Christmas Eve Sermon 2014
Isaiah 9:2-7

“Light”

In a season of dimness, when the nights are long and the sunshine is rare, we come to you in hope of brighter days. When shadows lengthen in our hearts and souls, we come for the warmth and sunshine of your spirit filling our lives, as it filled the life of Mary, as it rose in the life of the nation of Israel, as it filled the life of Jesus, spilling out into his world and into our own. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Often by the time that Christmas Eve rolls around, we have gotten a little tired of the endless cheer, bright lights, and glittering tinsel of the season, if we haven’t come to a place where those have little to do with our preparation for the coming Christ in any way. Most of us enjoy a little glitz and sparkle, but somewhere in the middle of it, I get a little overwhelmed and realize that beyond the sparkle, there’s not much substance to offer. In spite of the appearance of gold, the shining foil is just that.

It is then when I begin to seek out the meaning of God’s incarnation in my life yet again. I might ask questions.

God, where are you this year? Are you looking to be welcomed?

Jesus, how can we serve you now and into the next year?

Where can I find your light when my own feels dim—and all the sparkle in the world isn’t going to change that?

How can we discern between the joy of your presence and the giddy, momentary, and materialistic wants and desires that fill our moments?

Hearing ancient words of faith and hope can bring us to a place where we can gently and hopefully seek out the genuine sources of light in our lives. Light that illuminates and warms and doesn't just glare blindingly, hiding from us the beauty that is still in the darkness and mystery—the things just beyond what we can know. The light we seek doesn't remove darkness, we seek the light that defines and clarifies the mysteries of our lives. I won’t say it’s always comforting or comfortable—the light of Christ will illuminate the words, thoughts, and actions we’d rather hide—instead I’d say that the light of Christ moves us toward wholeness, revealing the hidden that needs to be seen and nurtured into health or changed from the evil to the good.

Sometimes we are afraid to lose darkness, afraid to let go and embrace the light God has placed within us—in Christ and through the very life that we contain. “We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”[1]

It is in this time of year that we realize the partnership between the darkness and the light. The definition that each gives the others. The bright shining hope that carries us forward is a partner with the quiet, dark, hope that most of us need in times of rest. In this time of year, when the earth is darker here in the northern hemisphere, we are reminded to seek out the light—the light of Christ, born into a work dark like our own. We are reminded to see the depths of this night and experience the joy, deeper than cheer, let us experience the light of Christ, brighter than the brightest gem.

CHRISTMAS hath darkness

Brighter than the blazing noon,

Christmas hath a chillness

Warmer than the heat of June,

Christmas hath a beauty

Lovelier than the world can show:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,

Birds that sing and bells that ring;

Heaven hath answering music

For all Angels soon to sing:

Earth, put on your whitest

Bridal robe of spotless snow:

For Christmas bringeth Jesus,

Brought for us so low.[2]

To the glory of God, born as we all were: naked and cold and full of light. Amen.

---

[1] from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

[2] Christmas Eve by Christina Georgina Rossetti

Sermon December 21 2014

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Luke 1:46b-55

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

“Great Reversals”

Life-giving God, fill us with your grace. May we, who hear the announcement of Jesus’ coming, give birth to your good news. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

The season of Advent reminds us every year that we are all waiting for something. We anticipate some event, sometimes with fear and anxiety, sometimes with happiness and barely contained excitement and sometimes a mixture of both. We may be waiting on a person to enter our lives or know that a time of departure is nearing—and we may not desire either one. We may be waiting for good news, bad news, or any news at all. We may be waiting for the other shoe to drop—for the world to end—for our lives to begin . . . for someone, something, somewhere . . .

The season of Advent reminds us that even as we prepare what we are awaiting has come. We are waiting for the light of the world—even as the sky in our part of the world gets darker and darker. Tonight, on the longest night of the year, we celebrate the light, grace, peace—and love that is already in our lives. We know that Jesus is born—so long ago—and still we wait, every year, preparing for Christ to come into our lives, preparing for Christ to gather us all into Christ’s life, forever and eternally.

The season of Advent and this fourth Sunday of Advent, again, reminds us that though what we are awaiting, the birth of Jesus into the world, the salvation of Christ in the world, the presence and grace of God in the world are already here. We still are waiting for the fulfillment of God’s kindom in the world that surrounds us—and in our own lives. Jesus is here; God is here and God is still building something—a kindom, a family, a realm, and we are part of that act of building. Or at least we can be a part of it, if we choose to say yes.

