This is the 4th Sermon of PRIDE 2011. I preached it at my church on June 19. It will also be preached at the Seattle PRIDE Community Worship Service on Saturday, June 25.
(Pink shirt and blue breast cancer tie hanging on front of pulpit)
This is my shirt of shame. It’s a gorgeous pink cotton dress shirt that I used to get particular pleasure out of wearing. I bought it a couple of years ago for Easter and have also used it to wear on days when I want to support women who have or who have survived breast cancer. I used to think I looked great in pink! I even got this nice Breast Cancer tie with the little pink ribbons across the blue background to wear with it.
A couple of months ago I wore the shirt to my retail job at Penney’s in Bellevue Square to celebrate my own sister’s 18th year of breast cancer survival. It turned out to not be a great day. One of the other employees decided to be difficult. Thought I tried to be patient and understanding and reflect Christ’s treatment of others in my supervisory capacity after repeated incidents with her, I had had enough and I spoke rather harshly to her. Now, I really don’t need this microphone, my voice booms out across rooms and people literally jerk their heads around to see whose talking. It used to be very useful when I needed to quiet down an auditorium of noisy children in public school. So, of course, everyone heard me tell the young lady that I was in charge and we would do things my way.
A customer who this saleslady was helping, but who had not heard what my co-worker had repeatedly said to me, only what I said to her, decided to come to the young lady’s defense and confront me in front of everyone present. In short, she said that she was tired of men attacking women verbally and that she wanted me to know that she was particularly displeased with my behavior. That would have been okay. I wasn’t very proud of myself. But then she finished, “You are nothing but a fat old man in a gay pink shirt!” I turned to her and said, “Cheap shot, lady.” To which she responded, “Yeah, well, you’re still nothing but a fat old man in a gay pink shirt.”
The rest of the evening I found myself wondering, is that the way everyone is seeing me: Just a fat old man in a gay pink shirt? It really didn’t do any good for others that evening to tell me how much they appreciated my wearing the pink shirt and tie to support those with breast cancer. All that I could think about was other people looking at me wearing a pink shirt and snickering because I was gay. It shouldn’t have bothered me: I am totally out at work, and everywhere else in life, about my being gay and my partner works at the same store. It’s not like my being gay is a secret.
But the confrontation with this woman psychologically took me back to my middle school and high school years when other students ridiculed me for being gay. It made me remember being threatened with physical violence just because I was gay. It reminded me of the times so-called Christian authorities had tried to tell me how unacceptable I was to God because I was gay. I spent a sleepless night reliving the incident over and over again. It was so traumatic for me that I stopped wearing my gorgeous pink shirt. I haven’t worn it to work since then.
My humiliation that day pales in comparison to what happened to the woman in the scripture passage I read to you. She is dragged before Jesus and thrown down in the Temple Court where he is teaching, charged with adultery, caught red-handed in the very act. They demand that Jesus make a judgment on the woman based on the Law of Moses which said that persons caught in such situations should be killed. They even have the stones ready to carry out the sentence upon his ruling.
At my church we have “Talk Back Time” during my sermons during which I ask people for their opinions and thoughts. So let me ask you today, “What’s wrong with the situation in today’s scripture?”
(The man she committed adultery with is missing.)
Yes, where is the man? You can’t commit adultery without a sexual partner.
Do you have any thoughts on why they didn’t bring the man for judgment and condemn him, too?
(Congregation offers thoughts.)
Some have suggested that the situation was a set up both for the woman and for Jesus. They conspired together to trap the woman in a questionable situation so that they could in turn trap Jesus into doing or saying something that they could use against him.
It’s the classic no-win situation for Jesus.
If he says that the woman is guilty and should be killed according to the law then they can make charges against him to the Roman authorities who were in charge of the law and government of the land since the Roman government only could condemn anyone to death. But if Jesus didn’t condemn her then they could incite a riot against him with the people because he refused to uphold their own Religious Law. They reasoned that they had Jesus over a barrel and there was not much he could do about it.
However, they were looking at things the way most of us look at things: right or wrong, yes or no, as if there were only two options Jesus could take. But Jesus, in the creative love of God, surprises them by taking a totally unexpected option. He doesn’t answer them. Even though they have set him up as judge over the woman he turns the question upon them.
Jesus bends down and writes something in the dust. While he is writing they keep shouting and demanding that he answer them. Listen, friend, when things get rough and people start yelling and screaming at you the best response is to attempt to slow the situation down and help people think things through calmly. That’s what Jesus does. I can’t help but wonder what he wrote. Some think he wrote a list of sins the men might have committed. I think he probably wrote the very law of Moses regarding the situation from Leviticus.
Which is where they misquoted their charges against the woman. For there it says that both the man and the woman should be killed.
They have set this up like a court, so Jesus the judge of this court, calls for witnesses when he says “Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” From what I understand, it is the one who witnessed the crime and reported it to the authorities that should throw the first stone. So who witnessed this crime? Well, I submit it was the person who set the situation up to trap the poor lady. To admit that you were present while the crime was being committed was essentially to say that you were the male figure who sinned along with the woman. Which is to say that you also deserved to be killed.
The concern of the legal experts and the Phraisees is not for the woman caught in sin, nor even for Jesus. It is to uphold their own understanding of their scriptures which Jesus is turning upside down by ministering to and accepting people they thought were outside of God’s love. Jesus the friend of the leper, the widows, the orphans, the hated tax-collector, the handicapped and ill, is hanging out with all the people they think are unloved and unwanted by God.
This poor woman is probably a widow, may have had children she was responsible for providing food and life. In that society a widow had no rights, could own no property, and if she did not have family that would take her in she was left to fend for herself and her children out on the street. Essentially she was homeless, living off of the handouts of others.
Forced into prostitution to provide for herself and her children she was the perfect foil for the Pharisees and lawyers to use to trap Jesus. They had no problem with heaping shame upon her and using her as a weapon against Jesus because they thought her beneath them for she was already condemned by God for her sinfulness or she wouldn’t be a widow and she wouldn’t be out on the street. God had already pronounced God’s rejection of her according to their way of thinking. Why not use her just like others had used her, for their own purposes and desires. And they thought they were men of God.
After issuing his demand that the ones who witnessed the crime should be the ones who throw the first stone, Jesus writes in the dust again. By now they have read whatever it was he wrote first and they have begun to understand that in responding to his question they may be convicting themselves.
