Revolution of the Heart
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Luke 15:1-10
Jesus is many things, but I’m not sure it would be fair to refer to him as a Jack-of-all-trades. We know that he’s a carpenter, or at least that he was brought up by a carpenter. We shouldn’t assume that he necessarily picked anything up from Joseph, since we’re told he was the kind of kid who liked to wander off and read instead of doing what he was supposed to be doing. So, at best he had the skills of a carpenter. But the words of this parable betray a lack of understanding of what would have been considered conventional wisdom amongst shepherds, on Jesus’ part. According to classics and Bible scholar Sarah Ruden, to leave the ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness to go and look for a lost sheep would have been nonsensical. What shepherd would leave the vast majority of their flock exposed to thieves and wolves and the sheeps’ own propensity to wander, just for a single wayward sheep. For any reasonable shepherd, the right thing to do would be to protect the rest of the assets, to cut their losses and leave the one for the sake of the rest. Especially since shepherds were typically hired hands, the best thing to do would be to keep as many sheep safe as possible—not risk everything turning their attention towards the lost sheep.
That conventional wisdom isn’t limited to the shepherds of two millennia ago, though. This mentality persists, telling us that some loss is necessary in order to preserve the greater profit margin, the security of the nation, our comfort, our desires. In order to give us some semblance of safety in a world that loves to remind us of all the potential for danger out there. Why would we risk everything for a small piece of the community, when there are wolves and thieves everywhere we turn out here in the wilderness? This conventional wisdom shames any sense of empathy, any urge to feel the pain of another and be moved by suffering. This conventional wisdom sees it not only as practical to leave the one sheep, but as a necessary sacrifice if we are to enjoy the freedoms and fullness of life that we ought to enjoy. This conventional wisdom deplores empathy and lifts up not mere apathy, but a conscious hard-heartedness with regards to those who suffer, those on the margins, and those in greatest need of the shepherd’s touch. And still it persists, even though it is not the way that Jesus shepherds, and it is certainly not the way we are meant to keep one another.
The news this week was heavy, though not anything out of the ordinary. This past week, a truly staggering number of shootings took place in the United States. More newsworthy shootings, such as those that took place in Evergreen, Colorado, Orem, Utah, and South St. Paul, Minnesota were not isolated incidents, but three of dozens. From right here in Rochester to the middle of nowhere Washington, in red states and blue states, big cities and small towns. Motivated by ideologies of violence, personal conflicts, fear, greed, and who knows what else. The responses to these acts of violence have been just as varied. Some have responded with calls for vengeance, both in the form of the death penalty and by vigilante means. Others have responded with broader calls for violence against political enemies. Others still, have met violence with apathy, ignoring the inconvenient or the unremarkable stories in the name of protecting our peace or preserving the political narrative. We exist in a culture that continues to see guns as irreproachable, gun violence as unavoidable, and those who say disagree as anti-freedom. And it’s not just a gun problem. It’s a problem of violence, which has become normalized in so many aspects of our lives. Those who encourage and justify violence against women, immigrants, and transgender people are themselves victimized by violence.
Throughout Creation, cries for justice—true justice—fall silently, unheard. The city streets are barren, too overwhelmed and too hopeless to bear the weight of marches and rallies and protests. Or…are they?
In the midst of story after story of despair, in the midst of apathy and hard-heartedness, we saw a sign this week that God is not done with us yet just down the road in Rochester. This past Tuesday, as three men were in the middle of a roofing job in the Park Avenue neighborhood, ICE rolled in to take them into custody. Instead of leaving these behind, instead of casting sheep from our flock out into the wilderness to be fed to the wolves or taken by thieves, over a hundred neighbors from around Rochester showed up to the work site and put themselves between the workers and ICE. They used their voices, their bodies, and their numbers to successfully get ICE to turn away, though one of the three men was taken into custody. This was not the response of apathy. It was not the response of those who couldn’t be bothered to care what happened to their neighbors. It was an acknowledgement of the need to stand against systems of violence, even if it means putting everything on the line. It’s a rejection of convention, and an expression of empathy—not a sign of weakness, but proof that in our connectedness we are more capable of resisting evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
In the midst of a world where the habit is hardheartedness and empathy is a weakness, we need to hear the words again and again of Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. She wrote that “the greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart.” This revolution, she writes, starts with each one of us. It starts with allowing our hearts of stone to be broken. It starts with showing up for one another, for our neighbors, for those afflicted by violence. It means looking internally, at our own ways of thinking, our own families, our own communities. It means examining our policies around guns through a lens of compassion and a concern for life, and it means voicing criticism of those who prey on primarily young white men and lead them towards right-wing extremism. We need a revolution of the heart, a revolution more focused on helping our neighbors to live than helping our neighbors to die. A revolution that does not build up walls and fortifications but tears down divisions that we create. A revolution that recognizes that until the most vulnerable among us—each child, each unhoused person, each migrant, each queer person—are pursued, are kept, are raised up, are made free, none of us is free. A non-violent revolution to oppose systems built and maintained by violence. This is our call as members of the body of Christ—to be a part of the revolution of the heart that began with the prophets’ song. To be a part of Christ’s non-violent revolution.
The prophet tells us that there shall be desolation—and boy, is there desolation. We can witness, without a doubt, to the desolation around us. But this is not the end, Jeremiah says. And we can witness to that, too. Because God does not turn God’s back on us, even when we are foolish, even when we worship other gods. The God we worship, who shepherds us through the wilderness and beyond all fear, has no use for apathy, no interest in turning away from the humanity of our violence. Our God allows their heart to be broken, sees their body broken alongside those who suffer, and dies the deaths we inflict on one another. We are called to shepherd one another, to see each sheep as beloved, and to risk it all for the sake of the one. Not for the sake of guns or gold, but so that more and more might find their place in the kingdom of God. May we have the strength to step into this revolution of the heart, to have our hearts broken, and to shepherd one another in solidarity. We need a revolution of the heart, one that starts with each one of us. May it be so. Amen.
Whose Are We
I swear I don’t really do sermon series. But I’m starting to feel like I’m repeating myself over and over again when I say that there is a lot of really uncomfortable stuff in the Bible. I’ve only spent about two months in this pulpit, and already we’ve looked at passages in which God massacres whole cities, Jesus comes across as a mansplainer, and which have been used to prop up oppressive ideologies. And now we come to today’s gospel, in which we are told that we must hate our parents, our spouse, our children, and our siblings if we want to be disciples of Jesus Christ. We’re told that we must hate our own lives, and that we must give away everything that we have. Oof. Luke’s gospel really packs a punch here. Maybe we’d prefer the version of this passage we can find in Matthew’s gospel, which doesn't say that we must hate our family, just that we ought to love Jesus more than them. That’s just a little bit easier to swallow, I think. Even so, it can be hard for us to take in these words from Jesus, when we generally think of hatred as antithetical to our Christian faith, and when our families—especially the nuclear families described in this passage—are generally the centers of our lives.
I spent the second half of this week travelling down to New Jersey and back for a continuing education opportunity at the theological school from which I just graduated this year. When I told the staff this, Kevin’s response was “but you just finished your education! What more is there?” I went down for the matriculation service, the initial rite of passage for students at Drew Theological School, during which each student signs their name in a great big book. The book was the original registrar’s ledger when the seminary opened back in 1867, and they’ve just kept up the tradition of having students add their names to the book each year—it’s a whole thing. Part of the service is a lecture. Not a sermon, a lecture. I then stayed the night at my uncles’ house and went to two worship services on Thursday, for a grand total of three worship services in two days—definitely my idea of a good time. Going back to my seminary was easy for me. I saw classmates and professors, people I had worked with and come to trust. I fell right back into the rhythm of things, taking notes during the lectures and picking right up where I left off with the people I left behind. You probably already know that I visited the United Methodist Archives while I was down there, too, since that’s another place that’s important to me. When I was leaving the archives Mark, the head archivist there, thanked me for visiting, gave me a hug, and said “this place is your home. Stop by any time.”
