Sermon: B Lent 3/Amistad Sunday, March 7, 2021, How long? Not long!

 B Lent 3 UCB 2012

Psalm 107 (OL for Amistad Sunday/BLent4 Scripture)

March 7, 2021 

              When I was in seminary, I regularly lampooned and directed sarcasm at the Bible, suggested that its moral authority meant little to me as a Christian.  I found very little eternal meaning in its pages.

           In the dreaded Middler Orals at Eden Theological Seminary, the seminary student is brought before a panel of three faculty members and quizzed and questioned on every theological issue under the sun.  One of the professors on my panel knew of my disdain for Scripture and sought to bring that forward for the other two faculty members to see.  By that time in seminary, I had decided I was not going to die in a ditch created for me by someone else.  At the time, my seminary was at war with itself, and too often seminary professors took out the differences of opinion they had with each other out on the students.   

           And I was changing in seminary.  I had one of the most gifted New Testament professors, the foremost Gospel of Thomas scholar in the world, who taught us the basics, encouraged critical insight, did not allow us to be lazy with politically opportune translations, and someone who sparkled when we investigated the text.  Like Steve, I began to delight in the work required to do Biblical investigation and find its meaning.  But during Middler Orals, I certainly was not going to display the transition I was going through, believing that would have conveyed theological weakness to at least one of my professors who wanted my Biblical certainty. 

           And Steve, my New Testament Professor, helped me even further when I would call him about a particular text for a sermon—usually late on a Saturday night!  Here I was, calling my New Testament professor out of the blue, and he was taking the time with me to look at the Scripture.  It was like going through a mini-class of Biblical CSI.  I would hear Steve working through his analysis over the phone, looking at the Scripture through four different angles, and delighting in a new perspective or understanding he had found right in that moment.   This was usually followed by me saying, “How am I supposed to preach THAT?”  And Steve would respond, with a smile in his voice, “Mike, my friend, that’s why they pay you the big money!”

           I retained my critical eye for Scripture, but I began to see real life truths that emerged from ancient stories and mythologies.  I began to see Biblical authors working the tradition—passing it on, repeating it to remind people that the story could be heard echoing into a new time, reshaping it and reformulating it for their day.  I saw a deep tradition beginning to reveal itself to me. 

One of those deep, deep stories had to do with the prophets, the truth tellers to power.  Something courageous within the heart of prophets placed them as intermediaries between God and the people. 

The prophets experienced the pain and suffering of God in a very real way.   I think I too often forget to relate that to you as a congregation, but relating the heart of God is done so well by the Biblical prophets.  God’s heart is full of revelry and joy when people live in right relationship with one another.  The prophets relate that God delights in us.  Like a small child, God is gleefully clapping hands, making music, and singing along.  At the same time, when God witnesses us taking advantage of the most vulnerable, the prophets share that God moans and grieves, openly weeping.  God’s heart is broken.  Almost like a young lover who sees her sweetheart in the arms of another, God feels jilted and scorned by such behavior.   So the prophet is given the job of relating God’s busting-at-the-seams joy with the people.  Or God’s disappointment, sorrow, and anger to challenge people in power—to communicate God’s joy or pain.

But the prophet also, as intermediary, must relate the pain of the people to God.  The people wonder, “Is God listening?  Does God care?  Where is God?  Why is God not present when God promised?  Why must our people suffer?  Why must our people go on living in such pain?”  And the prophet is, at first, when called to respond to the pain of the people by God, somewhat reluctant.  But when immersed in the struggle, feeling the pain the people feel, and wondering whether God’s character is to be believed, the prophet snaps, and begins to ask the perennial question:  “How long, O God, how long?  How long must your people suffer in pain and degradation?  How long must they go about suffering the stinging blows of their oppressors?  How long must they live in slavery, prison, and torture while you sit idly by, O God?  Where is your providence and care for us now, O God?  You promised.  And we see no evidence that you are active, alive, and up from your slumber, keeping your promises.  How long, O God, how long?”  The prophet first wants to know if God is woke.

Finally, returning from a God who listens, attends to, and answers prayer, the prophet communicates God’s hope against hope in the midst of despair.  The prophet seeing with God’s eyes has more clarity than most, and envisions the coming new day.    The prophet returns from prayer newly aware how they and their people are responsible for joining together with God in making a new creation.  And so the prophet begins to describe the contours of the new creation so that the vivid detail might goad us into collaborating with God to bring it about.  The prophet communicates that God is active and ready to act as God has done of old. 

March 25, 1965, Montgomery, Alabama.

 

I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long,  Because "truth crushed to earth will rise again."

 

How long? Not long, because "no lie can live forever."

How long? Not long, because "you shall reap what you sow."

How long? Not long:

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne,

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And, behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow,

Keeping watch above God’s own.

 

How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

How long? Not long,  because:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; God is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

God has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword;

God’s truth is marching on.

 

God has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;

God is sifting out the hearts of all before the judgment seat.