What did Jesus write next? I would like to think that he wrote from Deuteronomy which says that you should not bear false witness against another. If the situation was a set up in which they have trapped this poor lady then they would be bearing false witness against her and according to the scripture they would be condemned with the death penalty also. Oops, perhaps they forgot about that one.
There is something else going on here that many people miss. Jesus is making a statement about who he is and with what authority he is speaking. Jewish tradition and the scripture says that God wrote the Law given to Moses with God’s own finger in the stone. So Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us, writes with his finger the same law in the dust of the ground. I believe that would have infuriated the legal experts even more, leaving them beside themselves and enraged with anger, but unable to respond to the very situation they had set up, but which Jesus now owns completely.
One by one the men leave beginning with the oldest, also significant in their law because it is the oldest, the elders of the community, who were charged with carrying out the punishment of any crime. The wiser and older men see that the trap they set for Jesus has now been sprung on them and they depart before they can be implicated and accused as bearing false witness or worse.
Soon, Jesus is left with the woman to whom he says, “Where are those who condemned you?”
She responds, “There is no one who condemns me.” And she was right. There was no one left to condemn her. The only one left with her was Jesus, Jesus who did not condemn her, but who wanted her to live life without shame or condemnation. So he says to her, “Go and do not sin.” He does not list rules for her to follow. He does not extract a promise from her to never sin again. He does not tell her that she should avoid prostitution in the future, nor does he give her any particular advice about how to live her life. He just says, “do not sin,” which means to me to not do anything that separates you from the love of God.
You and I have a problem. We let other people and our own circumstances separate us from the love of God in Christ. We let the shame we feel about the way other people tell us we should live, act, talk, and walk and believe take control of our lives and paralyze us from being the person God created us to be.
The apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:38-39 “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.
It’s time that you and I realize that we need to get rid of the shame that controls our lives and live in the love of God in Christ. It’s time to take it off, take it all off!
(Bawdy music begins. Strip Tease. Remove Coat, Tie, and shirt.)
(Music stops as I pick up pink shirt and blue tie. Put shirt and tie back on as sermon continues.)
I told you that I had been unable to wear this gorgeous pink shirt because of what the woman said to me and the shame I felt at what she said. Well, I’m getting rid of the shame today and putting on my gay pink shirt. I can’t do much about the fat old man part, but I can be proud of who I am, of who God created me to be and put back on the shirt I had been proud to wear, proud to declare my support of women who suffered from cancer, proud to be OUT about who I am and not afraid for all the world to know.
When other people twist the words of the Bible to condemn you and make you feel unworthy of God’s love and acceptance you remember this story in which Jesus gave a woman back her pride in herself and let her know that she was not a reject, for God in Christ loved her and lifted her up to begin again.
God can do the same thing for you if you will do your own strip tease today, get rid of the shame, take it off, take it all off, and begin to live in the love of God. There is nothing that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jesus. Show all posts
Monday, June 20, 2011
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Second Chances (Lent 3, Year C)
In this week’s passage from Luke 13:1-9 Jesus confronts the question of why bad things happen to good people. In the thinking of ancient cultures a person deserved whatever happened to them, that is, bad things only happened to bad people. If you were a good person, then God would bless you with wealth, health, and happiness. If you were a bad person then God would punish you with bad health, accidents, and you would end up poor and homeless. In other words, blame the victim was the ruling thought of the day.
But Jesus contradicts this kind of thinking by saying that those who do encounter difficulty in their lives are no different from anyone else. But the idea that bad things only happen to bad people still persists in our society today. How often have you heard that anyone who gets HIV/AIDS deserved to get it by their faulty behavior? When I was growing up my parents would quote the following statement whenever I was in trouble, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” or “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” They were basically telling me that whatever had happened to me was my own fault. That wasn’t always true.
When my younger sister was born with facial deformities my parents decided that her handicaps meant that God was punishing them because they didn’t go to church and my father smoked tobacco and drank the occasional beer. Even as a five year old child I couldn’t understand the logic of that kind of thinking and if it was true wondered if God would get back at my parents by doing something horrible to me. My parents did start taking us to church and my dad did stop smoking and drinking any alcohol. But they also stopped playing Rook and cards and wouldn’t let me go to movies thinking that all of these things were somehow so sinful that God would punish them again if they didn’t clean up their lives completely.
We still have that kind of thinking going on in our own minds when someone has trouble in their lives. We ask: “What did they do or not do in order for this to happen to them.” Two hundred people get laid off because a company has economic problems but we ask our friend is one of the 200, “What did you do that they laid you off, too?” Like our friend might have some greater importance or ability than the other 199.
The fact is that we don’t control the future. But I guess I’m also saying that God doesn’t always control our future either. God has established a world where there are consequences to human actions like economic depressions and natural events like earthquakes and hurricanes that have nothing to do with what you and I might decide to do or how we might be living our lives. You cannot always, nor should you even try, to connect a natural event that causes you trouble with God deliberately punishing you in particular. That is a very childish way of relating to God. Grow up and take some advice from Jesus.
Jesus ends this discourse by talking about the fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and the owner that wants it cut down. However, another person suggests that the tree may need some special attention and that by loosening the soil and adding some good old manure to the soil the tree just might bear fruit. Jesus is saying that God loves us enough to give us another chance, another opportunity to recover from our troubles and begin again. We are so much more important than even a barren fig tree that gets a second chance.
Got trouble in your lives? Don’t blame God or think that God is punishing you. Instead do turn to God for encouragement and God’s presence and power in your life to start all over again. God loves you enough to give you a second chance. It’s at least something to think about.
But Jesus contradicts this kind of thinking by saying that those who do encounter difficulty in their lives are no different from anyone else. But the idea that bad things only happen to bad people still persists in our society today. How often have you heard that anyone who gets HIV/AIDS deserved to get it by their faulty behavior? When I was growing up my parents would quote the following statement whenever I was in trouble, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” or “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” They were basically telling me that whatever had happened to me was my own fault. That wasn’t always true.
When my younger sister was born with facial deformities my parents decided that her handicaps meant that God was punishing them because they didn’t go to church and my father smoked tobacco and drank the occasional beer. Even as a five year old child I couldn’t understand the logic of that kind of thinking and if it was true wondered if God would get back at my parents by doing something horrible to me. My parents did start taking us to church and my dad did stop smoking and drinking any alcohol. But they also stopped playing Rook and cards and wouldn’t let me go to movies thinking that all of these things were somehow so sinful that God would punish them again if they didn’t clean up their lives completely.