I ended up visiting several different homes of mine this past week—places where I’ve become part of an extended family that embraces without regard for markers of genetics, lineage, or origin. Places where I am known, where I am welcome, where my spirit is restored. Places where I most certainly belong.
The call to hate our nuclear families does not stand on its own. It is a part of this greater passage about weighing the cost of discipleship. At the core of this passage is a reimagining of our sense of belonging, our sense of obligation. I don’t believe that when we see “hate” in this passage, we are meant to stop loving. I see this as Jesus trying to add some shock value to what he’s saying so that these large crowds might listen more closely to what he has to say. I can’t believe that Christ would demand that we abuse, neglect, reject those whom we love, simply for the sake of claiming the title of “disciple.” I can believe that the cost of being a disciple is that we no longer belong simply to those biologically closest to us, but to something greater. Not that the connections we have to our parents, children, and siblings are going to be cancelled out, invalidated, or dissolved, but that our biological and legal understandings of who falls into those categories will be expanded. We no longer simply belong to a good old-fashioned family values Norman Rockwell unit. We no longer belong simply to ourselves, to our own needs, wants, and desires.
The cost of discipleship is not hatred, it’s not self harm, it’s not isolation—the cost of discipleship is claiming our place in something larger than ourselves. It means thinking about whose we are, and recognizing that when we choose to be part of the community of God, we are no longer our own. We are still unique, beautiful, individually-created children of the living God. But, in love, we are accountable to others in the community, we are accountable to those who have come before us, and we are most certainly accountable to those who will come after us. Are we living into this call, to see ourselves not as individuals, not as mere members of idyllic nuclear families, not as needing to live for our own self-interest, but as a part of the story of Creation? Are we willing to sacrifice our allegiance to the status quo, our commitment to preserving our present reality, our acceptance of the way that we think things have always been? Will we dare to build something that honors our call to see ourselves as part of a larger story, one that does not end with us—one that has no room for arrogance or self interest?
Perhaps the greatest cost of discipleship is embracing the hands of the potter. Allowing our lives to be transformed, reshaped, merged with others into something new is scary. Letting go of the mentalities we cling to that tell us our lives, our families, our church should be a certain way—that’s scary. But this cost, the price of which we are being warned, is not new to all of us. Some have embraced it willingly, becoming part of families and communities and finding belonging amongst something greater. Others—our queer and transgender siblings, our immigrant and refugee neighbors—have been forced to find new places to belong. This call to find new places of belonging, to find new family and new community, is not always a choice. But for those of us who do have the choice, who can decide to see ourselves and others as a part of the vision of God’s Kingdom, the cost of discipleship is making that choice. The cost is claiming our place in the story, and making the space for others to do the same. That means truly knowing others, and truly being known by others.
As we are called to see ourselves differently, to open ourselves to transformation in our own hearts and in the world around us, we live into this broader vision by gathering in community. We live into this vision by meeting at this table of grace. May we build a home where all might find a place to belong, where all might be welcomed in radical solidarity, and where all might take their seat at Christ’s table. There, we will find the Kingdom of God. Amen.
The Ancestral Dinner Party
Jeremiah 2:4-13
Luke 14:1, 7-14
Imagine, if you would, that you’re at a dinner party. You can imagine a dinner party like the ones that you might be used to, whether they be potlucks at church or with your loved ones. You could imagine a black or white tie affair, if that’s what you’re more comfortable with. You could even imagine yourself reclining on cushions on the floor around a low table, as would have been customary in Jesus’ context. If you’d like, you could also picture the food that you’d have at this imaginary dinner party, although that’s not quite as important to me. Maybe it’s some iteration of the biblical Mediterranean diet that would blend in with a contemporary potluck or a restaurant that has a dress code. What is important to me is the guest list. Before you let your imaginations run too wild, I should tell you—this isn’t some fantasy dinner party where you get to choose which figures from history or which modern celebrities you’d like to have dinner with. You can hang onto those lists for another time.
No, this dinner party will be attended by our ancestors, by the people who came before us and that we don’t really get to choose. Maybe you don’t know your biological ancestors. That’s fine. Ancestors in this context will also mean our ancestors of faith, those who came before us in this church or in the church universal. You’ve all heard me mention John Wesley. He’s there. So are his mother, Susannah, and his brother, Charles. Francis Asbury, the bishop who organized Methodists in America is there. So are Freeborn Garrettson, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, Richard Allen, Barabra Heck, Philip Embury, and countless others. If you’re the kind of person who gets stressed out around large groups, or if you’re thinking about how much work it would be to host all of these people, I’m right there with you, don’t worry. It’s a big dinner party: and those are just the folks from the Methodist branch of the family from a couple generations. The guest list gets much, much longer. It stretches on and on, all the way back to the earliest of ancestors, however we determine that.
What would that conversation look like? What would you talk about with all those people? Perhaps there are family mysteries or secrets you’d like clearer answers on, or any answers at all. Would conversation flow easily? Or would we have a hard time getting along with the folks who set up a legacy that got us to where we are now? Would we fall into the tendency to mythologize, as we often do, looking only at the good parts and deleting, erasing, covering up any of the misdeeds? Would we be tempted to?
As much as I love to lift up the really cool parts of our history as Methodists, it’s also important to recognize that our legacy includes a lot of harm. While it’s worth celebrating the fact that John Wesley and Francis Asbury licensed women and People of Color to preach, we can’t pretend that that means we Methodists don’t carry a legacy of white supremacy and misogyny. It’s important to know the stories of those like Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, who had to split off from the white Methodists because of the horrible segregation inflicted on Black Methodists. Because while we may gladly welcome Richard Allen at our dinner party, we have to reckon with the fact that the white pastor in Philadelphia, who made Allen and the other Black congregants sit in the balcony, is also a part of this gathering. William Apess, the first indigenous North American licensed to preach by the Methodists, would be there. But so would Colonel John Milton Chivington, the Methodist preacher who led the Massacre at Sand Creek in which 300 Cheyenne and Arapaho innocents were slaughtered. We have to reckon with the fact that, while we would welcome both Sarah Mallet and Sojourner Truth, two early Methodist preachers, we would also be sharing a table with the men who restricted women only to teaching Sunday School.
This list could go on and on, from the ancestors who fought for LGBTQ inclusion and the ancestors who opposed them, to those who used Methodism to colonize parts of Africa and the indigenous African Methodists who fought for sovereignty and independence. The table is wide. It’s varied. It’s uncomfortable how much tension and history exists among the guests. But these are all people who have a place in our past, who have contributed to where we are, and who we are, today. We are tasked, burdened even, with holding these ancestors in tension— whether we see them as pioneers or as pure evil. Either way, they are a part of our story. The decisions that they made in their time, decisions that placed them in seats of honor and pushed others to the margins, continue to impact how we live our lives today and how we strive to be the church. This inherited thirst for power tells us that we are to have the most of scarce resources. It tells us that we ought to have the biggest church, the most activities, the newest everything. It tells us as individuals that we ought to amass the greatest wealth, get close with the highest level of society we can, and do everything in our power to preserve and grow our own standing.