O, be swift, my soul, to answer God! Be jubilant my feet!

Our God is marching on.

Glory, hallelujah!  Glory, hallelujah!

Glory, hallelujah! Glory, hallelujah!

God’s truth is marching on.[1]

 

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.  This quote from Dr. King is the sentiment expressed in our psalm for today.   But . . . we acknowledge, as Ta-Nehisi Coates said, the arc did not bend for so many of the people enslaved on the Middle Passage, African-American communities segregated, lynched, or set on fire, Trayvon Martin, or Tamir Rice, or Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, or George Foster.   

It was Ibrahim X. Kendi, the director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research, where he’s the Andrew W. Mellon professor in the humanities, who, in remembering the longer arc of history, reminded us that when African American people have exercised their right to vote, have exercised their right to hold office, or have exercised their right to be free, they have experienced a consistent push back of white supremacist mob violence over the course of 400 years.   Professor Kendi points to what the super wealthy have done to all of us—the disinheritance they have created, the pressure they have put on our economic system to be like rats racing around for the fewer and fewer resources.   And many of us white folk who have suffered, even more so during pandemic, had their anger educated that the source of their suffering was not corporate elites but those Latinx invaders, those Black anarchists, or even antifa protesting in Portland.  You didn’t lose an election, they were educated to believe, you had it stolen from you by African American voters in Atlanta, and Philadelphia, and Detroit.  When that is repeated and hammered day after day, why wouldn’t they believe it?  Professor Kendi asked in referencing the capitol insurrection “What did you think they were going to do?”[2]

As people of faith in a largely white church, we must take up the task of confrontational education and protest so that the white supremacy abounding in this country is met and stemmed by an other-hearted people who remember the courage of their faith ancestors and hold the purveyors of violence accountable and will not stop until all God’s children see themselves as sisters and brothers, siblings and cousins.  We must rise to that task

Dr. King and that Psalmnist are not about optimism.  They are about a hope against hope.  There is no evidence but for God’s character that a people ground in suffering is not God’s plan and purpose.   Psalm 107 reminds us that God’s purposes are being worked out.  God is active and moving.  Providence is knowing that God is active and moving on our behalf, particularly as we found ourselves enslaved, broken, or economically destitute.

But hear these words very carefully.  They are not spoken from a place of power and privilege.  For when these same words are spoken from places of power and privilege, they become justification for genocide and slaughter.  God does not trample out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored to declare supremacy for one people over another.  No!  That wrath is to rightfully restore those who have had their own humanity taken from them, left broken and hurting along the road of life, so that they might know God is their advocate to restore and redeem them to human community.

That it is not in God’s character to leave us in desolate places, hungry and thirsting.  So where we see people redeemed from such troubles in the world, we know that God is at work. 

Even those who end up in prison and hard labor from their own actions and rebellion against God, when they cried to God, it was not in God’s character to leave them in chains and behind bars.  Where we see people freed from their chains and brought forth into the light of day, we know enough to say that God is at work.  

Some people are caught in their own sinful ways and find themselves caught up in destructive ways of being and close to death’s door, and they wake up from their nightmare and call to God, and it is in God’s character to forgive and heal.  So where we see people delivered from their own paths of self-destruction and healed, we know for certain to say God is at work. 

Repeating over and over again, as a mantra, Psalm 107 tells us that where the oppressed are liberated, the hungry are filled, creation is renewed, the needy raised up, and the politically powerful brought low, God’s purposes are being worked out.  It is not so much that God does these things through His power but rather through Her persistence and endurance, acting in love along that long moral arc so that right relationships are built in our personal lives, in our families, in our schools, in our community institutions, in the systems and structures of our government, and throughout our world. 

It is in the nature of God’s character, that God’s providence is found in His persistence and not in Her power.    That is the claim of Psalm 107, that God wills and wants our liberation from anything that would destroy us, even if what would destroy us is self-inflicted, so that we might experience joy. 

Can we possibly hear the good news that God wills and wants and works hard at delivering us from what would enslave us from the outside and what would enslave us from the inside as well?

This is what those Congregationalists believed, one of the historical denominations that came together to form our beloved United Church of Christ, against all odds, when slavery was still the norm in our country and a group of would-be-slaves revolted, took over the ship, La Amistad, and turned the ship back toward Africa during the day.  At night, the Cubans who had formerly been steering the ship, reversed course until the zigzagging ship landed in Long Island.  The Africans were jailed and charged with piracy and murder.    Congregationalist Lewis Tappan headed up the Amistad Committee, that was the precursor to our present-day United Church of Christ Global Ministries Board.   It is the courageous history in Jackson of abolitionist papers like the American Freeman and the Sentinel and Jackson’s history in the Underground Railroad.

In God’s great providence, not in power over, but in persistence and endurance, this church has been part of the long moral arc that bends toward justice.  