We still have that kind of thinking going on in our own minds when someone has trouble in their lives. We ask: “What did they do or not do in order for this to happen to them.” Two hundred people get laid off because a company has economic problems but we ask our friend is one of the 200, “What did you do that they laid you off, too?” Like our friend might have some greater importance or ability than the other 199.
The fact is that we don’t control the future. But I guess I’m also saying that God doesn’t always control our future either. God has established a world where there are consequences to human actions like economic depressions and natural events like earthquakes and hurricanes that have nothing to do with what you and I might decide to do or how we might be living our lives. You cannot always, nor should you even try, to connect a natural event that causes you trouble with God deliberately punishing you in particular. That is a very childish way of relating to God. Grow up and take some advice from Jesus.
Jesus ends this discourse by talking about the fig tree that doesn’t bear fruit and the owner that wants it cut down. However, another person suggests that the tree may need some special attention and that by loosening the soil and adding some good old manure to the soil the tree just might bear fruit. Jesus is saying that God loves us enough to give us another chance, another opportunity to recover from our troubles and begin again. We are so much more important than even a barren fig tree that gets a second chance.
Got trouble in your lives? Don’t blame God or think that God is punishing you. Instead do turn to God for encouragement and God’s presence and power in your life to start all over again. God loves you enough to give you a second chance. It’s at least something to think about.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
God: Forever Faithful (Year C, Lent 2)
Lectionary: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35; Psalm 27; Phillipians 3:17-4:1
As we read through the lectionary passages today did you catch any of the similarities? Sometimes I’m at a loss to connect the passages, and I’m the pastor. I’m supposed to know the connections. Mark will often ask me what the lectionary is about this week. How do you summarize four Bible passages into a word or two? It ain’t easy. Each week I do an in-depth study, time permitting, of the passages to get a better understanding of how they may be related before I select which ones I will preach on and what I will say.
This week the connection is all too obvious. Jesus is facing the facts about what staying the course to achieve his destiny will cost him. Abraham has been promised by God that certain things will happen and that he must persist in his trust in the faithfulness of God that they will in fact happen, even if it appears that he should make other choices in the meantime. Psalm 27 was written by someone in obvious trouble who is choosing to hang on to the promises of God for protection and blessings. In Philippians Paul tells us to hang on and preserver in our commitment to serve God and others to achieve the promised New Community of God.
This should be comforting to those of us in the LGBT community, because we have a vision of a future that is radically inclusive, it’s not yet a reality, but it is a reality that we believe God has promised us and that God will eventually achieve in us and through us as we work to promote our beliefs and educate our nation and the world. But it won’t be easy. It hasn’t been easy. Many have sacrificed much to get us to a point where we can hopefully stand up and say: I’m a gay man. I’m a lesbian woman. I’m transgender. I’m bi-sexual. Stand up and say it without fear of harassment, hostility, or being excluded. We’ve made much progress, but we still have much to do to make the vision a reality. The fact of the matter is though that we must remember at all times, even when there are setbacks, and there will be setbacks, that God is in this with us and God will be present and faithful to us all the way, just like God was with Jesus, Abraham, and Paul.
When we hear that God has promised Abraham that he will become the father of a natural child by his own wife and that Abraham will not have to adopt a heir, or have a child with another woman to fulfill the promise, it may in fact rankle us a little bit. Many of us will never father or mother natural children. Some of us will have to adopt children to have families of our own. Despite the fact that we who are Queer seem to be left out of this promise to Abraham, we have to understand that Queer people weren’t an obvious part of that ancient society or even of human understanding. God’s promise was one of family and a home. In Abraham’s world children represented the future, without children you had no future. Without land you had no home. God promised Abraham both: children, that is a future, and land, that is a home.
I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s. My grandparents still owned a family farm. They had six children over twenty years. My dad was the oldest and at age 11 was forced to drop out of school in order to help on the farm. They couldn’t afford to hire help. Your children were the help you needed to make a living. The farm was our home. I remember growing up and saying to my friends, “I am going home for the summer.” To which my friends would say, “You are home.” But to my family home wasn’t where we were currently living in Chicago. Home was the farm that we came from and to which we hoped to return someday. Home was family and home was a place where that family lived. That was what God was promising Abraham, a family and a home for that family.
At one point in Abraham’s life God comes to him and basically tells him to leave behind his current family and his current home and to start the journey to a new home, a new land that God will give to him. Abraham was to all ancient customs already an extremely successful farmer and herder, but God comes to him and says, “You think this is something? Why its nothing compared to what I’m going to give you.” And without knowing where he is going, Abraham pulls up roots and takes off on a journey with God leaving behind his family and his home for the promise of a new family and a new home.
Now, doesn’t that sound like the same type of journey that many of us have been on since coming out about our sexuality or our gender orientation? For many people coming out means that we must leave behind the family and home that we knew, and loved, for a different kind of family and a different kind of home. It isn’t easy to do. It is damn hard. It was filled with troubles and disappointments as well as the realization that it is a journey we must make to achieve the hoped for life and future that we desire for ourselves and for others like ourselves. There is a line in the Psalm that we read today: “Even if my own parents threw me out, you’d still be there for me God.” Many of us have literally experienced being thrown out of our homes by family when we announced that we were gay or lesbian or transgender. Even if they didn’t physically throw us out on to the street, we were thrown out of our families emotionally and socially.
It’s a very common experience among our community that when you do come out family members cut you off socially, refuse to include you or invite you to family events. One of the first things that happened to me when I came out was a phone call from my younger brother telling me to not come to his son’s wedding. They were afraid I’d use the event as an opportunity to promote my gay life style. What did they mean? They meant that they were afraid I’d show up with Mark at the wedding. Being the pastor of a fundamentalist church in Tennessee, my brother didn’t want to have to explain to his congregation why his older brother, also an ordained Baptist minister, was with another man instead of a woman.
We all face trials and tribulations when we chose to follow God’s will and God’s way for our lives. Abraham did. Jesus did. Paul did. I do. And so do you. Some of the worst opposition comes from those who we thought shared our own religious understandings. I grew up in a family and part of congregations at churches my family attended that taught me that God loves everyone: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Nice song. Good message. I got it. The problem was that the people teaching me that song and that message didn’t get it.