While we may want to leave the power-hungry, conformist parts of our story in the past, we can’t. One of my key takeaways from this exchange between Jeremiah and God that we read this morning is that we need to recognize the ways in which our ancestors have strayed, and we need to confront those ways head on. Even when it’s embarrassing, even when we might fear a loss of credibility, even when hiding certain parts of our story seems far more convenient and far more comfortable. We can’t pretend that they didn’t happen—and we can’t pretend like they don’t still have an impact on us today. Whether their example is one we choose to emulate or one we choose to intentionally counteract, our actions can trace their origins back to those who came before us. How much of our energy is spent just trying to clean up messes from the past? Messes of climate change and ecological degradation, messes of colonialism and war, messes of inaccessible spaces, white supremacy, misogyny, and all sorts of oppression. Messes of sexual abuse, which remains pervasive in many of our institutions.
All of this isn’t to say that we can pass all of the blame for what’s wrong with the world off on half of our guests seated around the table. But we can’t let them off the hook either. Their story is part of our own, and to tell our story without mentioning them is a good way to not actually make any meaningful change. They still exist—we encounter them each time we gather at the communion table, an open table from which none are turned away. Some of you may be sitting there with the adage “those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it” going through your heads. As much as I love to roll my eyes at that cliche, there is some truth to it. But what I’m talking about goes far beyond just knowing our history. We need to talk about it, to wrestle with it, to confront it head on—and seek reconciliation. Those ancestors who came before us, the ones we’re ashamed of, are a part of our story and they are a part of the story of God’s saving love. The love that stays with us, no matter what. The love that touched even those whom we would not believe. The same love that calls each of us and all of us to take our seat at that table and look each person present right in the face, knowing that they are a part of us, and we are a part of them.
We are called to break the old habits that hold us back from revealing the Kingdom of God in our midst. We are called to look at our ancestors, in all their brokenness and beauty, and find hope for tomorrow. We are called to face the past with honesty so that we—as individuals, as a church, as the Body of Christ—might seek true, transformative reconciliation. May we do this work not for ourselves alone, but for those who will come after us. Amen.
Sabbath is for Liberation
One of the uncomfortable truths that we, as Christians, need to wrestle with on a regular basis is that our faith has long been used and continues to be used to support anti-semitism. Hopefully we have not been ignorant of the ways in which the gospel message of liberation has been twisted and abused to justify bigotry, forced conversion, and genocide against our Jewish siblings. Each time a passage comes up in the lectionary in which Jesus is seen going head to head with the Pharisees, this history of anti-semitism floats to the surface of my mind, and I get defensive. Remember we’ve talked in weeks prior about how it’s ok to not be entirely comfortable with what we read in the Bible. But, as I’ve said before, the solution to our discomfort is not to ignore or simply discard the parts that seem harmful or that give us the ick. Rather, we ought to wrestle with them, to be in dialogue with them, and to re-examine them through different lenses to see if we can find grace in their midst. So, how can we find grace in this passage, which appears to show Jesus casting aside the Jewish laws regarding the Sabbath, the day of rest?
I don’t think Jesus in this passage is going out of his way to break a rule, a part of Jewish law, simply for the sake of breaking a rule. It’s pretty clear, I think, that he breaks this rule for a particular reason—to unburden a woman who is bent over. What isn’t entirely clear, though, is why this particular act is apparently so offensive to the leader of the synagogue, who grumbles to everyone BUT Jesus about what Jesus has done. In her new translation of the gospels, scholar Sarah Ruden points out that it would have been permissible in Jewish law to break the Sabbath in order to save a life—though she does point out that this exception would not extend to non-humans. So why not offer that same exception to the woman in this story? Perhaps the religious leaders preferred to ignore her. Perhaps they didn’t see her as worthy of help, or as in need as others. Perhaps the Sabbath was their excuse for not helping, for keeping her on the outside of the life of the community. Maybe they had another excuse for each day of the week, so that they would never run the risk of feeling obligated to welcome her into the center.
Or who knows, maybe the synagogue leader was just looking for something to complain about when it came to Jesus.
I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in Jewish law, or in rabbinic teaching for that matter. But it seems to me that Jesus might have been trying to make a point about how we use the Sabbath, and what the Sabbath ought to mean. It seems to me that the very concept of Sabbath is inextricably linked to the idea of liberation. It becomes a part of Jewish law during the exodus from Egypt, the narrative that epitomizes the idea of liberation in biblical tradition. Sabbath came down the mountain with Moses, a commandment that would have God’s people imitate God, the Creator. It was a recognition of the image of God that the Israelites bore, a recognition of the body’s need to rest, and a recognition of the inherent worth of humanity. Sabbath was a radical shift from the slavery from which they had just been delivered, and a sign that God places greater value on people than on endless productivity and ever-increasing profits. Sabbath is a part of the liberation story of Exodus, an act of resistance against dehumanizing economic systems, and an affirmation of the image of God which rests within each of us.
When Jesus sees this woman in the temple, he sees someone who had not been allowed to partake in the liberative aspects of the Sabbath because of her disability, and so he takes it upon himself to offer her liberation. Now, a more traditional—what some might call “plain” reading of the text—might take the position that liberation from disability means returning to the default or the correct state that our bodies should be in. And perhaps for many disabled people, liberation would mean not being disabled anymore. But it also means having access to healthcare to treat chronic illness and pain. It means having spaces and infrastructure that are accessible, and that don’t push people with disabilities to the edge of society. For this woman at the synagogue, it was not her disability alone that prevented her from partaking in the fullness of sabbath rest and the life of the community, but also the passive and active rejection of her disabled body by the worshiping community. Christ calls out this rejection, and continues to call us to examine the ways in which our spaces, our worship, our community of faith are inaccessible.
There are others, too, who are excluded from Sabbath rest. There are workers for whom Sabbath means fewer meals on the table, a missed rent payment, or no heat. There are caregivers, disproportionately women, for whom Sabbath means that no one is looking after children or parents. What does Sabbath look like for them? What does Sabbath mean for the unhoused, for those living in fear of deportation, for queer and trans folks constantly looking over their shoulders? For our Jewish and Muslim siblings living in fear of targeted attacks? In this world where it seems like evil never tires, never takes a day off, never slows down, it is more important than ever that we remove as many yokes from the burdened as we can, and it is especially important that we not contribute even more to one another’s burdens. True, liberative Sabbath can take place only when we recognize the ways in which others are barred from experiencing rest, and choose to do something about it.
All this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t take time to rest. I hope you’ve learned by now that I highly value taking time to rest and not work. What I am saying is that the ability to rest is a part of God’s liberating vision. You may notice that this story is nestled amongst Jesus’ series of mini explanations of the nature of the Kingdom of God. Just before this story, Jesus talks about the fig tree, and just after he compares the Kingdom to a mustard seed and some yeast and so on. This act, this demonstration of the relationship between liberation and Sabbath, is a further exploration of the nature of the Kingdom. It argues that in God’s Kingdom there is room for all—all those who have been pushed to the side, all those who have been told it would be too expensive or impractical to accommodate them, all those carrying burdens both seen and unseen. It proclaims that in God’s Kingdom there is room to find rest—from our work, from our fear, from the evil of this world— simply because we are made in the image of God, and that makes us worthy. And it does not let us off the hook. It calls us out for the ways in which we allow others to go on working, completely unaided, even when they are working just to survive.
The Kingdom of God is a place of rest, a refuge in the midst of a world shaken by sin and bursting with breaking hearts. But it is not a shelter for our complacency and our excuses. It’s a challenge. How can we help others to encounter the liberative rest offered to us through Sabbath? How can others help us do the same? I know I tend to ask a lot of questions from my position in the pulpit, some of which are rhetorical—these are not. We are called to make this world a place where the weary may find rest. May our moments of Sabbath, our days of rest, strengthen us for that task which lies ahead. Amen.
Interpreting the Present Time
Luke 12:49 "I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!
12:50 I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!
12:51 Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
12:52 From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three;
12:53 they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law."
12:54 He also said to the crowds, "When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, 'It is going to rain," and so it happens.
12:55 And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, 'There will be scorching heat,' and it happens.