And I think that continues to be.  That Biblical story I have come to love so well, the prophet who cries to God, “How long, O God, how long?” is repeated in age after age.  Let us as a church in matters of justice, continue to join with those in our local community and throughout our world, to say for another year, “How long?  Not long.” for we know God’s providence and purpose are being worked out through St. John’s United Church of Christ.   We communicate through our many and varied ministries and missions that the arc of the moral universe is long and that we believe God intends joy for the people in our church community, for those in Jackson, in Michigan, and for all of God’s creation.  How long?  Not long. 

The Bible teaches that persistently and with endurance, God’s Truth is marching on.  And we are marching in the light of that same God.  Glory.  Hallelujah.  Glory!  Hallelujah!  And thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] http://www.mlkonline.net/ourgod.html .  I have edited the speech to make language for the speech divinity gender neutral and language for humanity inclusive and expansive.  lThe video of this portion of Dr. King’s speech can be found at:  www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAYITODNvlM 

[2] “Ibram X. Kendi & Keisha Blain on Impeachment, White Supremacist Violence & Holding Trump Accountable,” Democracy Now!  February 10, 2021, https://www.democracynow.org/2021/2/10/ibram_x_kendi_keisha_blain_impeachment,

Trinity Sunday, "Divinity as community process," May 27, 2018

B Trinity BFC 2018

Isaiah 6:1-8; John 3:1-9

May 27, 2018

            I grew up in a town and a local church that was highly suspicious of people who wanted to talk too much theology.  Folks were very suspicious of intellectual dialogue just for the sake of that dialogue.  After all, who really cares if Jesus is of the same substance of God, a similar substance of God, and if the Holy Spirit proceeds forth from one or two parts of the Trinity?  I could really give a flying fudgecake.

          One of the most prolific and authoritative theologians at a seminary of German ancestry, like my alma mater Eden Theological Seminary, was Jürgen Moltmann.  Moltmann is considered one of the most preeminent theologians on the Trinity, and I absolutely hated reading his material.  He made up, excuse me, he believed each person of the Trinity had distinctive tasks or roles and believed that their given names were Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Using theology better developed in the Eastern Orthodox church, Moltmann argued that no one person in the Trinity was God.  When those persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, came together in mutual love and community, however, they were the one in three, three in one God. 

          Moltmann’s Trinity was and is a critique of Western individualism.  If we understand God to be a single, free, individual monad, then do we not aspire toward divinity by being a single, free, individual monad—to stand alone, outside of relationship?  The Scripture passages we have before us today offer a similar critique.  The prophet Isaiah, critical of a nation that believes God is forever with them and in the midst of them, suggests that God sits on a throne as judge, transcendent, far removed from the injustice practiced by the Israelite people.  Isaiah’s God is a critique of his own nation’s domestication of God.  God was readily invoked to be whatever the people wanted God to be and, in the process, had lost a wildness, a fierceness, that could challenge the status quo. 

          In John’s Gospel, the Pharisee Nicodemus comes to Jesus seeking to keep all of his understandings of God intact.  Jesus suggests to Nicodemus that far more is required.  New birth is required.  New understandings are necessary.

          Theology is really about the task of making meaning, of deciding what we will give our lives to intellectually hoping our hearts will follow.  Some time ago our denomination, the United Church of Christ, did branding that suggests our faith must grow and evolve to remain relevant.  Some of that branding was a little cheeky, which made it all the more popular, “Our faith is 2000 years old.  Our thinking is not,” was one of those phrases printed on bumper stickers, pins, and t-shirts.    I think most of us agree that one of the meanings of that statement is that we did not stop making meaning long ago.  We continue to think about who God is and who we are in relation to God.  Faith also demands that we ask what that meaning making requires of us.  If God is not only Father but Mother and Father, what does that theological statement require of us?  If we now understand gender and sexuality as a spectrum and non-binary, how do we then personify what we know to be divine as faithful?

           People of progressive faith have yet to work out what the building blocks are for teaching our children progressive faith.  For so long we found ourselves caught between two poles.  One pole was to abandon all rite, ritual, and structure to teach our children other religious faiths, throw in some ethics and a mission trip, and make believe that all answers are beautiful, insightful, and worthy of praise.  Or  . . . we just abandon structure altogether and hope our kids come back to us when they turn 45.  Or . . .  teach our children the faith we learned and hope that they grew out of it like we did.   

          What if, just what if, instead we taught our children how to make meaning not only by the content we offered them each week but also by the process we offered?  What if we distinguished sacred time with structure that included a tent and a fire and a table and ritual and getting connected and hearing our own answers, with boundaries, offered in prayer?  Such that, our children knew that not every zany, wild answer was correct, but if you could be seen trying to make meaning, that was valued and cherished.  What if we repeated that we are a child of God every baptism over and against a culture that undermined your image and taught you to fear?

          What if we gave our children and youth not the right answers at every stage of development but the right questions—good, difficult, meaning-making questions?  And then we tried to answer those questions with our children, wondered aloud with our children, pushed them when we sensed immaturity, praised them for answers that showed hard and difficult work, provided space for answers different than ours,  put them in front of another set of adults who might provide an array of diverse but centered answers, and even showed ourselves growing by coming over to their well-struggled and discerned answers? 