We’re in the middle of Black History month and sometimes, Gil, I feel it is my history, too. I lived through the upheavals of society in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember fountains and bathrooms that had signs over them saying, “White Only. No Blacks Allowed.” I remember dear friends having to enter through the back door of a restaurant when I could walk in the front door. I remember friends who had to sit in the balcony of the theatre while I could sit anywhere I wanted to sit. I remember the difference between my school building and their school building and the fact that society had the audacity to tell us that separate was equal when I was using new textbooks and they were using thirty year old textbooks. I remember all too well the superiority my own family exhibited over those who were of a different skin tone or a different language group or a different culture than my own. I was told to fear what was different and stick to my own kind at the same time that I was taught how to sing, Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all the children of the world. My family was okay with loving all the children of the world as long as those children stayed in their own lands with their own kind. The problem was that I believed what the Bible said and what the songs told me and I thank God that even though my family didn’t believe those things that they had enough faith to teach me the truth of the Bible even if they didn’t get it themselves. Thank God, that I got it.
Society is very different than it was before the 1960’s. Thank God for that. But it wasn’t a change that was easy. It was a hard fought change and there were many martyrs along the way, people who gave all they had and were to achieve the world we now live in. It still isn’t a perfect world. There is still much to do in the cause of equality for all people. Though the laws have changed, there are still hearts and minds that have to do a lot of changing.
Our own Metropolitan Community Churches began because there were no open, affirming, inclusive churches back in the late 60’s. Or there were churches you could attend as long as you didn’t disclose that you were gay or lesbian or, heaven forbid, transgendered. You could go to church as long as you stayed in the closet about your sexuality or gender, or at least didn’t talk about it, didn’t bring up the topic for discussion. They could ignore the obvious truth about you as long as you didn’t make it an issue. Just be a good gay they would say and don’t rock the boat. In the same way they told my black friends to stop rocking the boat.
Troy Perry, who went through his own dark night of the soul, claimed the vision God gave him of a church where gay and lesbian and transgendered persons could find a family and a home where they could worship a God of radical love and acceptance. There have been many times over the last 42 years that we have feared and wondered if the effort was worth all the trouble and tears. But all throughout those long years of struggle and hope God kept coming to us one by one and as a denomination and telling us like God told Abraham, “Do not fear.” God has been with us and God is with us today.
We have much to do as a congregation to achieve the vision of the future that God has given to us. We want to be a congregation where all persons as welcome and included no matter who they are. We want to be a part of the ecumenical community and join with other churches to make sure that all of them know that we are here and that we are Queer. Why? Because we want to be a part of God’s family and we want that family to know that God loves us exactly the same way that God loves them. Our mere presence in such projects as the University District Ecumenical Campus Feasibility Study tells people in ways that cannot be told any other way that we share their love of God and we want to be a part of expressing that love to this city in such a way that every straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered person knows he or she is included, welcomed, and has a home and a family that they can count on to help them out when they need a little help from us.
We met this past week to talk about the kind of building we hope to erect in the University District and the kinds of social service programs that we hope will occupy that building with us. Shelters for homeless men and women, daily meals for those who are homeless or can’t afford food, senior activity center, needle exchange program, health services, and more. But Lee and Dan and I, your representatives to the UDECC board will keep advocating for the Queer Community and for full exclusion in things as simple as restrooms where transgendered people feel safe and comfortable to the question of where does a gay man, a lesbian woman, or a transgendered person go when he or she is without a place to call home. We have much to do with the UDEEC project, but we have much to do ourselves.
I get phone calls every single week asking where gay men and transgender folk can find a homeless shelter where they safe and won’t be harassed. Where can committed Queer couples go and get to stay together as a family in a homeless shelter? Where does a Queer person with a child go for help? Currently there aren’t any homeless shelters who can consistently say that they provide such services to the city. Even those facilities that say they are inclusive can’t guarantee the safety of someone who is different in sexual orientation or gender. Those who do go are often taken aside and told by the staff that they won’t be safe if they do stay and that the staff cannot guarantee their safety. How does that make a person feel to have the administrative staff tell them that this isn’t a place they should count on staying at very long for fear of violence? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
More Queer teens are on the streets than any other group of teens. Queer youth are often the victims of sexual exploitation and violence. Queer youth are often thrown out of their own homes by their so-called loving parents for no other reason than that they are Queer. Where do these young people go? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
I don’t know how we will do it, but I am beginning to see that MCC Seattle has a purpose beyond merely providing worship services on Sunday mornings. We may be the very ones that God is calling to provide social services for our own Queer community and fill the gaps that aren’t being filled even though we live in the great gay Emerald city of Seattle. We tend to think that because this is Seattle that all of the problems we might encounter as Queer people have already been overcome, but that just isn’t true.
Jesus wept and then described how he wanted to gather in the people of Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her protective wings at night. This harkens to the Old Testament promise that God will gather in all the peoples of the world into God’s New Community, all the outcasts, all the rejects, all the persons on the edges of society. God will not leave anyone out of God’s family. God will create a home for everyone.
Some miss a very important part of the Genesis passage that we read this morning. To seal the covenant, the promise, between them, Abram prepares a sacrifice. The ancient way of sealing a promise was for each party to go amongst the sacrifice and each one to ignite portions of the sacrifice to signify that they were eternally bound to keep the promise made to each other. This promise was even binding upon their descendants.
But something interesting happens in the story we read today. Did any of you catch it? Just as Abram finishes preparing the sacrifice, God causes a deep sleep to come upon him. Then God passes through the sacrifice and ignites the sacrifice. Do you understand what this means? God will keep God’s promise to Abram even if Abram doesn’t keep the promise to God. God will be forever faithful to Abram. God’s faithfulness does not depend upon what Abram will or won’t do for God. God’s faithfulness depends only upon God. And so it is with you and me. When God makes us a promise, God will keep that promise regardless of whether you and I live up to the promise ourselves.
We have a God who comes to us and tells us to not fear the future because God is present with us, working powerfully to make sure that our God-given vision of the future will come into reality. We have a God who looks upon us with weeping eyes and gathers us under her loving protective wings giving us a new family and a new home, a place where we can safely celebrate exactly who God created us to be.
You and I have been together as pastor and congregation for a full year now…an amazing year of growth and change. Mark and I want to thank you for becoming our family and for giving us a new home among you.
As your pastor, let me leave you with a challenge: Will we, MCC Seattle, accept the Apostle Paul’s challenge from Philippians to become the very persons who God will use to achieve God’s New Community? Will we offer family and a home to anyone God sends our way? If we accept God’s challenge to us, then here is the promise that God gives to you and me: God who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Have no fear! You can count on it! God will be forever faithful!