In the text from 2 Samuel, we get a glimpse into the life of David, the king of Israel, after he’s come to a time of respite from the wars that put him onto the throne. He has a home, a house of cedar, he said, and he thinks that God might want a house, too, to live in. God’s word to Nathan, the royal prophet, denies God’s desire for a house built by human hands.  Instead God proclaims that God will build. God will build David a legacy, a throne, a kindom that lasts forever—instead, I think, God makes a claim on the life of David’s legacy, revealing God’s plan, not David’s plan.

David wanted to house God. God wants to build a legacy, create possibilities for revelation. God wants to be God for the people, not simply a place for the people to worship. And God wants it to last—houses don’t last, temples don’t remain, churches don’t live forever—God’s kindom, that’s eternal. God’s love, it’s steadfast and everlasting.

So we enter the story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel this morning knowing that this is God’s intention. For people who want to follow Christ, God’s intentions lead us here, to Jesus, to Mary, to the messenger God sent to give Mary some news.

The world into which the messenger brings news to Mary was a world very different from our own in many ways. As you know, the Romans occupied Galilee where Mary lived in the town of Nazareth. Galilee was a part of the land that had been Israel, but the Israel of King David hadn’t existed for a long time—about 1,000 years. Mary lived in a land occupied at various times by whatever empire ruled at the time. The Romans ruled her world and before that the Greeks, the Persians, Babylon or Chaldea, Aram, and Syria and before that, the two kingdoms that split from David and Solomon’s one kingdom. It had been a long time since God spoke with Nathan, the prophet, and promised a reign that would last forever. And because it had been so long, the promise God had begun to be seen differently. The throne of God, given by God, wasn’t one for kings, this throne was  . . . well, this throne was for Mary’s—not yet born, not yet conceived—son.

Mary’s world was very different than our own, but there are still similarities. The hungry and the sated are still with us, the poor and the rich, the servants and the rulers (one way or another) and God’s people are still waiting. In Mary’s world and in our own, some people have everything and more and some people not enough to live.

Mary heard the messenger’s word to her in a world occupied by empire and characterized by inequality, a world more our own than it would seem. And she heard the message in a world, like our own, that was waiting for answers, waiting for a long time.

In spite of the time that had passed, with no hesitation other than her confusion at her unmarried, uncoupled state, Mary accepts the news of the messenger, Gabriel. She would have a son, the Son of God. She would name him, Jesus, which means Savior. And somehow, he would inherit the throne of David, unoccupied, nonexistent, really, for many, many years.

So what does it mean that her son, the Son of God, the Son of the Most High was to be born? In that day? In that world?

As Luke tells the story, Mary’s reaction, her emotive and rational, theological response to actually understanding what God has done comes after she meets her relative, Elizabeth. When Elizabeth announces her baby’s reaction to meeting Mary, it is only then that Mary sings her song—her glorious Magnificat.

And she sings or tells of God’s action in the person Jesus will become.

She sings of God’s salvation revealed by her son not only in her own life, but in the fullness of all God’s people. Her words well up and name the justice of God.

God is merciful. God is strong and scatters the proud—the arrogant?

God brings power down from thrones and lift up those seen as lowly.

God fills the hungry. God sends away those who have all they need—and more.

God helps Israel, fulfilling God’s steadfast love.

God fulfills all the promises God has ever made—all of them.

Her child, but more than her child, will overturn all the world.

God was arriving, is arriving, always arriving, to reverse the way that we live with one another. God comes to turn us away from pride, from wealth, from gluttony and greed, from the power we have over one another—God comes in Jesus, born to a very young woman, into not a wealthy or powerful family, to save the world.

God comes into our lives this day to do the very same thing. Human beings, it seems, tend to wander into the same sins today as they did then. Then the rich and powerful, symbolized by Rome’s empire, kept people from realizing who God fully intended them to be—and God’s son’s life of healing, hope, humility, peace, grace, joy, and love overturned what a ruling power could be. And though it may look different, we still somehow live as if the world would be perfect if only the right set of people had enough power, like Rome. But with Mary, we sing, declaring that in us now already, God has accomplished a great reversal. Amid the disorder and evil of our day, we now sing the great reversal sung by Mary. We are not afraid. God is yet at work liberating and setting things right. The wrong is judged to be empty, and the right judged to be blessed. Within us, the empire has no hold; it has collapsed even as we contend with it daily.

With Mary’s son, the Son of the Most High, we can say, with Mary, “Let it be with me, according to your word.” Amen.

We had a casual service of Lessons and Carols--Story books and Carols, really . . .