12:56 You hypocrites! You know how to interpret [discern] the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret [discern] the present time [kairos]?
Why do we bother with church?
Better: Why does God want us to bother with church?
To help us align our stories with God’s story. How does church do this?
Worship God: making it clear that God is good and central, celebrate God’s presence. Confidence and inspiration. Acknowledge that core reality and affirm it with energy, gratitude, and joy.
Helping one another clarify what God’s story is by looking at the past and the present and projecting into the future.
Helping one another participate in that story more fully – creating and maintaining structures and practices that invite us into living ourselves into God’s story more fully.
Prayer and other grounding activities
Opportunities for service that widen our circle of compassion
Building relationships of care and trust within our community
Other stuff
One of the principal communal resources we have in figuring out how to align ourselves with God’s story is the Bible. What do we find in the Bible?
The story of the creation of the world and the coming into being of the people of Israel.
Jesus – his teaching and actions, his life and death, his resurrection
The activities and teachings of the post-resurrection communities of Jesus’ followers.
This morning we are looking at a particular moment in Jesus’ life of teaching. It takes place as he is headed toward his crucifixion in Jerusalem.
Maybe you noticed that in this morning’s Gospel Lesson Jesus is profoundly frustrated. I hope you heard that.
First, Jesus is describing division among people as necessary Being nice and getting along is not the goal. Aligning with God’s story is the goal. We’ll come back to this.
Secondly, he scolds his audience for not interpreting the time in which they are living. Jesus is frustrated with the crowd.
What does Jesus mean by “interpreting the time.”
Think of it this way:
Each of our stories are part of a larger story. God’s story. God’s story is playing out in many arenas on many levels:
The human world
Our individual lives: how is within our own minds, hearts, bodies.
Our family and wider social circle: how we are getting along with those around us and how are they getting along with each other.
Our communities: the people we regularly interact with. How things are going in the economic, political, and social institutions which impact us locally.
The community of communities: state, nation, world
The non-human world
The plants and animals and insects and bacteria: all non-human life
The material world
Earth beneath our feet
The air, soil, bodies of water
The weather
The climate
The planets, stars, and galaxies
The Cosmos: all these things, and even what we don’t know about, all interconnected.
It’s actually a bit dizzying when you stop to think about it. There’s a lot going on.
Now, I want to say that our faith, our confidence, our trust, is that God’s story, the story that God is drawing out or drawing in, or living out through all of creation, is directed toward the fulfillment of love. God’s story is directed toward the fulfillment of love.
And while it may be that we have faith, confidence that this story is moving toward the fulfillment of love, it is also true that God’s story is being thwarted at various levels by various forces – some of them human, and sometimes even you and me.
But despite this, it is our faith/confidence/trust that God is continually at work cajoling, seducing, nudging all that is – including us – toward a culmination of divine love.
Now, if we are to align ourselves with God’s story, we need to have some sense of how God’s story is playing out on the levels that touch our lives – and, perhaps more importantly, some sense of how our lives intersect with the ways in which God’s story is playing out around us.
Or, to put this a different way, in the limited amount of time and attention we have, how can we be aligning ourselves – aligning our attention, intention, and action with God’s story – the story God desires to be unfolding?
What do we do to align ourselves with God’s story of the fulfillment of the creation in love? Where do we focus?
We all know that our attention can be pulled in different directions, and we know that sometimes it is not obvious what our priorities need to be at a given time.
Understanding what our priorities should be requires discernment. But to discern wisely, we need to tease out the story of the present time. Interpret the present time.
If we are going to align our stories with God’s story, then we need to interpret the present time. Discern the present time.
This brings us back to the Gospel Lesson from Luke for this morning.
When Jesus scolds the crowd for not interpreting the signs of the times, he reminds them that they are able to interpret the sky to know what the weather will be, and they will plan and act accordingly.
Yet they are unable or unwilling to set their hearts on what is happening in their midst: namely that God is acting in Jesus in their present moment, and that activity of God’s love, mercy, and power is provoking the authorities to put Jesus to death in an attempt to stop him. That is the fire and baptism that Jesus refers to when he says:
"I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!”
And this brings us back to the division that Jesus says he has come to bring. This division emerges because of who he is and the controversy that brings. People will line up as supporters or opponents. People’s take on whether he is a part of God’s story or whether he is thwarting God’s story will divide families and households.
Discerning whether or not Jesus is a part of God’s story or thwarting God’s story puts you on one side of this division or the other. They don’t want to discern because they don’t want to take sides. But Jesus tells them the time is coming when they will have to come down on one side or the other.
Most of us do not want to be at odds with those in our households and families. Most of us do not want to be at odds with those in our church or communities. For most of us, it takes a lot to stake out a position that sets us apart from those with whom we personally interact. It’s stressful. Most of us put a high priority on getting along and being nice to others.
In fact, I suggest that one of the reasons we may be reluctant to interpret the signs of the times or discern the present moment in our households or in our church is because there is a danger of stirring up division. And that’s uncomfortable. Discerning the signs of the clouds or the wind and knowing how they will affect the weather is not going to stir up division….
Except, oh wait. Now it can. And it does. When we begin to link clear changes in weather patterns and hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, and forest fires and micro-particle smoke in the air to greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuel use to climate change we can begin to see a lot of division.
And when it’s reported that the current government in Washington is considering turning off two satellites that measure CO2 in the atmosphere, that strikes me as a sign of the times that has something to do with whether the government in Washington is thwarting God’s story moving toward the fulfillment of love.
To align ourselves with that story of abandoning the information from those satellites is aligning ourselves against God’s story urging and nourishing all of creation toward the fulfillment of love. Moreover, to cease getting information from these satellites would be a blow against even our capacity to know what the signs of the times are, let alone how to interpret them.
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Now, let me step back from that a moment so the larger point is clear.
In the last minute or so I made or implied several claims that might be wrong. I may be wrong that:
the current administration is really considering turning off two satellites that measure CO2 in the atmosphere.
those measurements are really as important as many scientists think they are.
ignoring CO2 levels in the atmosphere is a move to thwart God’s story moving toward the fulfillment of the creation in love.
I should direct our attention toward this today.I might have exercised faulty judgment in raising that issue this morning in light of some other priorities.
But even if I’m wrong about all these claims, the larger point I want to make is this: even though the preacher may get it wrong sometimes, if a preacher is to do their job interpreting the signs of the times and discerning how we should respond, that interpreting/discerning has to be a piece of the challenge of preaching. That’s part of what Jesus is telling us in this passage. Part of our task as the church is to help one another interpret the signs of the times so that we can all better align our stories with God’s story.
Even if it raises the possibility of division, we need to take up the task of interpreting the signs of the times and discerning how to respond. Jesus tells us in this passage that being nice and getting along is not the goal. Discerning the signs of the times to help us align with God’s story is the goal.
Yes, divisions may emerge.
But here’s the thing: when divisions emerge we have the opportunity to nurture and strengthen our tools to deal with them: virtues such as humility, kindness, patience, and charity. To cultivate a life in Christ is to cultivate all the capacities for dealing with division in a healthy way.
Of course, divisions may be uncomfortable, but they offer us the opportunity to flex our love muscles, which is another way of aligning our stories with God’s story. I would go so far as to say that God invites division, in part, to enhance our capacity to live out love in difficult circumstances. We align our stories with God’s stories as we work through the divisions that emerge as we interpret the signs of the times and discern how to respond.
And, as I said earlier: the reason we should bother with church is to align ourselves with God’s story. That’s the point.
It would be pleasant to think that we out here in Fairport are somehow isolated from the stories unfolding in the wider world. But we are not. All the stories are connected. They all echo and reverberate around the cosmos.