As we read through the lectionary passages today did you catch any of the similarities? Sometimes I’m at a loss to connect the passages, and I’m the pastor. I’m supposed to know the connections. Mark will often ask me what the lectionary is about this week. How do you summarize four Bible passages into a word or two? It ain’t easy. Each week I do an in-depth study, time permitting, of the passages to get a better understanding of how they may be related before I select which ones I will preach on and what I will say.
This week the connection is all too obvious. Jesus is facing the facts about what staying the course to achieve his destiny will cost him. Abraham has been promised by God that certain things will happen and that he must persist in his trust in the faithfulness of God that they will in fact happen, even if it appears that he should make other choices in the meantime. Psalm 27 was written by someone in obvious trouble who is choosing to hang on to the promises of God for protection and blessings. In Philippians Paul tells us to hang on and preserver in our commitment to serve God and others to achieve the promised New Community of God.
This should be comforting to those of us in the LGBT community, because we have a vision of a future that is radically inclusive, it’s not yet a reality, but it is a reality that we believe God has promised us and that God will eventually achieve in us and through us as we work to promote our beliefs and educate our nation and the world. But it won’t be easy. It hasn’t been easy. Many have sacrificed much to get us to a point where we can hopefully stand up and say: I’m a gay man. I’m a lesbian woman. I’m transgender. I’m bi-sexual. Stand up and say it without fear of harassment, hostility, or being excluded. We’ve made much progress, but we still have much to do to make the vision a reality. The fact of the matter is though that we must remember at all times, even when there are setbacks, and there will be setbacks, that God is in this with us and God will be present and faithful to us all the way, just like God was with Jesus, Abraham, and Paul.
When we hear that God has promised Abraham that he will become the father of a natural child by his own wife and that Abraham will not have to adopt a heir, or have a child with another woman to fulfill the promise, it may in fact rankle us a little bit. Many of us will never father or mother natural children. Some of us will have to adopt children to have families of our own. Despite the fact that we who are Queer seem to be left out of this promise to Abraham, we have to understand that Queer people weren’t an obvious part of that ancient society or even of human understanding. God’s promise was one of family and a home. In Abraham’s world children represented the future, without children you had no future. Without land you had no home. God promised Abraham both: children, that is a future, and land, that is a home.
I grew up in the 50’s and early 60’s. My grandparents still owned a family farm. They had six children over twenty years. My dad was the oldest and at age 11 was forced to drop out of school in order to help on the farm. They couldn’t afford to hire help. Your children were the help you needed to make a living. The farm was our home. I remember growing up and saying to my friends, “I am going home for the summer.” To which my friends would say, “You are home.” But to my family home wasn’t where we were currently living in Chicago. Home was the farm that we came from and to which we hoped to return someday. Home was family and home was a place where that family lived. That was what God was promising Abraham, a family and a home for that family.
At one point in Abraham’s life God comes to him and basically tells him to leave behind his current family and his current home and to start the journey to a new home, a new land that God will give to him. Abraham was to all ancient customs already an extremely successful farmer and herder, but God comes to him and says, “You think this is something? Why its nothing compared to what I’m going to give you.” And without knowing where he is going, Abraham pulls up roots and takes off on a journey with God leaving behind his family and his home for the promise of a new family and a new home.
Now, doesn’t that sound like the same type of journey that many of us have been on since coming out about our sexuality or our gender orientation? For many people coming out means that we must leave behind the family and home that we knew, and loved, for a different kind of family and a different kind of home. It isn’t easy to do. It is damn hard. It was filled with troubles and disappointments as well as the realization that it is a journey we must make to achieve the hoped for life and future that we desire for ourselves and for others like ourselves. There is a line in the Psalm that we read today: “Even if my own parents threw me out, you’d still be there for me God.” Many of us have literally experienced being thrown out of our homes by family when we announced that we were gay or lesbian or transgender. Even if they didn’t physically throw us out on to the street, we were thrown out of our families emotionally and socially.
It’s a very common experience among our community that when you do come out family members cut you off socially, refuse to include you or invite you to family events. One of the first things that happened to me when I came out was a phone call from my younger brother telling me to not come to his son’s wedding. They were afraid I’d use the event as an opportunity to promote my gay life style. What did they mean? They meant that they were afraid I’d show up with Mark at the wedding. Being the pastor of a fundamentalist church in Tennessee, my brother didn’t want to have to explain to his congregation why his older brother, also an ordained Baptist minister, was with another man instead of a woman.
We all face trials and tribulations when we chose to follow God’s will and God’s way for our lives. Abraham did. Jesus did. Paul did. I do. And so do you. Some of the worst opposition comes from those who we thought shared our own religious understandings. I grew up in a family and part of congregations at churches my family attended that taught me that God loves everyone: Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in God’s sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.” Nice song. Good message. I got it. The problem was that the people teaching me that song and that message didn’t get it.
We’re in the middle of Black History month and sometimes, Gil, I feel it is my history, too. I lived through the upheavals of society in the 60’s and 70’s. I remember fountains and bathrooms that had signs over them saying, “White Only. No Blacks Allowed.” I remember dear friends having to enter through the back door of a restaurant when I could walk in the front door. I remember friends who had to sit in the balcony of the theatre while I could sit anywhere I wanted to sit. I remember the difference between my school building and their school building and the fact that society had the audacity to tell us that separate was equal when I was using new textbooks and they were using thirty year old textbooks. I remember all too well the superiority my own family exhibited over those who were of a different skin tone or a different language group or a different culture than my own. I was told to fear what was different and stick to my own kind at the same time that I was taught how to sing, Jesus loves me, and Jesus loves all the children of the world. My family was okay with loving all the children of the world as long as those children stayed in their own lands with their own kind. The problem was that I believed what the Bible said and what the songs told me and I thank God that even though my family didn’t believe those things that they had enough faith to teach me the truth of the Bible even if they didn’t get it themselves. Thank God, that I got it.
Society is very different than it was before the 1960’s. Thank God for that. But it wasn’t a change that was easy. It was a hard fought change and there were many martyrs along the way, people who gave all they had and were to achieve the world we now live in. It still isn’t a perfect world. There is still much to do in the cause of equality for all people. Though the laws have changed, there are still hearts and minds that have to do a lot of changing.
Our own Metropolitan Community Churches began because there were no open, affirming, inclusive churches back in the late 60’s. Or there were churches you could attend as long as you didn’t disclose that you were gay or lesbian or, heaven forbid, transgendered. You could go to church as long as you stayed in the closet about your sexuality or gender, or at least didn’t talk about it, didn’t bring up the topic for discussion. They could ignore the obvious truth about you as long as you didn’t make it an issue. Just be a good gay they would say and don’t rock the boat. In the same way they told my black friends to stop rocking the boat.