Stories and Carols December 14, 2014

Sermon December 7 2014

Isaiah 40:1-11

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13

2 Peter 3:8-15a

Mark 1:1-8

“A New Social Order”

Comforter, you speak to us tenderly, revealing to us paths of restoration and peace. You show us the path of righteousness and peace. We trust in your steadfast love and faithfulness. We find your salvation in repentance for our offences, seeking forgiveness from those we have injured, and amending our ways. May my words and our thoughts be acceptable to you, God who strengthens, who redeems. Amen.

At the time when Jesus was born, in what we now call 4 B.C.E., the lands of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the lands of Samuel, David, Solomon, and Isaiah had been under the thumb of the Roman Empire for a while. It was long enough that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph would have known nothing but Roman occupation, nothing but Roman oppression, nothing but what could be called Roman peace through violence.

Rome, by this time had spread its influence through most of the known world by bringing in soldier engineers, as one author called them, to not only defeat the native inhabitants of a land, but build the infrastructure necessary to remain there indefinitely and drain from that land any and all resources, human and otherwise. Rome regularly and violently put down any resistance to its governance. Rome had realized in the previous generation that it could either be a Republic governed by the people (or some of the people, representation was limited to free, male citizens of Rome) or it could be an empire spreading out over the known world. Empire and the amassing of land, wealth, and power do not go together with democracy and human rights—then or now.

Whenever any group of people gathered up a few people within a resistance to push away the violence and corrupting wealth of Rome, Rome simply killed them—well, not simply. Rome violently and publicly killed people and often left behind, in the place of a thriving, but rebelling village, the peace of a desert. Rome violently and publicly killed individual leaders of rebellions by crucifixion—They didn’t mess around with negotiation, they quashed any defiance.

Jesus’ birth was into this world; Jesus’ life was pressed into service in a world where his people were under threat if they chose to speak up against the injustice and violence that was everywhere around them. The peace of Rome was the peace of violence and fear. The peace of Rome was ever and always threatening to break into rebellion and violence—and that rebellion was justified and some of the violence could be understood as justifiable anger at unforgivable oppression. Few of us in our social and racial identities can relate to that kind of anger—but I think Jesus could. The anger of daily injustice, the daily grind of being told about your inferiority, and the daily words and actions that enforced that kind of oppression. [1]

That is the world where Jesus was born.

The world of Mark 1:1-8 is the world of John the Baptist—a world grown even more volatile in the 3-4 decades that have passed since Jesus’ birth. And this world would have been familiar to the world where Isaiah prophesied.

Several hundred years before Jesus was born, someone continuing the prophetic tradition of the author of Isaiah’s first 39 chapters began another set of prophecies many scholars call Second Isaiah. Isaiah 40 is the first word of the Lord that has been spoken to Israel in about 48 years.

Forty eight years prior to this text, the Empire of Babylon had taken the southern kingdom, Judah, into captivity. They had killed all of the king’s sons, then blinded and finally killed the king. Almost 200 years before that, the northern kingdom of Israel had fallen to the Assyrian empire and for all practical purposes, those people disappeared. Judah and its people were the people who held God’s promise and they have lived in Babylon after the temple and Jerusalem were destroyed.

The word came, just before Second Isaiah began to prophesy, that Cyrus, the Persian emperor was going to send the Judea people back to their home, back to Jerusalem to rebuild their temple. It hadn’t happened yet, but soon. Isaiah’s word of comfort reinforces this good news.

Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and cry to her that she has served her term and that her penalty is paid—that more than that, she has served double anything that was ever intended.

Isaiah’s word of comfort comes with great upheaval. Isaiah’s word of peace comes only with great change. Isaiah’s word, accompanied by the word of the psalmist reminds us that the road to peace, faithfulness, steadfast love, and good news is exactly that, a road, a way, a journey to travel. And that road, as the mountains, hills, valleys and potholes are evened out will take time.

The peace of violence quashing of rebellion is swift. The peace of Empire, Assyrian, Babylon, Peria, Greece, and Rome comes with parades, soldiers, and fortification. The peace of God’s justice, the peace that transforms human avarice, greed for stuff and for power, into a divine generosity that comes only in God’s presence—and our constant awareness of God’s presence.

The peace of God’s justice comes as God gathers us together in our mutual vulnerability rather in our show of strength, our wielding of physical power and prowess, or our ability to overwhelm one another. God’s peace comes by our dependence upon God’s way toward justice for all people—not a violent force upon people to live according to some human standard. God’s peace comes to us as Christians through Jesus, who called people toward God’s kingdom, an empire characterized by justice, not violence.

