Sermon May 3 2015

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:25-31

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

“Nourished by Love”

The past several days, couple of weeks have been trying ones in this world where we live. We see, in the midst of natural disaster and the pain of national protest over racial injustice, that we are connected to one another in ways we cannot deny. We bear one another’s pain because we are one human family: Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and people of many other faiths large and small. We are all connected to one another every day and at times, when large disaster and painful situations arises we realize what that connection means--and how deeply we are connected. We are reminded that at rock bottom we are made in the image of God, all of us, everywhere.

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4)

On April 19, a young black man named Freddy Gray in Baltimore, Maryland died 7 days after his spinal cord was severed while he was in police custody. The 6 police officers involved have been charged in connection with his death. People, many clergy, have been in the streets calling for justice because of this and other incidents of injustice and police violence, but also because of the extreme levels of unemployment among the black population there and extreme poverty among the black community in Baltimore. The recent examples of police violence are not and cannot be separated from the desperate situations in which some folks, especially people of color, find themselves living.

And last Saturday, an enormous earthquake hit Nepal. As of Thursday, when I checked, More than 7,000 people are dead. Many more are injured and homeless. Eight million are affected across Nepal. One million children are urgently in need of help. Most of those who are known to be dead are in Katmandu, but there are still extremely isolated villages closer to the epicenter of the quake where rescuers have not yet been able to go. There are bright, isolated moments. A four month old baby boy was rescued after 22 hours lost in debris. But many are homeless refugees of the disaster or are afraid to enter their homes because of the continuing quakes and landslides caused by the quakes.

²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4)

In both of these situations, and in many situations all kinds of people have come together to work for good for those involved.

Besides the story about the rescued infant, I read one brief story of Turkish and Chinese rescue workers who freed a 21 year old man from a crushed bus after 13 hours of work. Rescue workers from around the world are traveling there because after an earthquake there is not shelter, no water, and often no roads to travel to get resources to places in need. But people are working together to help, people who probably can’t agree on anything else agree to rescue the injured, feed the hungry, house the refugees, and provide whatever is needed as the earth itself is unstable right. Often these situations bring out the best in humanity because we know our priorities in these moments.

In spite of  the stories on many network news shows, there are thousands in Baltimore protecting police officers, protecting places where people are receiving help, while protesting against the injustices they have witness or experienced. A small fraction of people are violent—and all are justifiably angry—but thousands more are just desperate for change in their city and the wider culture. They are asking us—Americans everywhere—there and in places like Ferguson, Missouri to listen to the stories and really hear them. One “protester laid into [one notorious correspondent] about the national media's obsession with black rioting and criticized him for ignoring stories about Baltimore's poverty, and nonviolent protests which had also taken place in the city. ‘You're here for the black riots that happened,’ said the man. ‘You're not here for the death of Freddie Gray.’” He continued, "Why does it take a catastrophe like this in order for America to hear our cry? I mean, enough is enough. We've had too many lives lost at the hands of police officers. Enough is enough."[1]

“The protester's blunt analysis of the situation mirrored what others have said about a media obsessed with covering rioters and ignoring the city's largely peaceful demonstrators. [One Baltimore councilman] urged reporters . . .  to focus on larger issues plaguing the city as the underlying causes which led to the death of Freddie Gray and the riots.” He specified, “This is about the social economics of poor, urban America.” This is “a symptom of something that’s going on here . . . look at communities like this in urban America, lack of education, lack of commercial development lack of opportunities. . . . This can erupt anywhere in socially economically deprived America.” 

The thousands who came out to protest were not the ones destroying the city—the protesters were the ones standing together, praying together, protecting one another from the police, if necessary, and protecting the police from the ones who were violent. Many African Americans were handing out water and other necessities to police as well as the people gathered in protest. This is their home. They don’t want to destroy it.

Members of notorious gangs, the names of which bring fear and hatreds to many hearts and minds, came together in a truce to protect stores from being looted. Well, not a truce, they said, but men respecting one another as men to protect their communities from further destruction. The gang members took water to the police as they guarded stores and homes. The police officer brought food and water to them, too, as they worked for their communities. (The Nightly Show, April 30 2015) http://www.cc.com/full-episodes/0tkj27/the-nightly-show-april-30--2015---baltimore-gang-truce---gay-marriage-fears-season-1-ep-01051 

⁵I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. (John 15)

The gang members spoke of people being pushed into corners until they finally had to push back for their very lives. And when they pushed back, with shouts and marches for justice, with protests against so many deaths at the hands of authorities, people outside their situation began to wonder at the extent of their anger. But their anger, and our anger, if we have understanding, is at a system that values one kind of community over others. In this case, white affluence over black poverty. Or white affluence and success over the despair within many communities of color. 

^21bthose who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. 