Troy Perry, who went through his own dark night of the soul, claimed the vision God gave him of a church where gay and lesbian and transgendered persons could find a family and a home where they could worship a God of radical love and acceptance. There have been many times over the last 42 years that we have feared and wondered if the effort was worth all the trouble and tears. But all throughout those long years of struggle and hope God kept coming to us one by one and as a denomination and telling us like God told Abraham, “Do not fear.” God has been with us and God is with us today.
We have much to do as a congregation to achieve the vision of the future that God has given to us. We want to be a congregation where all persons as welcome and included no matter who they are. We want to be a part of the ecumenical community and join with other churches to make sure that all of them know that we are here and that we are Queer. Why? Because we want to be a part of God’s family and we want that family to know that God loves us exactly the same way that God loves them. Our mere presence in such projects as the University District Ecumenical Campus Feasibility Study tells people in ways that cannot be told any other way that we share their love of God and we want to be a part of expressing that love to this city in such a way that every straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered person knows he or she is included, welcomed, and has a home and a family that they can count on to help them out when they need a little help from us.
We met this past week to talk about the kind of building we hope to erect in the University District and the kinds of social service programs that we hope will occupy that building with us. Shelters for homeless men and women, daily meals for those who are homeless or can’t afford food, senior activity center, needle exchange program, health services, and more. But Lee and Dan and I, your representatives to the UDECC board will keep advocating for the Queer Community and for full exclusion in things as simple as restrooms where transgendered people feel safe and comfortable to the question of where does a gay man, a lesbian woman, or a transgendered person go when he or she is without a place to call home. We have much to do with the UDEEC project, but we have much to do ourselves.
I get phone calls every single week asking where gay men and transgender folk can find a homeless shelter where they safe and won’t be harassed. Where can committed Queer couples go and get to stay together as a family in a homeless shelter? Where does a Queer person with a child go for help? Currently there aren’t any homeless shelters who can consistently say that they provide such services to the city. Even those facilities that say they are inclusive can’t guarantee the safety of someone who is different in sexual orientation or gender. Those who do go are often taken aside and told by the staff that they won’t be safe if they do stay and that the staff cannot guarantee their safety. How does that make a person feel to have the administrative staff tell them that this isn’t a place they should count on staying at very long for fear of violence? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
More Queer teens are on the streets than any other group of teens. Queer youth are often the victims of sexual exploitation and violence. Queer youth are often thrown out of their own homes by their so-called loving parents for no other reason than that they are Queer. Where do these young people go? Who will be their family? Who will give them a home?
I don’t know how we will do it, but I am beginning to see that MCC Seattle has a purpose beyond merely providing worship services on Sunday mornings. We may be the very ones that God is calling to provide social services for our own Queer community and fill the gaps that aren’t being filled even though we live in the great gay Emerald city of Seattle. We tend to think that because this is Seattle that all of the problems we might encounter as Queer people have already been overcome, but that just isn’t true.
Jesus wept and then described how he wanted to gather in the people of Jerusalem like a mother hen gathers her chicks under her protective wings at night. This harkens to the Old Testament promise that God will gather in all the peoples of the world into God’s New Community, all the outcasts, all the rejects, all the persons on the edges of society. God will not leave anyone out of God’s family. God will create a home for everyone.
Some miss a very important part of the Genesis passage that we read this morning. To seal the covenant, the promise, between them, Abram prepares a sacrifice. The ancient way of sealing a promise was for each party to go amongst the sacrifice and each one to ignite portions of the sacrifice to signify that they were eternally bound to keep the promise made to each other. This promise was even binding upon their descendants.
But something interesting happens in the story we read today. Did any of you catch it? Just as Abram finishes preparing the sacrifice, God causes a deep sleep to come upon him. Then God passes through the sacrifice and ignites the sacrifice. Do you understand what this means? God will keep God’s promise to Abram even if Abram doesn’t keep the promise to God. God will be forever faithful to Abram. God’s faithfulness does not depend upon what Abram will or won’t do for God. God’s faithfulness depends only upon God. And so it is with you and me. When God makes us a promise, God will keep that promise regardless of whether you and I live up to the promise ourselves.
We have a God who comes to us and tells us to not fear the future because God is present with us, working powerfully to make sure that our God-given vision of the future will come into reality. We have a God who looks upon us with weeping eyes and gathers us under her loving protective wings giving us a new family and a new home, a place where we can safely celebrate exactly who God created us to be.
You and I have been together as pastor and congregation for a full year now…an amazing year of growth and change. Mark and I want to thank you for becoming our family and for giving us a new home among you.
As your pastor, let me leave you with a challenge: Will we, MCC Seattle, accept the Apostle Paul’s challenge from Philippians to become the very persons who God will use to achieve God’s New Community? Will we offer family and a home to anyone God sends our way? If we accept God’s challenge to us, then here is the promise that God gives to you and me: God who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it. Have no fear! You can count on it! God will be forever faithful!
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Singing With Mary, Christmas 2009
From Christmas Sunday, Dec. 20, 2009 at MCC Seattle
We are given two noteworthy passages to focus our Advent attention on this week (Luke 1:39-55 and Micah 5:2-5a). Both of the passages tell us about a Great Reversal, that is, an unexpected turn of events that we can truthfully say could only be caused by God because…this isn’t the way that things normally work in our world. We begin with the Micah passage in which the prophet foretells of the birth of a Savior, of a new King for Israel, who will be like his ancestor King David, who will bring those who have been exiled back home. This is the same passage that King Herod’s scribes quote as evidence that the messiah is to be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6) when the Magi from the East come to Jerusalem expecting to find a new king of the Jews.
The references to David are obvious. Bethlehem was the birthplace of David, Israel’s most famous ruler who also was a shepherd. This was probably not a prophesy about Jesus, but the infant church saw this passage exactly that way and claimed it for their own. Bethlehem was not thought of as an important city, being on the outskirts of the politically and religiously important Jerusalem. Historically it was the home of the smallest, the littlest, the most inconsequential tribe of Israel. References to Bethlehem are used to describe one who was younger, of lesser social status or of little political power.
However, we know that Jacob, Joseph, and David were all younger brothers who were chosen over their older siblings to become leaders, and who were honored by the rest of Israel throughout its history. They are examples of the Great Reversal. Jacob gets the birthright over his brother Esau. Joseph is elevated above his older brothers and becomes the one who saves all of his people and also all of Egypt from starvation.