          Talking theology is about making meaning, but talking theology is also about growth.  To begin talking about what we believe is to begin talking about what we will give our heart to, our will to, our whole being to.   We recognize, like so many of the saints who have gone before us, that we are caught somewhere between the world we live in and who we truly want to be in that world.  Like Jürgen Moltmann establishing the Trinity as a way of drawing us toward the community God wishes and wills for all of us, we must make meaning, do the hard work, to decide who God is, to be drawn toward that understanding of God.

          Though we tell ourselves we do not believe in a vengeful or cruel God, sometimes we do not do the hard work to make meaning.  And so, in difficult times, there we are again, finding ourselves straining to appease a vengeful and cruel God.  This time we will get it right, we tell ourselves.  We are just respectable enough now.  We are just starting to like ourselves now, that we reach out thinking that now this God will accept us.  And our hand withers reaching out for such a God.  We end up becoming the thing to which we aspire.  We end up becoming vengeful and cruel, other people unable to reach out their hand to us.

          That is why having a safe community where we can speak about such things is so important.  When we speak about a God we would never give our heart to in the first place, we have companions, accompaniers, people who walk the hard road with us to measure us and give structure to the meaning we make.  What new image or metaphor for God would call you to those values you truly do hold?  Who do we say God is for our children in a concrete but expansive way that helps them understand but also allows for them to spiritually grow?

The prophet Isaiah called his nation to a God who stood outside the nation’s courts, in a heavenly court that could not be co-opted by political power.  Jesus called Nicodemus to a God who did not want reform but radical transformation.

          We need to talk about who God is today—as a congregation.

          In a former congregation a parishioner shared with me that she was frustrated my sermons seemed only half-finished.  She said that just when she thought I was going to give the answer she had been waiting to hear, I stopped.  I shared with her that in a church based on congregational polity, I am not supposed to have the answers.  You, in conversation with each other, are supposed to have the answers.  That was in a dialog sermon where I asked the congregation, “Prove to me that David Koresh, the Branch Davidian cult leader, is not the Messiah.”  Even after we had practiced several dialog sermons to that point, had had interesting and lively discussions, nobody raised their hand for that question.  They did not have any answers.  So I walked back up into the pulpit.  With no answers.  And as I turned my back, this parishioner spoke up.  I could tell she was frustrated.

          I might say that no one of us has anything true to say about God but that when we come together in discussion, dialogue, and sharing, we truly express who God is and how God is moving in the world.  I think that is what Jürgen Moltmann meant when he shared that no one person of the Trinity is God but that when each person of that Trinity comes together in mutual love and community, that is God.  That metaphor, image, or concept calls us away from the individual salvation so long preached in our world today.

          Still, I am not really sure about this Trinity idea and how it all works.  I am sure that we should make meaning together, that we should ask ourselves what metaphor, what image, what name for God draws us out to a deeper reality, to a God who encourages our growth and life.  We should work on it and struggle with it so that we develop a critical skill and become very suspicious of easy answers.  We should grow.  If we still have the primary metaphors for God that we had when we were children, have we grown or is our faith a romance for what church used to be?  My experience is that many of us, myself included, worship at the altar of a god who is somehow connected to a romantic notion found in our past.  We would rather that God not be so wild, untamed, and undomesticated.  We’re really not too sure we have faith in a loving God.  Because if God gets away from us, will we be left behind?  You know, when the rapture comes? Or when God moves once again and we are called to spiritually grow . . . once again.  Like Isaiah called the royalty of Israel to do.  Like Jesus called Nicodemus to do.  “Come, don’t be afraid” God beckons, smiling from ear to ear, “you have forgotten how to play.  Let’s play.”  Amen. 

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent, November 27, 2016, "Behaving Badly"

Advent A1 OL BFC 2016

Isaiah 1:10-28; Matthew 3:1-12; Psalm 42

November 27, 2016

          In chapter 1 of the great prophet Isaiah, God entreats us, “Come now, let us argue it out,” says the Holy One, “though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.  Come now, let us argue it out.”  Never has a singular passage made it so clear that what God wants is relationship with us.  Isaiah, the prophet, believes that God has a case against the people, but enjoining the people, God wants to hear their side of the story.  “Tell me, so I understand,” God seems to be saying, “help me figure out how you could have gotten it so wrong.  Don’t hold back.  Don’t pull punches.  If you have something to say, make your case.”

          Some scholars believe that the first chapter of Isaiah is the prologue for all of the latter prophets, prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, all who spoke from the Eighth Century B.C.E. forward.[1]  All of these prophets understood judgment and hope as the two sides of one coin.  This same understanding is part of the gospel text we have with John the Baptist preaching repentance to the people in the Jordan River.  Repentance is not about hell-fire and damnation.  Repentance is about purification leading to a different set of values, a different way of being in the world that shows we have chosen a different path. 