The world into which Jesus was born was created by the Roman Empire—and God gave the world in Jesus’ Way to reveal how we are to be at peace with one another. The way comes through the wilderness of our violence, so that God’s peace will come, through the valleys and over the mountains, recreating and creating in us a peace that is evident to all peoples, all nation, all creatures, and all creation.

We are called, in the life of Jesus, who was born into the peace of Rome, the peace of violence, to hear the good news proclaimed, that it only justice creates Gods’ peace, slowly, incrementally, and that that kind of peace changes the world. That peace, the peace of God’s presence, the peace of Jesus’ life of resurrection, the peace that can stand forever.

To the glory of God. Amen.

---

[1] The peace of violence and the peace of justice, from The First Christmas, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan

"Treasuring, Confessing, Reconciling" Thanksgiving 2014

Sermon November 23, 2014

Deuteronomy 8:7–18 

Psalm 65 

2 Corinthians 9:6–15 

Luke 17:11–19

“Treasuring, Confessing, Reconciling”

God, who brings slaves into freedom, water to dry lands, bounty to scarcity, blessing to the poor, generosity to the needy, food for the hungry, and health to the ailing, we approach you in humility and gratitude in this season of harvest. Though we may not be as close to the fields as we once were, we celebrate all you give and all we already have. May our fullness be shared abundantly with those in lean times, may our hearts be opened to all. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.

Through an exploration of his own family’s history my husband, Carl, has discovered that his great-grandmother was Otoe with tribal roots in what is now western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. She gave up that identity to become a part of the dominant culture. Her identity, as often happens, was covered up because of the shame attached to being Indian by white Americans.  In our dialogue, his voice represents the indigenous voice. Mine represents most of our voices, the voice of the immigrant. 

One:         (immigrants) This is the promised land. What are you doing here?
Two:  (indigenous) This is the good land, our sacred home.
One:  You are but Canaanites in the land.
Two:  We are custodians of the land.
One:         You are uncivilized natives.
Two: We are the indigenous owners.
One: God promised us this land.
Two: God entrusted this land to us.
One: You have not developed this land. You don’t deserve it.
Two: We have sustained this land, its life and its soul. 
One: What do you know of soul?
Two: We know the spirit of this land; do you?
One: We know the Creator who promised us this land.
Two: We know the Creator’s spirit deep within this land.
One: Anyway, we claim the right to remove you from this land.
Two: A right to poison our land, our water, and our children?
One: You are in the way of progress for a superior people.
Two: We have a close kinship with the land and its animal life.
One: You are living here wild anyway.
Two: That’s the kind of racism that poisoned our lives – and yours.
One: This is the promised land; it’s ours now.
Two: This is a sacred land; we are still its custodians. (Seasons of the Spirit, Thanksgiving Service 2014)

We come together this morning in worship carrying within us the conflicts of history. We come bringing with us the varying cultures and traditions of our celebrations, rituals, and worship. Even within Christianity, we bring various hopes and dreams, different memories, and diverse backgrounds. These differences reveal within us the need we have as people of faith to be thankful everyday, to confess not only our participation in systemic racism and violence, but our continuing benefits from it, and how we are going to walk the road that leads to reconciliation and reparation. 

Many, if not most, cultures in history have celebrated some kind of harvest festival where they lifted up with joy, the time of gathering in the fruits, grains, and other produce when they were ready. Of course this kind of gathering and appreciating shifts season as geography shifts, but most of the time the harvest celebrations began as some kind of dormancy, like winter, a dry season, or a very wet season, like monsoon,  were about to begin. 

People celebrate the gathering up and storing of abundance, giving thanks to God—sharing through parties and other festivities. And in this nation, because we are a society with many cultures, there are lots of stories about how, when, and who started our celebration, but all of the stories are about giving thanks for what we have. 

Our stories and traditions are about seeing the wealth we have for what it is, as well as seeing it for what it can do. Unless we appreciate that the resources we have are from God, they will rust and fade, rot and corrupt, they will, unless they are shared out to those who need to be nurtured and encouraged. Because in the end, nothing we have is our own. All that we have belongs to God, the source of all, the source of our very lives. 

And yet, it often seems as if we have often forgotten whose creation it is and whose people we are. We may have spoken the right words and talked a good game, but have often behaved without regard to the God who made us, the God who made everything. 