A couple of weeks ago I went into the Perinton Wegmans to pick up a prescription and wanted to get some fruit. I could scarcely believe my eyes that the produce section was nearly empty. No berries. No melons. Because one Wegmans employee shot another Wegmans employee at the warehouse, shipments to our store were cut off.
Of course, I could have gone elsewhere to get some berries. This was not a real crisis.
At the same time, I saw it as evidence of the vulnerability, precariousness, the fragility of the systems which keep us provisioned with all the things we have come to expect. With climate change and the incarceration and deportation of agricultural workers what I saw at the Perinton Wegmans may simply be a foreshadowing of what is to come. We need to interpret the signs of the times.
Those who live closer to the margins: those who are poor, those with insecure housing, those without proper immigration documents, those with disabilities, our gay and trans neighbors – those closer to the margins live in a more precarious and fragile space. Interpreting / discerning these signs of the times must surely shape in part how we see our stories aligning with God’s story in our world today and inform how we set our priorities and attitudes.
Now some of you may wonder, “but why do we have to hear about this in church? We’ll just watch or read the news.” And that’s a good question.
So let me suggest a good answer: I think we need to raise these matters in church because for some of us, what we have already heard about on the news has alerted us to what we understand to be cruelty, injustice, or incompetence that hurts our neighbors and ourselves. Some of us are called to respond to these situations and it helps to have our grounding and alignment in God’s story reenforced here in our community of faith, in the same way as when we are facing family troubles, illness, personal economic hardship, and struggles with personal sin or grief need so that we have our grounding and alignment in God’s story reenforced here in our community of faith.
Each of our stories are part of a larger story. God’s story. God’s story is playing out on many levels:
Our individual lives.
Our family and wider social circle.
Our communities: the people we regularly interact with.
The community of communities: state, nation, world
Not to mention the wider natural world.
All of these arenas in which God’s story is playing out have their moment in the spotlight in the life of our faith community because each of us has some intersection with each of them at some point in our lives.
And this is why we bother with church: to align our stories with God’s story as it plays out across all the stories in all the dimensions of creation.
Interpreting the signs of the times in all these dimensions gives us a fuller picture of how God is continually at work cajoling, seducing, nudging all that is – including each one of us – toward a culmination/fulfillment of divine love.
I, for one, am grateful for the encouragement and inspiration and opportunity that I receive here to align my story with God’s story in so many dimensions.
I pray that you agree with me that it is consistently worth the bother.
Thanks be to God.
Waiting and Hoping
Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid? Really, Jesus, that’s the best you can do? How can we not be afraid, in a world that never seems to run out of ways to terrify us? In the midst of souring trade relations, a housing affordability crisis, ongoing wars and genocides, and not to mention a climate crisis that threatens our society as we know it. In the midst of all that, all you can offer is a measly, condescending “do not be afraid, little flock”? I would have hoped for something more. A set of instructions for lowering my heartrate, a way to fix everything that stirs anxiety in me, something. Anything. Certainly something more than that, something besides just “sell everything you have and give away the money.” Because what, something better is coming, and we just have to trust that it will get here before it’s too late? We’re supposed to wait—even as our skies remain hazy with wildfire smoke. We’re supposed to wait—even as migrants are kidnapped and families are torn apart. We’re supposed to wait—even as our queer and trans siblings are degraded, dehumanized, and overlooked?
How are we supposed to do that? How are we supposed to wait for the Kingdom while people we love are dying, while the world is ending, and nothing seems to be getting any better? As difficult as waiting can be, it’s astounding to me how good we are at putting things off. I can speak from experience on this, as I was a terrible procrastinator in school—although I must admit, some of my best work got done at 6 in the morning the day a paper was due. We’re great at putting things off, at embracing distraction rather than truly encountering and wrestling with the realities of the world around us. Sometimes it’s willful ignorance that helps us steer clear of the scary parts of the world. We’d rather look at the rosy picture, the hopecore videos, the jokes and memes. Anything but what’s actually going on in the world. Other times, we might acknowledge what the world is facing, but we’d rather not get involved. To do so would be too risky, too disruptive, would require too much from us. It would require that we have hope—that we believe that change is possible and that God’s Kingdom will be recognizable in our midst.
The year I started seminary, they had also just hired a brand new dean of the Theological School, Rev. Dr. Edwin Aponte. As a part of his installation celebration, Dean Aponte hosted a panel discussion on restoration and justice with three of his colleagues from other theological schools across the country. Two of the panelists were Dr. Miguel De La Torre and Dr. Stacey Floyd-Thomas. I don’t remember a lot from the conversation, but I do remember a rather heated exchange between these two theologians on the topic of hope. Professor De La Torre, when asked, said that he has no hope, but that his drive to pursue justice as a part of his vocation as a follower of Christ was driven, in part, by his view that we have nothing left to lose. When facing the irreversibility of climate change, the rise of violence in our communities, the reality of Christian nationalism, his thinking is that we ought to push back with all that we have because we have nothing left to lose—not even our long-gone hope.
This sense of hopelessness was not unfamiliar to me. For people my age— who grew up in post-9/11 America, who entered adulthood during or after the Covid-19 pandemic, who have never known a country at peace, and who have seen in our lifetime the very real impact of climate change—hopelessness is pretty normal. There are pockets of hope here and there, sure. But so many have become jaded by institutions that value their own power, profit, and preservation above their concern for justice and transformation. Whether it be the Church, the government, or the economy, the fickleness, self-interest, and lust for distraction has repelled many who yearn for a new world. For some, this void is filled by those who, despite not having any real hope, would rather go down swinging, joining social justice movements and community organizations. Others seek to fill this void with right-wing, alpha-male influencers who prey on those who feel hopeless, like they’ve already lost it all.
The other panelist, Professor Stacey Floyd-Thomas, took a different approach. She talked about her identity as a mother, saying that she has to have hope because she has everything to lose. She talked about the fear she lives with on behalf of her sons, young Black men, with whom she’s had to have the talk about what they can do to deescalate confrontations with police. We have everything to lose, she says, and so we have to have hope because hope is the only thing that carries us through when we are paralyzed by fear. It’s what allows us—forces us—to push on, even when our present reality makes it seem like believing in something other than what we’ve always known is just fantasy, just a temporary salve to keep us from falling into total despair. But hope isn’t just an intellectual belief. It’s not just something that we think or say or hold in our hearts. Hope is not a passive waiting. It’s not letting go of action and expecting God to take the reins and right the world. It’s more than sitting back and waiting for signs or simple assurances.
Hope is active, and it demands things from us. It demands that we look beyond the distractions and the white noise that we produce and enable. The distractions with which we engage in the world, as well as those that we manufacture here. It demands that we know our neighbors—not just the neighbors out in the world, like I talked about a few weeks ago, but the people who sit on the other side of the sanctuary. The people you may never have seen before, whether they’ve been here six times or six hundred times. Whatever it is that distracts us from embracing one another and engaging one another, that is what hope demands we let go. But it’s not just about what we abandon. Hope demands that our waiting takes on a different form, so it looks less like the waiting that Martin Luther King wrote about in his letter from a Birmingham jail—the kind of waiting that delays, and therefore denies justice. It demands the kind of waiting that shares God’s dissatisfaction with performative worship, and God’s call to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. That is what hope values—engagement in the face of distraction, action in the face of apathy, and resolve in the face of fear.
Where do you look for hope? Where do the young look for hope? Is it here? Ask them. Ask each other. Are we living out this command to wait, to look and speak and act as though we are, in fact, confident that transformation is possible, that a world renewed is coming? Or are we trapped in the same cycle of waiting…and waiting…and waiting, without anything to show for it. Our call as the Church, as people of faith, and those called Methodists, is to live out the resurrection hope we profess—that change is coming. That change has come. We are to be that hope, for the queer and questioning, for the mournful and broken-hearted, for the disinherited and dispossessed, for the disabled and chronically ill. If hope is something we value, let us live into that hope, waiting earnestly and actively. Let us not be distracted any longer. Let us turn our attention to what God is calling us to be for the world. Amen.