          These prophets hear the same message from the people in protest, “But we are the chosen people.  We are the people of Judah and Jerusalem.  We are the people who regularly go to church and do our religious duty.  We are the ancestors of Abraham and Sarah.”  To the prophet, these are empty titles which do not recognize what God truly desires—to protect the weakest in their communities, the widows and the orphans, by doing justice.  I know I have preached it several times before, but I believe it is worth hearing again and again.  There are several places where God refuses the people’s worship because they continue to do injustice.  But nowhere in the Bible, absolutely nowhere, does God refuse the people’s justice because of the imperfect way they pray, or sing hymns, or do worship.  It is one of the most common themes throughout these Latter Prophets:  God refuses the people’s worship because of their unwillingness or inability to do justice. 

Isaiah clearly states in this passage that God will not accept the worship practices, religious observances or festivals, because of their violence and injustice.  Their hands are full of blood.

John the Baptist, much like the Hebrews walking in the wilderness, does not depend on the Roman meal for his food.  He practices repentance.  He eats locusts and wild honey as a way of showing his independence from Rome and dependence on God.  John screams along Jordan’s shore, that the axe is being laid to the root of the tree because the whole system is sick and diseased.  No good or real fruit can come from running the world in this way.  In this judgment, asking for people to show their repentance, this is our hope.  We recognize that we cannot re-make the world without God and God will not re-make the world without us.

As we begin this Advent season, we remember early followers of Christ who believed God was acting to continue the story of salvation during a dreadful time in human history.  They created a narrative that ran counter to the violence and death and injustice and night they found all around them.  Dawn was breaking and they knew they were to pay attention to the breaking of that dawn.  They were practicing repentance.

Rev. Grant Gallup said of early Christians:

Our believing ancestors thought of themselves as the subjects of their own history, for they were The Story and they were the tellers of the tale.  They were wide awake dreamers of wonderful dreams, in a world of nightmares, and they were awake to tell the dreams.  They brought light into a world of shadows.  They brought hope into a world that had lost its hope and lost its way.  They had been told by the God who visited them in Jesus that they were Light in the world.

 . . . God saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins but as a mother saves her child from danger and delivers it to safety and health and maturity and responsibility . . . [2] 

I love that line.  “God saves us not as a pinchpenny saves coins, but as a mother saves her child from danger and delivers that child to safety and health and maturity and responsibility.”  God does not save us to continue the same violence and death and injustice and night.  God saves us to be the fruit of a different tree.  God saves us to be people who bring health and maturity and responsibility to our community and our world.  We are to be the actors not the acted upon, the subjects of salvation not the objects done in by the violence, death, injustice, and night that surrounds us.  We cannot save the world without God, and God will not save the world without us.

          Too often, in the church, we have acted too courteously when God has asked us to be lovingly confrontational, too polite when God has asked us to protest in truth, too respectable when God has asked us to be resolute in seeking out justice for the most vulnerable among us.  “Come, let us argue it out!” God says, the Holy God who desires not platitudes or a fake politeness, but a real relationship with us.

          Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, the Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church at Harvard University since 1974, spoke at the United Church of Christ General Synod for our 50^th Anniversary.  Speaking as an American Baptist in the mist of New England Congregational heritage, a heritage that is part of Billings First Congregational Church, Rev. Dr. Gomes showed his appreciation for the United Church of Christ, saying that we have led out on every important social movement in this republic.  But, he said, one of the greatest things we could do in our own time is “to overturn the climate of low expectations” in mainline churches.  People in communities like Billings have very respectable expectations of local UCC churches, and it is our job to turn these respectable expectations upside down. 

          He went on.  We give the occasional heifer (referring to the Heifer Project), have the funeral for the respectable person, every once in while marry the person not so respected.  “Here is a chance,” Gomes said with a smile, “for a great church to behave badly.”

          As Congressperson John Lewis said after his sit-in on the Congressional floor to protest the lack of collegial courage around gun violence, “Sometimes you have to find a way to get in the way.  Or get in trouble.  Good trouble.  Necessary trouble.”[3]

          What do we think of that wild-eyed prophet calling for repentance out by the Jordan River, eating bugs and wild honey for lunch?  Do we think he cared more about individual respectability or the world’s salvation?

          Is it possible in a United Church of Christ Church, that our best days are ahead of us?  Many mainline churches have a habit of acting like their heydays are all in the past.  As in, “Oh, you should have been here back then.”

          Gomes ended his speech by wondering aloud whether all the history of the United Church of Christ was leading up till now, a time for us to act with conviction and character . . . with a hope that God is still acting and speaking.  What Rev. Dr. Gomes wanted to know is, “Are we still listening?”