When Samuel comes to look over the sons of Jesse, seeking to annoint a new King, David is so insignificant that his father doesn’t even call him in from the fields until Samuel has rejected all of his siblings and asks if there aren’t more sons. Then David, the youngest and most insignificant son, is brought back from the fields where he was caring for the sheep, and Samuel anoints him. David later becomes Israel’s greatest King.
"But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the littlest clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2). The most unlikely, the most insignificant are exalted by God in a great reversal of fortune.
Bethlehem, literally, “The house of bread,” was a backwater village located some 8 miles outside of the walls of Jerusalem. One who comes from Bethlehem cannot be expected to amount to much similar to Nathanael's statement when he hears about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).
Can anything good come out of Nazareth, or Bethlehem? And yet, in the case of Bethlehem and those who come from her, the old biblical pattern holds true: the insignificant are exalted. The tables are turned, and the most unlikely of people become instruments of God's salvation. From this insignificant little village, a young shepherd boy grows up to become the most beloved king in Israel's history. And a descendant of that king, also born in Bethlehem, fulfills God's long-awaited promises of deliverance, not just for Israel, but for the whole world.
It is not the way of the world, this exaltation of the lowliest. But it is the way God works, over and over and over again throughout history. An insignificant village. A child born to a poor, very young unmarried girl. In today’s second passage it is Mary, who sings a song of the Great Reversal.
Mary rejoices in the promise that the proud will be scattered, the powerful dethroned, the poor raised up, the hungry fed, and the rich emptied. Mary sings out of her own experience, her own hope, but out of the experience and hope of her people as well.
The Magnificat, Mary’s Song, is indeed a lovely expression of joy at God's promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned, or overturned: the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down, and the hungry are fed. God remembers the people of Israel, and the promises God has made to them. What a powerful text for every heart hungry to hear the good news that God is with us: Emmanuel!
In this week's unique situation, we have, in a sense, four unlikely prophets gathered not in the wilderness but on the front step of Elizabeth's home, two of them not even born yet, and still the infant John is already able to acknowledge the One who is greater by leaping inside his mother’s womb. The other two prophets are women, women with names and stories, women with voices and something to say, or in Mary's case, something to sing.
Women and babies: were definitely not at "the top of the heap," here, especially so, since there's an actual priest in the house, Zechariah, a professional, licensed and learned, knows-what-he's-doing expert in matters of faith. Ironically, though, Zechariah is the very one in this scene without a voice, literally, since he's been struck speechless during his own angelic visit for his disbelief and lack of faith. The stage is set this week, then, for us to have the rare opportunity to hear from the women and children for a change. And what a change they dream of!
This rejoicing in the Great Reversal is of course a powerful theme in the whole prophetic tradition, and is the more particularly connected with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Hannah’s song of vindication and joy at the conception of Samuel when she has been barren for so long. And it was Samuel who set the pattern of relations between prophets and kings that more or less defined the prophet’s role for centuries. Mary’s song echoes this prophetic tradition powerfully, and at the same time looks forward to the role she will play in God’s mercy being shown to generations “from now on”: because “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” because of God’s particular action in empowering Mary to conceive Jesus, she herself is blessed and is the channel through whom blessing will enter the world “from generation to generation.”
When we take Mary’s own words and speak them out as we did today, we are including ourselves in the work of the Great Reversal, and we in our time and place are included in the bringing-forth of blessing that feeds the hungry and lifts up the lowly and transforms the distribution of power. In taking on these words as our own, we can be encouraged to think about the concrete ways in which Mary’s song bears out “the promise made to our ancestors” in our own work for justice and peace today. These are the things that make our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.
Today’s passage begins “In those days Mary set out,” with little or no explanation of what “those days” include. The situation is this: Elizabeth is six months pregnant with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist, whose conception, birth, and vocation were foretold to his father Zechariah by the angel Gabriel. However, Zechariah has been struck speechless because he wouldn’t believe Gabriel’s message. Contrary to Zechariah’s lack of faith, Elizabeth, his wife is rejoicing that her barrenness has been relieved and she has been vindicated by God’s empowering her to conceive. In that respect Elizabeth stands in the line of Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel.
Just before this episode, Mary had also been visited by Gabriel, who announced to her that she would conceive and bear a son, despite her protest that she was a virgin. Gabriel continues by telling her that this son would be called the Child of the Most High. Mary receives this startling news by saying “Let it me with me according to your word,” giving her “Yes” to God, and so co-creating with God the possibility of blessing and salvation.
But because she is not yet married, and to conceive and bear a child would put her in a very precarious and potentially life-threatening social position in Nazareth, and possibly a precarious position with Joseph—so perhaps Mary decides she needs the wisdom and guidance of an older woman who can understand her unusual situation. That is why she “set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,” where Elizabeth and Zechariah live, to stay with them for about three months.
When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, it touches off a series of recognitions. Such “recognition scenes” were a staple element of classic Greek literature, and Luke, being a fine storyteller in the Hellenistic style, uses that Greek literary element to good effect in his narrative. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb recognizes the presence of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb, and leaps for joy. Elizabeth then recognizes the meaning of her baby’s movement—not just a random kick, but a ready greeting—and in turn recognizes Mary as “the mother of my Lord” and “she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
This recognition on Elizabeth’s part is the work of the Holy Spirit, which empowers her to identify realities she herself could not have witnessed firsthand. Mary, in turn, recognizes the work of the Spirit in Elizabeth’s sudden knowledge, and responds by singing her famous song, the Magnificat.
It is in this complex weave of recognitions and recognitions-within-recognitions that the witness to the coming of the Christ emerges. No one element alone tells the whole story; but together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the God into the world in human form. Emanuel, God with us. They are therefore living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, insignificant in the eyes of their male-dominated patriarchal culture—one old and one young; one previously barren and one just entering her childbearing years; neither possessing any particular dignity nor power— yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human form.
Put another way, in more relational terms, Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships—with each other, with God, with Zechariah and Joseph, with the townspeople and villagers; relationships both of support and subjugation, both suspicion and rejoicing—Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships form the social matrix in which God can bring forth new possibilities for the realization of justice, peace and love. Those new possibilities are gathered most obviously in the unborn John and Jesus, whose potentials will unfold in their adult lives of ministry and mission. But those new possibilities are also immediately evident in Elizabeth and Mary, in the inspiration and insight and songs they share, in the way their lives are redirected by the potentials for justice and peace God opens up for them.