In our text from Deuteronomy we heard the promises God made through Moses, the promises God made about the Promised Land. When we pray with thanksgiving, we remember God and all that God has made and all that God has done. We remember the land beneath our feet. The soil itself and all that it provides through its particular fertility. We remember the water we must drink to stay alive, as it flows from below the ground and rains down from above, watering us and the food sources we need. We remember the precious, at least costly, minerals buried in the ground that we mine to create material comforts and possessions. And we remember the ingredients of the food we rely on for nourishment. We are to remember in all of these components of our lives that God is the source—that it is God who has provided, not the power of our own hands—but it is God. 

When we idolize economic independence in our culture, we disregard God and say, “I own my house because I worked hard to earn it.” But any claim about attaining what we possess exclusively through our own efforts is a God-denying act that forgets about God. 

While we are certainly created to work for what we need, what we do to satisfy our material desires call us to confess the effects our actions have had upon many of God’s children in this world. When we thank God for all that we have, we cannot forget that much of what we have was gained less expensively by us through unjust labor and inhumane work environments. The land itself that we live on was acquired by the deaths by war and disease of the peoples, tribes, and nations who lived here before most of our ancestors came and claimed to have discovered it. 

When we give thanks to God for what we have and how we live, we can’t forget those who work to provide it and those who have lived in these lands, enjoying its riches for thousands of years before most of our ancestors left their native lands. 

We are called upon to confess, to repentantly name the heinous acts that have often followed when we take possession of the natural resources we thank God for. We have to remember that the destruction of a lands or a people are not acts of gratitude, but fly in the face of the God we worship. Everything we have comes with a price, not just the labor of our hands, but the labor and sometimes the lives of others. 

On Thanksgiving Day we do celebrate all that we have and the creation that God made. We celebrate with gratitude, and yet we are also called to realize that much of what we have was taken from others. As the immigrants to this land moved west, people were forced from their homes and villages by force of arms and by misunderstood or deceptive sale or trade. Many people disappeared through diseases for which the first residents had no immunity. 

So we stand in this place in history, expressing gratitude for what we have while realizing that much of what we have was gained at many points in history by false, violent, or apathetic actions. In other words, people lied and cheated, killed and tortured, and usually didn’t really care that the other human beings who had lived and thrived here before. 

Here, in these lands, the peoples who lived here went by many names. Some of those names are Weas and Piankashaws, Kickapoos, Mascoutens, Miami, Wiandot, Kaskaskia, the Cahokia, the Peoria, the Tamaroa, Moingwena . . . and so many others. Some finally took a stand here at the Wabash because they were tired of forced removal, losing family and identity again and again. The violence escalated until some tribes disappeared and others turned into residents of reservation lands in what would become Oklahoma. That land was also taken as when immigrant people moved into it in the land-runs of 1889 and 1893.

We can be grateful for all that God has created, but not without confessing and once we have confessed, we have to act on our contrition. 

Apologies would be a good first start. Christianity carries with it the shame of conquest as well. Though our faith and the work of Jesus arose from a movement against the empire of Rome, Christianity has become the faith of those in power. We have to acknowledge our part and our subsequent benefit. 

Christianity—through Rome and into the European kingdoms and empires, flowing right into the growth of the United States as a world power—was distorted into the religion of conquest. There are lots of historical events that show us this shift from what Jesus taught to how we live, and we need to know those events. So we need to apologize, to God, to the people who were tortured and killed by our ancestors and to the people who continue to suffer because of those actions. 

And then we need to do something about it. We need to do something for children in the Little Singer Community School near Winslow, Arizona who attend school in buildings built during the depression. They have less than a 25% proficiency in reading and math. In addition to 81 students, Little Singer Community School is also home to asbestos, mold and scores of mice. Students have to carry their seats from class to class, presumably because the school can't afford chairs for each classroom. 

We need to address why and how 1 in 4 Native Americans live in poverty and continually face double-digit unemployment rates. They also lack access to healthcare and have a lower life expectancy than average. 

We need a systemic way of addressing this racism with regard to native peoples all over our country and around the world. We need to begin by righting our attitude toward the land we have gained, doing more than using it up as if it were not sacred by virtue of its Creator. We need to remember God and be grateful. We can look at the people who were entrusted with this land before and realize that our subsequent ownership and use has been greedy and wasteful. 

We need our consciences raised, building relationships, and begin a process of reconciliation the victims past actions. We need to hear what the other has to say. 

One:         Let us talk.
Two:  Let us talk.
One:   Let us listen to each other.
Two:  Let us listen to each other. 
Both:      And let us find ways to share. (Seasons of the Spirit, Thanksgiving Service 2014)

To the glory of God. Amen.