          “Dare it be said,” he challenged, “dare it be said, that the last 50 years (the whole of our life as a denomination), the last 50 years were mere prologue for what is to happen, for whatever role you were meant to play?  Dare it be said that your founders simply began what it falls to you to carry on and complete?”[4]

          Dare it be said that all of those people who began Billings First Congregational Church, that they simply began this incredible project that now falls on us to carry on and complete?  As we look at the violence, injustice, night, and death that surround us in this time, a time not unlike the time of Christ, we may be the Light of the world, the subjects of our own history.  So here we are, sisters and brothers of Billings First Congregational Church.  Here we are.  This is our story and we are the tellers of the tale.  Amen.

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[1] J Clinton McCann, “Commentary on First Alternate Reading—Lectionary for August 8, 2010”  WorkingPreacker.org, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=8/8/2010 .

[2] Grant Gallup, “First Sunday of Advent A,” Homily Grits, http://rci.rutgers.edu/~lcrew/homilygrits04_05/msg00020.html.

[3] “Interview with Congressperson John Lewis,” The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, September 1, 2016.

[4] Rev. Dr. Peter Gomes, Synod in the City, United Church of Christ General Synod, Hartford, CT, June 26, 2007.

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time, May 29, 2016, "Yes, please"

C Proper 4 9 Ord BFC 2016

Galatians 1:1-12

May 29, 2016

        Paul’s writing to the Galatians tells one of the great stories in Christian faith—in keeping with the United Church of Christ’s “God is still speaking” identity campaign.  For Paul believes that he has been given special insight into world-transforming news of a breakthrough, of God doing something new in the world.

Our Scripture reading today is a letter.  And we know the meaning of letters by what is said in the body of the letter.  One is to read the salutation, the conclusion, and the closing in context with the body of the letter defining the whole of the letter’s meaning.  Found in the body of Paul’s letter to the communities in Galatia, Paul uses the most ancient baptismal formula of the Christian Church to tell us what this world-transforming news of the gospel is all about.  That ancient baptismal formula goes something like this: “You are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or freeborn, male and female.  Instead, you all have the same status in the service of God’s Anointed, Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:27-28)  Paul writes in the 1^st Century, when a familial system based on patriarchy, an economic system built on slavery, and with Jews and Greeks killing each other at alternate civic events, making that baptismal formula a radical, life-altering baptismal formula. 

Imagine a baptismal formula that brought people of different cultural and religious backgrounds, diverse socio-economic status, of various gender and sexuality labels all around a table to break bread in love.  I would want to be a part of a project like that.  Wouldn’t you?  That is what the church, in Paul’s grandest dream, communicated in the letter to the Galatians, is supposed to be. 

Imagine baptisms based on ending those labels or divisions religiously and culturally, socially and economically, and based on gender and sexuality polarities.  That is not avoiding the Bible to be more loving and progressive.  That’s Bible.  And, at the end of this sermon, I’m going to invite all of us to an opportunity to live out the book of Galatians in the city of Billings.  So people get ready. 

As I stated, the idea that God is doing something new and bringing new life and building new community is contained in that wonderful UCC identity campaign, “Never place a period, where God has placed a comma.  God is still speaking.”  That first sentence is from Gracie Allen to her husband and comedic partner George Burns.  When Gracie died, George found himself bereft with grief.  Until, one day, he found an old note from Gracie that seemed like a love letter from heaven.  It was her last letter to him, telling him to buck up, that he should never place a period where God has placed a comma.[1]  Word is that this found letter assuaged George’s grief so that he might go onto tremendous success as a solo act, including playing the role of a genial and benevolent God with a great sense of humor..

As Gracie Allen and George Burns might both counsel ways to be open to possibility and new life, so I have found that to be true with two comedians who have become family favorites.  In our two most recent road trips, we picked up the audio recordings of two Saturday Night Live alums, comedian Tina Fey, her book, Bossypants, and often her partner in crime, Amy Poehler, her new book, Yes, Please.  I highly recommend both books.  They had us laughing, tearing up, and admiring the courage of two women who are doing their level best to be genuine leaders in the world.  I believe one of the most meaningful parts of each book was when they described what improvisational theater has meant to their lives.  And how the rules for improv might provide lessons for everyday life.  Hear in these descriptions of improvisational theater an openness to new life and new possibilities—arms outstretched.

I’ll start with Tina Fey first.  She writes that the first rule of improv is to agree.  Always agree and SAY YES. When you’re improvising, this means you are required to agree with whatever your partner has created. So if we’re improvising and she says, “Freeze, I have a gun,” and you say, “That’s not a gun. It’s your finger. You’re pointing your finger at me,” our improvised scene has ground to a halt. But if she says, “Freeze, I have a gun!” and you say, “The gun I gave you for Christmas! You bastard!” then you both have started a scene because you both have AGREED that her finger is in fact a Christmas gun.

The Rule of Agreement reminds you to “respect what your partner has created” and to at least start from an open-minded place. Start with a YES and see where that takes you.  As an improviser, Fey writes, she always finds it jarring when she meets someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?