(1 John 4)

Different human communities do not exist in isolation from one another, no matter how hard we’ve tried to do this, say this, and enforce this in our history. What happens to one group of people has tremendous influence on all other groups of people—we know it because we talk about it from various perspectives every day. When we’re feeling drained by the needs of others, we sometimes wonder why they (whoever they are today) don’t take better care of themselves, their needs, wants and desires—so I or don’t have to. Or, if we’re feeling the pinch ourselves, we think or feel that the real or perceived abundance of another and lack of generosity or caring contributes to what we don’t have. And both of those situation contain pieces of truth—but almost nothing is worse than an incomplete truth. Because we stand and defend some incomplete truths with our lives and the lives of those we call enemy.

¹I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. (John 15)

The truth is—as Jesus said in John’s gospel that all of us are part of the vine that is one body of Christ. And any of us who do not bear fruit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control) need pruning. We need correction and connection to the one who nourishes us. As Christians, we have found that we cannot love without the strength we find connected to the vine—to one another, to Christ, to God. When we aren't bearing fruit, we are isolated, unconnected, rejecting what we are offered. We are dry, barren and might as well burn for all the good we are doing. We are branches with a choice to make—are we connected to the one who teaches us love or to what are we connected? By what are we nourished? Do we listen to the reasons the news media give us for the anger of the black community or do we listen to the black community, to all communities of color and hear about the anger, the pain, the sorrow, the terror directly and authentically? Do we listen to our brothers and sisters in Christ with love in our hearts? By what are we nourished, inclusion and connection or isolation and exclusion?

It’s not only Christians who are connected, who are loved, because we can also hear the words this morning’s epistle lesson, “because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God,” and “¹⁰In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us.” And “²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

In the stories from Nepal, it is sometimes easier to see and express the love, the mercy and compassion that people have for one another in the ways that we respond to people who are victims of natural disaster. When the situations become complicated, like in Ferguson, like in Baltimore with human fallibility and the complications of historical and communal sins like racism, we struggle to respond graciously and with love. We struggle to understand the economic history in places like Baltimore where the city council purposefully segregated their city by race after the Civil War and those historical practices still effect the generations of black men, women and children who live there. Not that Baltimore is alone, but they are a fresh example. We struggle to understand, because police officers are often put into situations where health care professionals, social workers, councilors, and others would be more appropriate, but the burden has been placed on law enforcement because there isn’t enough money in budgets for what is needed.

And though not every person in these situations claims Christian faith, Christians are still called upon to work in love, to respond in love, to reach out in love because we are connected to the vine—the body of Christ—and because God fist loved us, all of us, all of them, everywhere. As part of the vine of Jesus Christ, we may need to be pruned of that which keeps us from bear the fruit the Spirit gives us—that fruit characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control—so that we can exist in this world surrounded by love rather than fear. We can live, as we are connected to the true vine, nourished by loving community in Christ and bearing fruit as his followers. We may not be big branches—that’s not what Jesus says—but we are all to bear the fruit of our connection to him. To love even when we don’t completely know how—because who really does. To do justice and stand for justice—when people are treated as subservient to systems and other groups of people. To see what is within us that does not bear fruit and allow God to prune it from our lives.

⁸My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples. (John 15)

In this life, may we be nourished by love for God is love, so let us love God, remembering that if we are loving God we must love one another. Amen.

[1] Protester Schools TV Anchor On Media Coverage Of Baltimore Riots

Sermon January 11, 2015

Sermon January 11 2015

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

“Into Right Relationship”

God-with-us in right relationship, open us to understand the unjust relationships in which we participate every day. Inspire our concern and guide our actions with your Spirit, as we question and seek to change them to reflect your justice and love. Help us claim our baptisms in Christ as a blessing and source of power. 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. 

Have you ever met anyone like John the Baptist? Something about John drew people out of the comfort of their homes, from the culture of the city of Jerusalem, even from the regular and relatively safe expectations of the synagogue and the temple to hear something different. They didn’t go and hear a man preaching about how great they were doing, but instead they heard about their shortcomings. While his particular words don’t appear in Mark’s gospel, according to the other gospels, he told some that they were a brood of vipers, hissing, dangerous, and, I think, to be avoided. 

But whatever he said, exactly, he was talking about sin, repentance and how to be forgiven. While those who went out to see him may have come out of some kind of curiosity, many welcomed his preaching and were baptized to take away the sin from their lives. John was preaching to all who would show up—the poor, the country folk, the city folk, and, we hear in other places, the leadership from the synagogues and temples, possibly even one guy, Herod, who liked to call himself a king. People from all over, it seems, heard him and some listened and decided to be baptized, to confess their sins, this text says, and repent. 

This is a radical message—to repent is to change the way they were living and live some other way. I often talk about repentance in my baptism and membership classes about repentance as realizing you are traveling down a road in some direction you don’t intend to go, then turning around and going in the direction of your destination. If you are headed to Lawrenceville on highway 1 and you are traveling north from here, then you may need to repent, turn around and drive in a more southerly direction. 

While life sometimes doesn’t offer such obvious choices, if we begin to look closely at the pattern of our choices, we may realize that the choices we have made don’t have the goal of sharing God’s love as we know it in Jesus anywhere near them. 