"Take Action" Sermon August 24, 2014

Sermon August 24 2014

Exodus 1:8-2:10

Psalm 124

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

“Take Action”

O God of liberation, you call us to take action, and to live in the world – a world of brokenness and pain. We thank you for all those who act on behalf of others; we thank you for those who use the gifts you have given to do your will. May they inspire us to live into your call to take action. May the words of my mouth, the meditation of our hearts,  the work of our hands, feet, minds, and hearts, be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeember. Amen.

She shook with fear, wondering what terror the day would bring. Yesterday, she had heard the cries of the mother next door as she found out her son had been killed by those in power. Her own son was blessedly alive, but every day the fear was worse. Every day she wondered if this would be the day he was killed. Her people had come to this place of fear, this place and time when they wondered if they would survive—at all. They wondered if the people in power would kill all of their sons, letting them die out slowly, or even begin to kill all of them like they were killing their sons.

This mother was like other mothers, mothers who fear for the lives of their sons at the hands of power and violence. She was like mothers who wondered what his life would be like if he did survive. She wondered if he would grow up in anger or if her love would protect him. She wondered if there was anything she could do to make his life a good one, anything.

* * *

The story really began a generation or two earlier, when one young man was sold into slavery. A couple of weeks ago, we read the story of Joseph and his brothers who sold him because of their jealousy. And by doing so, they put him in exactly the right situation for them to be ruled by him because in slavery he was favored by the Pharaoh of his day and ruled for that king.

And as our text today says, that Pharaoh had died and at least one more had taken his place—this one had no connection to Joseph or at least had no concern for Israel’s descendants. He saw an opportunity for free labor. They had been rescued by Egypt, but now they would work. They had been guests; now they were slaves. Slaves, then and now, have no voice. Slaves, in all times and places, work for the sake of work receiving almost nothing for their effort. Slaves, especially those enslaved because of their ethnic background, are stripped of their dignity and kept enslaved because those in power teach them they have no value as human beings. But that never lasts, humanity rises above that falsehood—humanity and the image of God within produces people who will not bear that weight for long.

People who are taken advantage of will not stand forever under that kind of abuse—the kinds of systems that strip people of their humanity push people to the extreme. The kinds of systems that use wealth and poverty, race, gender and gender identity, and sexual orientation to categorize and value us according to those categories strip us all of our true selves. The energy we spend, alone, trying to make sure that justice never truly happens saps us of potential and always has.

But when we watch, when we listen, when we pay attention to the best of us, we know that there are those who will not stand for the terror and the violence of oppression. There are those who will risk the wrath of the powerful to take a stand. In our scripture today, two women named Shiphrah and Puah are those people, the people who stand against power—and they lie to the face of power, too.

I chose two pictures today for the front of the bulletin, one of two women, one is holding a baby, called Shiphrah and Puah defy Pharaoh. The other is an icon called Perpetual Felicity, which refers to two women martyred in Carthage in 202 A.D. because they identified themselves as Christians and refused to offer sacrifice to the Roman Emperor. They were two women who stood up to the power of Rome as Shiphrah and Puah stood up to the Pharaoh of Egypt. They did it because of Pharaoh’s fear of the men the boys would grow into. He was more afraid of them than he was greedy to use their labor to build his cities. 

Certainly the story of the midwives and the mother who protected her son from the Egyptian murders was told to reveal who Moses was and where he came from, but in the telling we receive a teaching about what we can do in the face of injustice. Shiphrah and Puah were Hebrew women, Hebrews and Israelites seem to be equated here and into the next chapters of Israel’s history. When they were told to kill the male babies of the Hebrew women, they chose instead to lie to the king about the births they attended. And because they lied, the Pharaoh saw he’d have to be more direct. But they saved many boys, like it seems they saved the one born to the man and woman from the house of Levi. The Levite woman was the woman who shook with fear at what could happen to her boy.

The mother who feared for the life of her child could be many mothers—then and now. She could be the mother of a black or Hispanic male child in America today wondering, like my friend who lives just outside of Chicago, about her two young boys who are smart and beautiful and funny and African American. Statistically they are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than white children.[1] The mother in Exodus could be the mother of a young person of color who is more likely than a white child to be shot before he or she turns 18.[2] The Children’s Defense Fund reports that in 2008 and 2009, Black children and teens accounted for 45 percent of all child and teen gun deaths, but were only 15 percent of the total child population. Her story was similar; she was a member of an oppressed population of Israelites or Hebrews in a land ruled by the Pharaoh, a man afraid of her infant son—and all of the other sons of her fellow Hebrew mothers.