The second rule of improvisation is not only to say yes, but YES, AND. You are supposed to agree and then add something of your own. If she starts a scene with “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you just say, “Yeah…” the both of you are kind of at a standstill. But if she says, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “What did you expect? We’re in hell.” Or if she says, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “Yes, this can’t be good for the wax figures.” Or if she says, “I can’t believe it’s so hot in here,” and you say, “I told you we shouldn’t have crawled into this dog’s mouth,” now the both of you are getting somewhere.

To Fey YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. Always make sure you’re adding something to the discussion. Your initiations are worthwhile.

The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positive way of saying “Don’t ask questions all the time.” If we’re in a scene and she says, “Who are you? Where are we? What are we doing here? What’s in that box?” she is putting pressure on you to come up with all the answers.

In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles. We’ve all worked with that person. That person is a drag. It’s usually the same person around the office who says things like “There’s no calories in it if you eat it standing up!” and “I felt menaced when Terry raised her voice.”

The final improv concept is this:  THERE ARE NO MISTAKES, only opportunities. If she starts a scene as what I think is very clearly a cop riding a bicycle, but you think I am a hamster in a hamster wheel, guess what? Now she is a hamster in a hamster wheel. She is not going to stop everything to explain that it was really supposed to be a bike. Who knows? Maybe she’ll end up being a police hamster who’s been put on “hamster wheel” duty because she is “too much of a loose cannon” in the field. In improv there are no mistakes, only beautiful happy accidents. And many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been by accident.[2]

Those are Tina Fey’s improvisational theater rules.  Imagine those rules not only applied to our individual lives but to the collective life of the church.  What would it mean to hold our hands open to new life and possibility by answering, “YES AND”, taking the responsibility to make statements, and seeing nothing as a mistake?  How would that open our lives up to the future?

In much the same way, Amy Poehler wrote about the rules of improvisational theater by referencing the first response as “Yes, please,” a way to be open to your partner’s leading.  She summarized her rules in a commencement address given at Harvard five years ago: “Listen, say yes, live in the moment, make sure you play with people who have your back, make big choices early and often. Don’t start a scene where two people are talking about jumping out of a plane. Start the scene having already jumped. If you are scared, look into your partner’s eyes. You will feel better.”[3] 

All of those rules for improv sound like an invitation to a pretty grand, courageous, and adventurous life.  They are positive rules.  In them, the universe is friendly and God is good and you don’t go around thinking about what could go wrong and clutching your shame purse or wallet.  I think that’s what Paul intended in his letter to the Galatians.  He wanted the Galatians to see the new thing that God was building, the world-transforming news that was making possible new relationships, new table companions, new . . . life. 

In the Scripture passage for today, Paul makes it clear that this world-transforming news is not something of human origin.  God is in this.  So buck up.  Look for commas.  Yes, please. 

In the next two weeks we will follow the Revised Common Lectionary in Galatians to begin unpacking some of the backdrop, context, or matrix in which Paul finds himself and the genius way he upends the present violent system for something that begins to define all of Christianity.  We will look at an incredibly massive piece of art and architecture that defined who Rome thought they were and who Rome thought the Galatians were.  I will, hopefully, with the help of Biblical scholars, unearth the deep politics and power found in Galatians.  So I hope you will come to get the whole picture of Galatians over these next few weeks, that you will say, “Yes, please” through your participation in worship.

But here is my idea for our community.  And I’d like to enlist as many of you as possible to help.  As a church that is becoming known for our public liturgy, why not get the radical meaning of baptism out into the street?  The downtown farmer’s market will be soon be humming along every Saturday.  Why wouldn’t we be outside, with evergreen boughs in a re-affirmation of baptism to say to everyone gathered that no matter what the world calls you, God looks at you and says, “You are my beloved daughter.  You are my beloved son.  And I see nothing in you that should ever get in the way of my love for you?”  What if we did that three or four times this summer, once a month, for about an hour during the farmer’s market?  I would be glad to get everybody ready by writing for Sue Olp in the Billings Gazette.  And we could get rid of this idea that church is supposed to be this provincial, select few kind of thing and get Jesus out of the building and out onto the street.  So let me know if you are willing to saying “Yes, please” by sending me an email.  What if we could plug into that radical baptismal formula that is open to building something new, to new life, and new possibilities for relationship so that no matter what our culture or race, what our socioeconomic status or position, no matter what our gender or sexuality, we are all just one.   That’s the project.  I’m in.   

In that baptismal formula from Galatians we might tell the story of Dekha Ibrahim Abdi.  “She was an ethnic Somali peace activist based in Mombasa, Kenya who worked as a consultant to government and civil society organizations until her untimely death in 2011 as a result of a tragic car accident. Abdi’s spiritual identity as a Muslim and her devotion to the Qur’an’s teaching on understanding the soul served as a foundation for her work in bringing about durable peace.  Abdi declared, ‘there is no failure in peace initiatives.’”[4]  Peace building then, sounds like improv.  One love.  One heart.  Let’s get together and feel all right.  Let’s give thanks and praise to the Lord, and we will feel all right.  Amen. 