Things Above and Below
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21
Christmas Eve, 2021. My sister and I had stayed up late—like, really late—so that I could finish wrapping the gifts that I would be giving to my family in just a few hours. As we sat together on my bedroom floor where I was hastily throwing the things I’d purchased into gift bags and loosely covering them with tissue paper, my sister looked me in the face and said “hey, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I’m actually a woman.” I like to think that I responded as well as you can when someone comes out to you as transgender, especially when you have the honor of being the first person in their family to know. I smiled, said something like “dude, that’s awesome!” and we hugged it out. She cried. I cried. A lot. She explained how scary it is to carry that inside, even in a family that she knew would be affirming of her. But I could tell that she also felt a sense of relief, having told someone else, and in the months, and now years, that followed, she really did become a new person.
She’s still the same witty, charismatic person I’ve always known, who despite being almost three years younger than me is definitely smarter than I am. But she is visibly freer, more comfortable with who she is, and happier. She knows who she is, probably more so than many other people in the world who have never had to do the level of self-reflection that she has done. And she has chosen to live into that self knowledge, having been clothed with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of the creator, as the author of this letter to the Colossians puts it. Because being transgender, or being gay, or bisexual, or queer in any way is not to say that God has made a mistake, or that those who identify in these ways are rejecting God’s role as creator. On the contrary, living out these identities, or however it is that you are as your authentic self, is evidence of God’s grace. The ability to claim who you are in a world that sets a different standard, a different default way of being, can only be something divine. To come out into the fullness of who you are called to be is not hubris, but an act of co-creation, and a realization of the transformation to which each of us is called.
It also takes courage that many do not possess. I remember when my sister sat down with the rest of the family to catch everyone else up. To no great surprise, she was met with resounding affirmation, which is not the experience of everyone. And while that support has never wavered, our parents have acknowledged that they’re afraid of her existing in a world that seems to constantly be looking for ways to stop her from existing. In the midst of a federal pressure campaign against hospitals and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender youth. A pressure campaign that has led many healthcare providers, even in states where trans people are legally protected, to stop offering gender-affirming care for fear of losing their jobs, their credentials, or their funding. This is a campaign that is driven by fear—fear of the unknown, fear of change, fear of self-realization. And it is fear, too, that drives complacency. Fear of risking our own well-being, fear of being judged for our association with those on the margins, fear that we might actually learn things about ourselves or others that we didn’t know—or didn’t want to know. Or perhaps it’s the fear of losing status in society, the same fear that drives many white supremacists and many of those seeking to completely close off our country to refugees and immigrants.
The same fear that leads some to build bigger barns, because someday we might need that surplus grain. Even when we try to reason with ourselves that it’s just good, common sense to have great big reserves stored up, because we know even in times of abundance that another famine is just around the corner. Still Christ tells us, over and over and over again, to not be afraid. He tells us to take a step back and gain some perspective. To fix our sight not on our human means of trying to stave off fear, but on Kingdom means of overcoming fear. He doesn’t tell us exactly what the Kingdom looks like, but he does tell us what the Kingdom values: abundance, selflessness, fearlessness, and, in all these things, living contrary to the ways in which we are taught by the world that we ought to live. We are called to live fully and vulnerably, to love recklessly and in ways that don’t always make sense for our position in the world or our net worths. To be rich towards God, though, is to live fully into the transformed life to which we are called. Lives that authentically and fully show off who we are and how we have overcome our fear. There is nothing about this that is incompatible with Christian teaching—it’s actually at the very center of the resurrection faith that we proclaim.
This passage from Colossians is also a statement on how the early church understood baptism. It ends with a phrase similar to one that we also see in Galatians, that “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!” Many scholars believe that this is part of a first- or second-century baptismal liturgy, and is still present to some extent in our own liturgy, when we describe the church as something which Christ has opened to people of all ages, races, and nations. Through the sacrament of baptism, we become a part of the church. We covenant with one another and with God, to care for those in the community as we grow in faith together. Not erasing the identities that we bring with us to the community, but embracing them as a part of the Body of Christ, which transcends our human ideologies and fears. It is a call to live differently, to reject the ways in which we are told we ought to live and exist and identify. And to embrace fearlessness and wholeness in community. Because coming out is a lot easier when you have a community that will be brave with you.
In our baptismal liturgy, in this covenant we make, we also say that we will “accept the freedom God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.” This part might sound a little more familiar, since it’s the line that makes it onto t-shirts. We are called, and we covenant, to resist, to struggle. Not to let fear or hatred rule, but to embrace in loving-kindness and in sacred solidarity. We are called, and we covenant, to put all that we have and all that we are on the line—each of us in community. We are called, and we covenant, to create the space that our siblings need so that they don’t have to hide who they are, but can proudly be clothed in new selves, according to the image of the creator. That is who we are called to be as a community, as those who share in this universal baptism as a part of the community of Christ.
So on this day, and all days, remember your baptism. I was 11 when I was baptised, so mine is a little easier to remember. Remember the call to new life in Christ that is placed on each of us. Cast off your doubts and fears, and claim the courage to live authentically—in the fullness and vulnerability that that entails. And may we live into our shared covenant to live in the struggle for new life, until we are living the Kingdom values that we profess. May we do so this day and all days. Amen.
Pray Like This
I spent this past Friday night out at Hamlin Beach State Park with the Youth of this church for part of their annual Bike Trip. Bike Trip was one of the first things I heard about when I first met with the Staff Parish Relations Committee back in March of this year. It was a great experience overall, and I got to spend some time with a group of incredibly thoughtful, creative, and energetic young people, that I would really encourage you all to get to know, if you haven’t already. I won’t go into too much detail about what goes on at Bike Trip, but I will share one of the mantras that got thrown around a lot: trust and obey. Now, in this case, this phrase “trust and obey” was applied not to God, but to Mary-Beth Rumble, whom the youth had been told they should trust and obey. In my time at Bike Trip, this mantra was repeated several times, usually during meal prep and when there were complex instructions being given. While it is certainly fair to say that, if you are a teenager on a church camping trip in the woods, you ought to trust and obey absolutely, this doesn’t necessarily seem to be the example set in the exchange we witnessed this morning between God and Abraham.
Abraham doesn’t seem to be down with the whole “trust and obey” concept. As soon as God tells Abraham what the plan is for these cities, Abraham seems immediately put off. He jumps in, though much more politely than I might be if I had just been told that two whole cities were about to be carpet-bombed, leveled, and systematically wiped out by a much more powerful force. Abraham, in that moment, failed to reconcile these plans with the God who had been lecturing him about becoming the father of many, and about upholding justice and righteousness, and about how many nations would be blessed through him. Maybe he saw God as being a little hypocritical in that moment. God, this powerful force that claimed to stand for justice and mercy, was now looking out at an entire people ready to erase them from the Earth—every adult, every child, every infant.
It’s probably a good thing for God in this story that the Geneva Convention wasn’t a thing yet. Not that prohibitions against collective punishment or targeting civilians really make a difference today, but still.