This particular mother hit on a plan to trick the powerful people into saving her son’s life by appealing to their sense of decency, or at least the maternal instinct of the daughter of the Pharaoh. The midwives had shown bravery, she knew that. Her son had survived his birth. But soon he would be three months old, so she made a basket of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with pitch. She floated it in the Nile as a last ditch effort to save her son—if he could live, she had hope. If he could live, if any of those boys could live, then her people had hope.

But you know and she knew that her son was never really out of danger—he was a Hebrew male child in the land of the Egyptians, the land of the Pharaoh who feared what he and his people could do with their rising numbers and growing strength.

In this particular scripture, the women in the story were the ones with the opportunity to subvert the power of the established governmental authority and save lives. Each one did her part, each one knew that God was behind their action, that their faith in the God of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah (the mothers of the twelve tribes) was meant to instruct and inform the decisions they made for the sake of their people and for the sake of humanity.

It is often difficult to imagine how we are to respond to the powers of destruction—we may even imagine that the power of the oppressed is the power that threatens us. We may, as white, relatively affluent people think with the mind of Pharaoh and fear people who threaten the lives we enjoy living. Many of us stand in positions of relative power and feel the need to control and direct the lives of others. On the other hand, by virtue of a broader vision, we may see the world differently and make choices on behalf of the oppressed or the less powerful. We may not think we have a choice, but to follow orders or expectations, but we do have choices, like Shiphrah and Puah choose to defy Pharaoh and instead of exercising power as control, they used power as compassion.

We aren't going to receive orders to kill Hebrew babies, but we are given choices to collaborate as we vote to cut funding to educate the youngest members of our society or when young people find it easier to sell drugs than to find jobs. We have choices about control and compassion when we respond to need in our town, county, state, nation, and in our world. We can ignore—which is a choice—we can choose to exert control and support those who do. We can choose to have compassion on others—even if and when others do not do the same. We can choose to speak up and act up in the face of controlling, abusive power.

Shiphrah and Puah acted, what will we do?

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[1] https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/what-school-prison-pipeline

[2] http://raniakhalek.com/2012/12/21/missing-from-the-gun-control-debate-police-shootings-of-unarmed-people-of-color/

Sermon August 3 2014 Deepened Relationships

Sermon August 3 2014 

Genesis 32:22-31  

Psalm 17:1-7, 15 

Romans 9:1-5 

Matthew 14:13-21 

“Deepened Relationship” 

Life is a struggle. I don’t think there’s any real doubt about that. The chances of being conceived and the processes by which we are formed from a few cells into the complex, living beings we become are difficult and all but impossible. There are a number of things that can go wrong every step of the way from those few cells to our birth. Once we are born, life is no less a struggle. It’s just different. We depend upon adults to feed, clothe, and shelter us for years before we are capable of taking care of ourselves. And throughout our lives, we struggle to eat, learn, love, work, stay healthy or get healthy after illness, stay fit or get fit. We struggle to support ourselves and our families. We may struggle to find someone to love or to love someone with whom we struggle to stay in relationship. We desperately need one another, those closest to us and those far away, and yet those relationships cause us to struggle even more, I would say.  

God knows that life is a struggle—that life is busy, messy, and full of difficult times and difficult people—the ones we love and the ones we are still learning to love. God’s actions in history are always moving toward the greater good of humanity and the greater good of all creation. And sometimes God’s actions are difficult to understand, especially in the stories told to us from thousands of years of history and cultural change.  

The story of Jacob in today’s First Testament reading continues our exposure to those stories that happened so long ago and so far away. We’ve been reading the story of God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah and with Abraham’s and Sarah’s descendants one event at a time for several weeks. This morning we read about another big event in Jacob’s life as God’s agent for his generation’s presence in that covenant. It was just in last week scripture that Jacob married Leah and Rachel. He lived in Haran with Laban for decades—he was given a chance to build his own flocks while he was there. With clever breeding methods, he increased his flocks at the expense of Laban. And over years of struggling with infertility and conflict between the women who were his four wives, his family has grown to include eleven of the thirteen children I mentioned last week.  

With God’s prompting, it seems, Jacob has decided to return to the land God promised him among the Canaanites. The land where he dreamed and God’s covenant became his. He was going back to the place he had named Bethel, the city of God.  

On the way back to Bethel, he has to reenter the land where Esau lived. Esau, the brother he tricked out of Isaac's blessing and his inheritance. So he was afraid and sent gifts ahead of him to appease his brother's anger. Then, as the text said, he sent his wives and children ahead so he could be alone, alone with God or alone with his own thoughts.  