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[1] Peter B. Panagore, Two Minutes for God:  Quick Fixes for the Spirit (New York:  Touchstone Faith, 2007), p. 73. 

[2] Tina Fey, Bossypants (New York:  Little, Brown & Company, 2011), pp. 84-85. 

[3] Amy Poehler, “Harvard Class College Day,” May 25, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7N_L_pu74k. 

[4] https://www.monasteriesoftheheart.org/monks-our-midst/dekha-ibrahim-abdi-peacemaking.  

"Actively" Church

I shared with my good friend and colleague, Christopher Grundy, that I believe the United Church of Christ needs to develop designations that help us move out of our "achievement" statuses.  I have become disillusioned and disappointed by the number of UCC congregations that are "Open and Affirming" or "Just Peace" and yet do not use those statements as "North Stars" for further action.

Sometimes I see those statements as all too often achievements by a solitary individual or small group in a local church that finally carried the day to get their church designated as "Open and Affirming" or "Just

Peace."  The local church then proudly posts these designations on their website, on their blog, and or in their bulletin without any reference to how it continues to embody these designations.  As in many institutional

settings, the description of a church becomes a noun (who they think they are) rather than a verb (what they do).  I am not saying that happens in every local church, but I am amazed by the number of local churches who become "Open and Affirming" never to revisit their growth and development with that identity or designation.

I would love to see the United Church of Christ continue to develop these designations as a rolling horizon, recognizing that we need to continue to grow and develop to be fully "Open and Affirming" and "Just Peace."  So, throughout the year, what has your church done to be considered "Just Peace" or "Open and Affirming?"  These rolling horizon designations

would be about a dialog between grass roots local churches and the national church.  Local churches would share some creative idea they employed and the national church would add it to the list for all other churches to learn by, recognize within their own work, and take hope from.

For example, we could use a model begun in the

Young Christian Workers Movement and advanced in Latin American base communities--see, judge (as to discern), and act.  out of see, judge (as to discern), act.  Celebration was later added to the process as people realized that the process left them with little energy to begin again.  

This is oversimplifying a process that can encourage deep systemic analysis, but here goes.  See:  (Open and Affirming) We could ask and answer how congregations might have engaged issues or communities surrounding the issue of the inclusion of the LGBTQ community.  (Just Peace)  We could ask and answer how congregations have lifted specific concerns about racial justice, violence, or building peace in their communities.  Discern:  We could ask what educational or immersion experiences congregations have used to further understanding of themselves and people not like themselves.  Act:  We could ask what their educational or immersion experiences led them to do in advocacy, pilgrimage, practice, mission, or evangelism (including others in their work or building the movement) Celebration:  We could ask how congregations celebrated the work they did over the course of the year or how they lifted up their identity in joyous proclamation.

Congregations would have to complete each one of these headings to be considered "actively" Open and Affirming or "actively" Just Peace.  The purpose is not to create a litmus test but to get congregations intentionally reflecting on their work, mission, and ministry.  In reflecting publicly, their information creates ideas for others, builds a feeling that a movement is afoot, and gives hope that we are not alone.

I also believe such reflection would make us more articulate as a denomination.  Let me give you an example.  Rev. Michael Neuroth is the UCC Policy

Advocate for International Issues.  He recently wrote a piece titled, "The True Cost of Drone Warfare."  In that piece he did an excellent job of helping us all discern further what it means to be a Just Peace institution/movement by spelling out some of its characteristics:

• Commits itself to working for systemic justice
• Commits itself to deepening friendships and covenants with all God's children
• Commits itself to claiming God's shalom for all
• Holding to the prophetic promise that "peace is possible"

Conversely, what is not Just Peace has these characteristics:

• Dims our hope and imagination for peace
• Blurs lines between civilian and combatant
• Distorts covenants between nations and peoples
• Pushes our nation to a constant state of war

I might look at the "opposites" of what is not Just Peace to offer what is:

• Just Peace lights the way for our hope and imagination toward peace.
• Just Peace seeks out ways to affirm our humanity even in the presence of war.
• Just Peace builds community, coalitions, and keeps covenant that furthers the welfare of people beyond our own races, ethnicities, and nations.
• Just Peace builds systems and infrastructure to make peace sustainable and resilient and undercut the arrogance and appetite for violence and warfare.

I know that Rev. Neuroth uses language from General Synod Resolutions, but he also cogently argues in a way that helps all of us better understand what it means to be Just Peace.  In so doing, I naturally compare and contrast my congregation to the criteria he puts forward.  I become much more articulate for helping my congregation discern how they shall be more Just Peace.  

So what about that idea?  What about deciding how we might become "Actively" Open and Affirming or "Actively" Just Peace using the base community process.  I would love to read the final step of the process--celebration.  How do other congregations actively celebrate their identity and work in way that gives them energy for starting the process all over again?  

I know there is much creativity out their in local congregations.  I would love to see how they sing, dance, and get goofy over their work and identity.  I believe that sharing would give my imagination flight and return the favor in some creative way.