Maybe God knew that Abraham would push back against this plan, and maybe that’s why, just a couple verses before the start of this reading, God has this internal debate with Godself about whether or not to tell Abraham about what was going to happen. Maybe God wanted to be challenged, talked down, told off. The Book of Genesis is full of God trying to teach Abraham lessons, to varying degrees of success. But I feel like this particular instance is one in which Abraham maybe starts to get it. Each time he lowers the number of righteous people it would take to keep God from destroying these cities, God seems to be coaxing a little more out of Abraham, leaving the door open for him to ask for more. What if there are fifty? Forty five? Forty? Thirty? Twenty? Ten? And that’s where he stops. Now, I did think about doing something with our faith stopping at ten, ten percent, tithing…but I’ll save that for stewardship season. Why does Abraham stop at ten? If there were only nine righteous people in the cities, would that have been palatable for him? What if there were five? What if there was One righteous person in either city, and because they happened to live in one of those cities, they had to suffer with the rest of their people—even if they were actually on the ground trying to change things.
And before anybody who knows their Bible tries to counter with the example of Lot and his family being saved from Sodom, go back and read their story. If they’re an example of righteousness, then the bar is pretty darn low.
And what about the children? Are they counted the same as the adults? Are women counted the same as men? Are all of these really guilty of the sin of Sodom, which the prophet Ezekiel tells us is trampling on the poor and refusing hospitality to those in need? What are the limits of God’s grace? What are the limits of Abraham’s faith?
I don’t believe that God personally tests us, though there are certainly things that happen that test our faith. Maybe hearing the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is one of those things. Something I do believe, though, is that stories like this one can help us understand how people in the past have thought about God, and can help us to evaluate how we think about God today. In this sense, I see a couple of valuable pieces of this story. The first is that God seems to welcome pushback. We often think of obedience to God as submission to God. But I believe that we can be people of faith and still argue with God. God can take it, I promise. And God is the perfect argument partner, because we know that, even as we argue, there is nothing we can do or say or think that will cause God to leave us or stop loving us. In the midst of a polarized world, we often don’t bother arguing, or we don’t argue with one another in constructive, good-faith ways. Because we don’t always trust that our relationships can endure disagreement. This breakdown of our ability to argue, to disagree and have a productive back and forth contributes to apathy, distrust in one another and our institutions, and has left for our young people a poor example of how to exist in community beyond the superficial. So let’s learn how to argue, starting with God.
The other thing that I take away from this passage, is that pushing back when we see injustice is obedience to God. These two passages today, both the Genesis and the Gospel, teach us how to pray. In each prayer, there is a form of advocacy. We’ve already looked at length at Abraham’s advocacy in Genesis, even if his demands don’t go quite as far as we or God might have liked. The gospel reading, though, is a little more subtle. Hopefully this passage sounded familiar, as it is what forms the base of our Lord’s Prayer that we say at least once a week. And it’s full of demands. “Your Kingdom come,” give us our daily bread, forgive us, “do not bring us to the time of trial.” These are all demands—not just for ourselves and our own personal flourishing, but for the community. The pronouns are plural: us, our, we. This prayer, unlike Abraham’s individual lobbying on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, is the manifesto of a people crying out to have their basic needs met and to see the good community realized in its midst. When Jesus teaches his followers how to pray, he teaches them not only how to approach God, but that prayer is collective action, it is speaking together, and it is speaking out with those in need. Not only that, when we organize to advocate for justice, our letter, our chants, our songs—these are prayers. Not because those in power are God, but because God hears those cries and stands with those who cry out.
To pray is to protest, to argue, to make demands. To pray is to be heard—by those in power and by the one who truly listens and will never turn us away. When you pray, when we pray together, may we pray ourselves to action, may we pray together in boldness, and may we pray God’s kingdom be revealed in our midst. When you pray, pray like this. Amen.
The Better Part
While this morning’s gospel reading certainly isn’t the most terrifying text in the Bible, and not even the most terrifying text in the New Testament, I have to admit that I always kind of dread when it comes up in the lectionary. It makes me a little uncomfortable to witness this interaction between Jesus and Martha. When I hear Jesus’s words, about how Martha is too worked up and is worried about the wrong things, it sounds kinda condescending and mainsplain-y to me. Does anyone else hear it that way? Hearing it that way makes me squirm a little because it makes it harder for me to forget that, while Jesus isn’t just some guy, he also is a man who was surrounded by all the cultural expectations and shortcomings that that brings.
So, maybe Jesus did do some mainsplaining. And I’m a little sorry if that’s not the way that you heard it before and now you can’t unhear it. But that’s a good reminder that we’re not always going to be entirely comfortable with all of what we hear in scripture. We’re going to hear things, or have heard things, that are unequivocally disturbing. And we’re going to hear things, or have heard things, that strike a particular nerve because of our own experiences and how we view a particular text. We may hear things differently—and that’s ok. That’s part of what makes biblical interpretation so fun. We bring our whole selves to the process, and I think that’s beautiful.
Reading this passage with that condescending tone in mind, it can be easy to think that Mary has it all right and Martha is getting everything wrong. But I don’t think that’s the case at all. That might be true in the moment, but I think that there is a false binary present in the notion that a good disciple is like Mary and not like Martha. And I’m not just saying that because the folks who prepare Sunday Dinner or who provide mercy and hospitality in countless other ways here at Fairport lean more in the Martha direction. The Church is a place of activity. It’s a place of doing, of moving, of making a difference. Welcoming the stranger and providing hospitality is a part of our calling—whether they’re from down the block or halfway around the world. Would we still be living our call as a community of faith if we weren’t doing that? If we were just a social club? We have people to feed, goals to accomplish, deliveries to make, programs to organize. We should be busy, we should have many tasks, right?
So what, then, do we do with Mary. The do-nothing, the less busy one, the one not pulling her weight. Supposedly the one who has chosen the better part, whatever that means. Mary does a couple of things in this text for us. First, she forces us to redefine what we mean by hospitality. Tradition would have us see hospitality as making sure that the house is clean, the table is set, the good wine is brought up, and there is plenty of food for everyone. It’s the material hospitality that is vitally important, that makes sure that bodies are cared for. And it’s the kind of hospitality that is usually associated with women and with femininity. That’s what Martha provides. Mary provides her own kind of hospitality. She greets the guest, listens to what he has to say, makes him feel heard. While the text doesn’t say so, I find it hard to imagine that Mary would just sit there soaking it all in without saying anything back. She was a good disciple after all. So in my mind there’s an exchange taking place here between Jesus and Mary. Are they talking about anything serious? Is Jesus telling her parables in response to questions that she’s throwing at him? Maybe. Maybe they’re discussing current events, or the state of the fish market, or local goings on. This is hospitality in its own right, and it’s hospitality that is usually associated with men and with masculinity. That’s what Mary provides.
The other thing that Mary does in this text is she disrupts this idea that to be faithful is to be endlessly busy. She disrupts this idea that in order for us to be successful or for us to prove that we are fulfilling our mission we need to keep moving without stopping. We get this idea from somewhere that if we take time in between projects, somehow we’re not doing enough, even though Christ himself takes time to rest as he travels from village to village preaching and performing miracles. Even Jesus took breaks. He would go off for a while, by himself usually, to pray and just be apart. And yet we, often, end up living like Martha, whose value is, whether by societal expectations, personal expectations, or a combination of both, tied to her constant busyness. Constant busyness which we know, all too well, isn’t something that we see only in the church. We as an American society are terrible about work. Despite the insistence that no one wants to work anymore, which is a statement that has been thrown around as long as there have been workers, Americans work a lot.
While in the past five years the average number of hours that a full-time employee works per week has actually gone down slightly, the average work week for full-time workers is still over 40 hours a week. And that’s just paid labor which doesn’t include caring for children and other family members, it doesn’t include cleaning and housework, and any of the other necessary tasks included in the second shift—the work that traditionally falls on women. While there has been a push towards the prioritization of worker well-being more recently, a push that has been spear-headed by workers under the age of 40, Americans still perpetuate this harmful idea of the grindset or hustle culture—the idea that we ought to be working more in order to drive career advancement and greater productivity. It’s a culture that discourages vacations and taking care of yourself or others when sick. It discourages and even prevents new parents from spending time with their children. And now with the ability to work from home and be available 24/7, it discourages healthy boundaries and a life beyond work. And it leads to burnout, poor mental health, and further isolation from our communities.