Jacob had a lot to think about; he had had many years of experiences that he was bringing back to the land he had called home as a child. What do you suppose he was thinking about as he sat alone that night waiting to meet his brother again? And as he waited to take up his new life in the land God promised?  Nighttime was a dangerous time in that age and place. It was a time of wild animals, utter darkness, and when people then and sometimes now believed that spirits were free to interact with people. Nighttime was often seen as a time of chaos, like the great seas were a place of chaos, as well.  And then that night someone began to wrestle with him. Did he wrestle with chaos? Did he wrestle with justice? Did he wrestle with God? Whoever and whatever it was that someone wrestled with him until the sun began to come up.  

The struggles we experience in the most difficult times in our lives are often the events that are the most significant in shaping us. When I say most difficult, I don't necessarily mean just the worst things—the deaths of loved ones or another great catastrophe—I also mean times like the one Jacob was experiencing. He had come to a time of great transformation for his life. His had been a life of dependence, in many ways, up until this point. He was the younger son, the favorite son, the fugitive, the poor relation, the subservient son-in-law. Though he had been a father for years, but things were changing because when he crossed the Jabbok, he would become the founder of a nation and the ancestor of twelve tribes.  

The struggles we experience make us who we are. When we struggle to learn some skill or another, we either prevail and learn that skill or lose hope for the accomplishment behind. Either one shapes us. When we stand at a crossroads of decision: am I going to college right now?  Am I taking a job? Will I do both? Do you pursue a relationship with someone you have found you like? Will you or I seek out new friends or build and strengthen current relationships? Will you or I reach out, broaden our hearts to include those that others exclude?  

All the decisions we make have the potential to transform us as Jacob's decision to return to Bethel would change him. Oh, not in exactly the same way—but he decided to claim God's promise to him--the covenant of a nation, the covenant of a home and a family. And more significantly, God promised that God would never leave him. God accompanied him through all of the changes that Jacob experienced, the painful and the pleasant, those full of sorrow or betrayal, suspicion and accusation and those that were joyful and welcome.  

Think of a time when you have been aware of the presence of God in your life—or think of a time when you moved from a time of seeming alone, full of sorrow, or unsure of tomorrow and with time—perhaps suddenly, maybe gradually, you were assured, aware of God and had a certainty within. Sometimes these experiences are like a bolt of lightning—or like a night of wrestling when you are suddenly granted a new purpose, like the name that Jacob received. Sometimes we experience transformation over time—and we look back over our lives and recognize a moment when our lives began to turn in a new direction, toward God or God's purpose.  

Those moments may not mean moving from one land to another like it did for Jacob. The transformation that God brings in the difficult times, may be internal--that is, after all, the big change for Jacob as well. During the long time of wrestling with this strange man, Jacob persevered, and as the dawn begin to break Jacob asked for a blessing and the man gave him a new name. He became, overnight, the nation of Israel, in a way. God's promise was fulfilled. Jacob, the supplanter—a sort of substitute or cheater—became Israel—the one who struggles with God. He was Jacob, who tried to slip into the place where another was—like his brother, Esau. Now he was Israel, who would contend with God face to face, as in this night of wrestling. And, like us, his struggle that night (and the struggles he experienced before and after) were all part of who he had become.  

It could be argued that Israel had a born again or baptism experience in Jabbok. People who are baptized as adults often see the experience as a threshold moment where the shedding of their old self leads into something new. In many traditions it is customary to wear new clothes after baptism to symbolize newness in Christ. In the moment of baptism the hope is that the baptized will start the process of loving and accepting themselves as God loves and accepts us all. In baptism, we embrace and are embraced by the identity that God gives us as children of God, heirs with Jesus, the Son of God.  

In this week’s scripture readings, evening and night are portrayed as sacred times for building relationships, and receiving blessings from God. It is during the night that Jacob finds himself “alone in his thoughts,” wrestling with the memories of his past and current deceptions, wondering if he will be able to make amends. Jacob survived an identity-changing transformation and, when the sun rose, a blessed Jacob declared that he had “seen God face to face.” The psalmist cries out to God through the night and concludes by stating: “As for me, I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake I shall be satisfied, beholding your likeness.” Jesus feed a multitude with the five loaves and two fishes late in the evening. Night is portrayed as a sacred space of both hardship and joy in the scriptures.  

Perhaps we won't always have the fortitude to revel in difficulty—and we certainly aren't called upon to celebrate suffering—but we can know that God accompanies us, striving with us, perhaps wrestling with us, but never leaving us until we reenter life at the dawn of a new day.  

To the glory of God of transformation, bringing us to hope for all that tomorrow can be. Amen.