel warns them about will come true.  

Samuel seems weary too. A sign of his faithfulness is that he’s honest. He doesn’t shirk from or apologize for the truth that things aren’t going well, and that the people are corrupt – even when they tell him – hey, your sons are too corrupt to lead.  Samuel’s like – yeah, they are.  It’s not about blood relationship.  That’s part of what Jesus reminds us about today in the gospel. The powers that be are threatened by Jesus’ words, and so they decide he must have a demon. A very human pattern of calling something demonic that we don’t like or when God colors outside the lines.  

The good news is that even while we continue to get it wrong, putting our faith in a human to save us, God is still present.  The question should not be who will lead us, but how do we follow God, no matter who is in charge.  God led the people – out of Egypt with a pillar of fire, and will continue to lead.  We sometimes wish for that pillar of fire again: just give us a king who will make the right choices and we won’t have to watch the news or worry any more – but no human will save us, other than the one who descended from heaven and ascended again.

Instead God says: you are the answer to your own prayers. Remember the motto of our denomination: God’s work – our hands.  Not someone else’s – not a white knight or the perfect leader.

When we pray “thy kingdom come,” a king isn’t going to show up to bring that in.  Rather, it invites us to ask, in what way, even small, are you bringing down, bringing in God’s kin-dom?  I want to introduce this term to you, if you’ve never heard it before. Pioneered by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz, a Latina mujerista theologian, kin-dom looses the gendered and hierarchical aspects of the important phrase that we use to describethe goal and vision: the kin-dom of God.  Instead, kin-dom “provid[es] an impetus for reconstituting family not as authoritarian or patriarchal but one offering warmth, protection, and provision for lasting relationships[.]  Kin-dom offers a communally-oriented foundation for mutuality, justice, and the restoration of faith and society.” (from here.)

This is what Jesus is talking about in today’s gospel.  Creating chosen family.  A term that the LGBTQIA+ community embraces by necessity, Jesus reminds us today that sometimes when your family isn’t that support for you, God sends others.  

God created us to be beautifully diverse and even weird in our own ways – not just like the people next door. God has a vision of kin-dom not created by blood or gender, where the reign is signified by a relationship, not a rule.  A kindom affirms that we’re all related.  A kindom doesn’t look for one person to save us, but sees the reign of God brought in by inclusion, relationship, and peace.  A kindom is where everyone has a seat at the table and acknowledges that as long as someone’s on the outside, we’ve still got work to do. 

Given this language to describe it, we see in scripture God’s intent has always been kindom, not a kingdom.  

I thank God for the small ways that our little church creates it.  Even over this pandemic, we’ve created bonds over miles and bandwidth.  We’ve invited people to God’s table and fed them outside Mt. Zion church last night.  Tomorrow we open our doors to GMC and Friendship Place to welcome in folks in need. In a city where not many of us have family close, we can become kin to each other by sharing meals, the tough parts of life, and praying for and with each other through sorrows, waiting, and joys.  

The kindom is not just inside the church – it’s the irrepressible movement of the Spirit to care, love, and connect. And she isn’t bound to just religion, y’all. The kindom is mutual aid groups that have made a huge difference for folks in need.  It’s the “Village” programs that support and connect seniors – giving rides and bringing groceries. Kindom is Thanksgiving tables where they may not say grace but you see it where no one is related by blood but there is surely family.

It’s not perfect, but always a work in progress.  It’s also not something for you – it is you.  These readings remind us that when something isn’t working, maybe you are the answer to your own prayers.  That relationships make a difference, and there is no easy solution will be delivered by one person.  It’s something we have to create together – and keep doing it – even church.  So I need your help, over these next few weeks and like honestly, forever, to roll up your sleeves with me and take part. Getting back to in-person worship will mean all hands on deck – figuring this out together – finding new ways, and opening new doors, not returning to old ones.  We’ve got work to do – led by the vision – God’s kindom come.

May it be so with us.  Amen.