It’s a modern embodiment of Amos’s criticism of those who can’t seem to wait until they can get back to business when the Sabbath is over, so they can keep on harming themselves and others by their practices.
You all may have thought you’d escape this week without a mention of John Wesley. At this point I really just want to see how long I can keep this streak going. One of John Wesley’s best-known sermons is his sermon on the use of money. You may be familiar with the Wesleyan adage that we ought to gain all we can, save all we can, and give all we can. We can unpack the second and third parts of that trio when we get to stewardship season. But I want to call out specifically the first part: that we ought to gain all we can. Wesley wasn’t opposed to us earning money. What he was opposed to was earning money at the expense of our own well-being and the well-being of others. That includes slavery. That includes over-working, although Wesley himself wasn’t always great about not overworking. That includes not buying and selling goods and services that are harmful to yourself and others. And it includes anything that might harm our own health and ability to rest, as well as others’ health and ability to rest.
Whether in body, mind, or soul, the ways in which we live and work ought not to harm us or our neighbors. So our call to live differently, our call to be different from the rest of the world, or at least the rest of our society, includes a call to resist the hustle, to resist the grind. It includes a call to now get consumed by all the many things that we have to do. And, it includes sharing one another’s burdens, a callback to my first Sunday. Rather than being in competition, rather than sectioning ourselves off or leaving others to fend for themselves, we are called to create space for one another to rest. There’s a whole community of people here—lean on one another. Hold one another accountable to resting, to not doing too much. If you’re Mary, maybe trade off with Martha once in a while. In a culture that ties our worth to our work, may we resist that impulse by sharing the load together, not trampling on one another. And not by trampling on ourselves. Sharing the load, resting in community, rejecting the notion that our worth is dictated by how much we do—that is the better part. Let’s choose that. Amen.
Digging In
Deuteronomy 30:9-14
Luke 10:25-37
Well, I warned you all last week about how important Methodism is to me. More specifically, Methodist history is a big part of who I am and what I do. Some of you may know that I currently serve as the chair of the Upper New York Commission on Archives and History, and as a board member of the General Commission on Archives and History. But you might not know that I also spent more than a year volunteering at the United Methodist Archives at Drew University, and I have co-taught a course for the Upper New York Local Pastor Licensing School on United Methodist History. So, if you’re not a history person…well, I’m not going to say that I’m sorry, but I will warn you now that I like to sprinkle in stories from our ancestors of faith every now and then.
One of the stories that even the most devout and serious Methodists don’t always know is about a man named William Morgan. William Morgan was a member of the Holy Club, the student group led by John and Charles Wesley at Oxford that became the first Methodists. This group started out looking like many other campus ministries. The students would meet up frequently, study the scriptures, take communion as often as they could, talk about their faith, and fast regularly. Ok, so maybe the fasting part isn’t typical in a campus ministry nowadays, but the rest seems pretty standard. Anyway, William Morgan thought this was all great, but he wanted the Holy Club to do more for the community outside the university. So after weeks of prodding John and Charles, William Morgan was finally able to convince them to go with him to visit some people who were incarcerated in debtors’ prison. He dragged them along with him and…it went great. The Wesleys kept going back to visit the inmates at least once a week, and started raising funds to help those in debt get out of prison. Then, William Morgan realized he was onto something. So he took the Wesleys to visit a group of orphans that he had been educating and taking care of. And the Wesleys started to spend part of each week with the orphans—tutoring them, feeding them, and even hiring a caretaker for them. Her name was Mrs. Plat.
It got to the point where the entire Holy Club, not just William and the Wesleys, was spending a good portion of their time together each week with those on the margins—the orphans, the incarcerated, the elderly shut-ins. This became an integral part of who the Methodists were and how they lived their theology. I touched on this last week, when I talked about social action as a part of the Methodist theology of connection. And it all started when this man, William Morgan, took John and Charles to meet the people who had been forgotten or ignored by the rest of their society. It all started when they stopped crossing the street, and started acting like neighbors to those lying beaten in the gutter.
That’s not always an easy thing to do. It takes a conscious effort on our part to go out and meet the marginalized in our communities, especially since we have been so deeply conditioned to avoid eye contact and to not respond when we notice people sitting on the sidewalk or walking towards us while we’re stopped at an intersection. We keep our eyes pointed straight ahead, keep our windows rolled up, and keep on minding our own business. And even if we do stop to give someone a dollar, do you ask them their name? The disconnection in the world feeds and is fed by the distance that we put between us and others. Distance going back decades, created by white flight, the interstate system, and the rise of individual transportation as a replacement for mass transportation. We, as a society, have made it so much easier to cross the street, to keep our eyes fixed straight ahead, and to keep on walking—even while others lie bleeding in the gutter.
But, we watch the news. We stay up to date on the issues, who’s doing what, what the statistics are. But if that’s all we’re doing, just watching from afar while asking God, “who will go and do it for us, who will cross the sea for us—who will dig in, get closer, and make a difference?” Then we’re only halfway there. While we’re looking far away for answers and solutions, God tells us that they’re right here. The way to fulfill God’s call for us to live out our love for God and neighbor, which is all one and the same, is to look closer and to step closer. Surely that’s not too hard for us, nor is it too far away. There are people right here in Fairport, right here in Rochester who have been left in the gutter, those whom the institutional leaders seem comfortable passing by. Our call is to be different. Our call is to see each person at the margins not as a project or a person that we can save, but as those for whom we can be neighbors. And that starts with getting closer.
Because that’s what Christ is. Christ, the divine incarnate, is the God made real to us by getting closer to us. By taking on a human body, talking with people—with women, children, lepers, with criminals, and even the imperial occupiers. By experiencing anger, love, exhaustion, and even grief at the loss of a friend. By sharing the experience of working really hard at something and feeling like no one is listening to you and you haven’t really accomplished anything. And, ultimately, by being stripped, publicly humiliated, beaten, and left for dead. Christ is God, our neighbor, whose love for us is so great that it moved God to see those in the gutter and cross over to help. And, in so doing, provided us with the moral example, and the clarification that to fulfill the ancient commandment to love God with all of our heart and soul is to love your neighbor, and to love your neighbor requires you to go and be a neighbor. It requires us to get in closer, to build relationships. Because “neighbor” isn’t just defined by proximity. But it’s not, not defined by proximity either. It’s about standing with.
I would be remiss this morning if I did not mention Rochester Pride, which, as I mentioned in the announcements, is coming up this Saturday. As an aside, could someone explain to me after the service why Rochester Pride is in July and not June? Was there just a scheduling conflict with the entire month of June or is there some local history I’m not keyed into? I’d really appreciate that. While today Pride is largely seen as a celebration of community and identity, it has always been an act of neighborliness. It is an act of solidarity within the queer and trans communities, and also between allies and members of the community. It’s an organized way of showing up for those who have been and are currently being beaten, humiliated, and left lying in the gutter—whether by their family situations or by social and political violence. It’s a way for those who are queer, and especially those who are not, to break their stride and get down in the gutter. It’s a way for us to get closer, and to act a little more like neighbors.
So, how are you going to neighbor this week? How are you going to love your neighbor, to get to know your neighbor? How are you going to build those relationships, not as some salvific figure, but as one seeking true solidarity? Listen to the pestering of William Morgan—visit the incarcerated, the homebound, the orphaned. Connect with refugees and immigrants. Go to Pride! Allow yourself to be impacted by the hurt around you. Get in close, and dig deeper. As Christ has done for us, may we go and do likewise. Amen.