Now, at this point in John’s story, without taking clues and hints from other gospels, he didn’t know exactly who he was waiting for, it seems that he only knew that he was a forerunner, a herald, a prep guy for the one who was to come. He told the people who came to see him that more power was coming after him, and he didn’t even know what it was like—he was like water, the next one came with God’s very own spirit. 

But John was one of those people who challenged what was around him, he had that in common with Jesus—the person we’ll discover Jesus to be in Mark’s gospel—but today we’re looking at John. John, who wore camel’s hair, camel’s hair likely felted into a kind of cloth, scratchy, and uneven, with a few fleas and things leftover, just tied around him with a leather belt to keep it on. And he neither sowed nor did he reap, he just found bugs and honey to keep him alive. I’ve heard it’s a good, fairly nutritious and lean diet, but I’m guessing the honey is used to just get the bugs down. If you want to eat a Paleolithic diet, really, this would be most authentic. 

Have you ever met someone like John? Maybe not in looks or diet choice, but someone who was out, sent out, called out, to call people on their sins, on the ways that people need to turn their lives around. Maybe we think of old style preachers, calling down fire and brimstone like Jonathan Edwards did several hundred years ago, talking about God dangling the sinner above the fires of hell like a spider dangles a bug. And there are other folks I’ve heard on television more recently who have decided that great tragedies like the earthquake in Haiti, hurricanes on our gulf coast, the tsunami in Asia, and even the events of 9/11 were punishment for sins they have perceived, including but not limited to the practice of voodoo and other native religions, the acceptance of homosexuality or divorce, and other things perceived as sins. 

Maybe that’s one way of seeing it . . . but that’s not the only way to call people on their sins, their need to turn around their lives. 

I’ve got friends around the country who remind me of John the baptizer in other ways. My friend, Sandhya, in Oakland, California, preaches the gospel of justice every day as she works to house the homeless, as director of the Oakland Peace Center, and as a sought out antiracism trainer in our denomination. And she preaches the gospel most Sundays in various pulpits, too. But her life centers on moving systems away from the sins of racism, hatred, fear, and unjust economic policies that keep the poor, poor and maintain the status quo based on race in this world. I don’t think she eats locusts and wild honey or dresses in camel’s hair, but she is preparing a place to experience the just kindom that Jesus began to preach after his baptism. 

I have another friend who was the pastor of a church in the south. He preached and taught that God is more about loving us into loving one another and that perhaps we are living in deeper depths of sin when we participate in or just ignore systems that perpetuate poverty than when we perform bless loving relationships between people of the same gender.  I assume that many in his congregation didn’t agree with him because he no longer serves that church—part of the ministry that he was encouraging them to do included feeding the hungry and providing places for the homeless to sleep within their building. 

For several years within the women’s ministries in the Disciples of Christ, the issue of human trafficking has been raised—though this issue isn’t exclusive to our denomination. Through study materials, conversations within workshops, and through other events, I’ve learned about many situations where people of both genders and all ages are forced into situations of slavery, though most victims are young and female. Some young people of both genders are sold as sexual objects; some boys and girls are forced to fight wars they are too young to understand; many people are taken advantage of when they are fleeing from dangerous home situations and pay thousands to those who promise to take them to freedom only to take them to factories where they never see daylight, homes and businesses where their “employers” keep their identification documents. This happens in this nation and in others. Some of those kept enslaved are tattooed with bar codes as a way of dehumanizing them and keeping track of their identities. I know of some tattoo artists who help these folks by redeeming their tattoos from marks of slavery to signs of freedom. 

Some of these situations are so heinous that we recognize the injustice, the inhuman torture and some of them are difficult because changing the systems that cause others injustice may mean giving up privileges that we call rights. 

That’s the kind of repentance that John called the people of the Judean countryside, the city of Jerusalem and the leadership of the synagogues and temple to participate in. They may not have really understood what their actions did to other folks around them—but once they heard John preach, they didn’t forget what they’d done or participated in. They confessed their sin before God, maybe out loud, before or while they were being baptized. Imagine that! 

The wild man in the wilderness was a man who lived a life of fasting and simplicity and taught the people of his land that they needed to repent. And Jesus came to him to be baptized into that repentance, into the way of life that was about over turning injustice, taking action for hope and mercy and life. I know some people have questioned Jesus need to be baptized with John’s baptism, but perhaps it was about taking on that mission of overturning what was wrong with the world. And his message came out differently than the one John preached, but there was still a call to repentance, to a life lived toward where God called, toward authentic life in relationship to God and other people a life leading toward God and not away. Jesus offered and still offers a life moving away from the ways that corrupted, that filled people with hate and fear, and a life without hope or understanding, a life without forgiveness for oneself or one’s neighbor. Jesus offered and still offers hope, grace, and love.

John preached repentance, turning around, forgiveness of sin, and baptized as a sign of those. Jesus takes our lives and teaches us to turn toward what a right relationship means. 

To the glory of God, calling us to life and life as Beloved Child. Amen.