The new life promised in Mary's pregnancy, is the focus of Luke's story, as it fulfills God’s promises to all humankind, but one wonders how these two humble women must have felt about what was happening in their own lives. Henri Nouwen says, "Who could ever understand? Who could ever believe it? Who could ever let it happen? But Mary says, 'Let it happen to me', and she immediately realizes that only Elizabeth will be able to affirm her 'yes'. For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them." As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: "They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community."
You and I and those gathered around you this morning are joined in community with each other. We are those who are blessed to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ today. It is to us that God has come again this Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us. It is through us that God will complete God’s work, through our relationships with each other, through our joint efforts to take that Good News to our own families, friends, and acquaintances, and to the greater community around us here in Seattle.
The question we must ask ourselves this morning then is how will we recognize the presence of Christ within and among ourselves, what will we do to bring into reality God’s justice and God’s peace in our own lives and in the lives of others? How will we redirect our lives to make it possible for us to accomplish the new opportunities God desires to bring forth for us, for our church, for our community, for our city, for our world?
Like Mary and Elizabeth we do have a choice: We could reject God’s presence with us this Christmas. Or we could accept the Christ Child into our lives again and also accept with Him the blessings God wants to give to us and to bring about through us? Will you sing joyfully and boldly with Mary this Christmas about the promises of God?
We are given two noteworthy passages to focus our Advent attention on this week (Luke 1:39-55 and Micah 5:2-5a). Both of the passages tell us about a Great Reversal, that is, an unexpected turn of events that we can truthfully say could only be caused by God because…this isn’t the way that things normally work in our world. We begin with the Micah passage in which the prophet foretells of the birth of a Savior, of a new King for Israel, who will be like his ancestor King David, who will bring those who have been exiled back home. This is the same passage that King Herod’s scribes quote as evidence that the messiah is to be born in Bethlehem (Matthew 2:5-6) when the Magi from the East come to Jerusalem expecting to find a new king of the Jews.
The references to David are obvious. Bethlehem was the birthplace of David, Israel’s most famous ruler who also was a shepherd. This was probably not a prophesy about Jesus, but the infant church saw this passage exactly that way and claimed it for their own. Bethlehem was not thought of as an important city, being on the outskirts of the politically and religiously important Jerusalem. Historically it was the home of the smallest, the littlest, the most inconsequential tribe of Israel. References to Bethlehem are used to describe one who was younger, of lesser social status or of little political power.
However, we know that Jacob, Joseph, and David were all younger brothers who were chosen over their older siblings to become leaders, and who were honored by the rest of Israel throughout its history. They are examples of the Great Reversal. Jacob gets the birthright over his brother Esau. Joseph is elevated above his older brothers and becomes the one who saves all of his people and also all of Egypt from starvation.
When Samuel comes to look over the sons of Jesse, seeking to annoint a new King, David is so insignificant that his father doesn’t even call him in from the fields until Samuel has rejected all of his siblings and asks if there aren’t more sons. Then David, the youngest and most insignificant son, is brought back from the fields where he was caring for the sheep, and Samuel anoints him. David later becomes Israel’s greatest King.
"But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the littlest clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2). The most unlikely, the most insignificant are exalted by God in a great reversal of fortune.
Bethlehem, literally, “The house of bread,” was a backwater village located some 8 miles outside of the walls of Jerusalem. One who comes from Bethlehem cannot be expected to amount to much similar to Nathanael's statement when he hears about Jesus, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" (John 1:46).
Can anything good come out of Nazareth, or Bethlehem? And yet, in the case of Bethlehem and those who come from her, the old biblical pattern holds true: the insignificant are exalted. The tables are turned, and the most unlikely of people become instruments of God's salvation. From this insignificant little village, a young shepherd boy grows up to become the most beloved king in Israel's history. And a descendant of that king, also born in Bethlehem, fulfills God's long-awaited promises of deliverance, not just for Israel, but for the whole world.
It is not the way of the world, this exaltation of the lowliest. But it is the way God works, over and over and over again throughout history. An insignificant village. A child born to a poor, very young unmarried girl. In today’s second passage it is Mary, who sings a song of the Great Reversal.
Mary rejoices in the promise that the proud will be scattered, the powerful dethroned, the poor raised up, the hungry fed, and the rich emptied. Mary sings out of her own experience, her own hope, but out of the experience and hope of her people as well.
The Magnificat, Mary’s Song, is indeed a lovely expression of joy at God's promises kept, a celebration of the tables being turned, or overturned: the lowly are lifted up, the proud are brought down, and the hungry are fed. God remembers the people of Israel, and the promises God has made to them. What a powerful text for every heart hungry to hear the good news that God is with us: Emmanuel!
In this week's unique situation, we have, in a sense, four unlikely prophets gathered not in the wilderness but on the front step of Elizabeth's home, two of them not even born yet, and still the infant John is already able to acknowledge the One who is greater by leaping inside his mother’s womb. The other two prophets are women, women with names and stories, women with voices and something to say, or in Mary's case, something to sing.
Women and babies: were definitely not at "the top of the heap," here, especially so, since there's an actual priest in the house, Zechariah, a professional, licensed and learned, knows-what-he's-doing expert in matters of faith. Ironically, though, Zechariah is the very one in this scene without a voice, literally, since he's been struck speechless during his own angelic visit for his disbelief and lack of faith. The stage is set this week, then, for us to have the rare opportunity to hear from the women and children for a change. And what a change they dream of!
This rejoicing in the Great Reversal is of course a powerful theme in the whole prophetic tradition, and is the more particularly connected with the Song of Hannah in 1 Samuel 2:1-10, Hannah’s song of vindication and joy at the conception of Samuel when she has been barren for so long. And it was Samuel who set the pattern of relations between prophets and kings that more or less defined the prophet’s role for centuries. Mary’s song echoes this prophetic tradition powerfully, and at the same time looks forward to the role she will play in God’s mercy being shown to generations “from now on”: because “the Mighty One has done great things for me,” because of God’s particular action in empowering Mary to conceive Jesus, she herself is blessed and is the channel through whom blessing will enter the world “from generation to generation.”
When we take Mary’s own words and speak them out as we did today, we are including ourselves in the work of the Great Reversal, and we in our time and place are included in the bringing-forth of blessing that feeds the hungry and lifts up the lowly and transforms the distribution of power. In taking on these words as our own, we can be encouraged to think about the concrete ways in which Mary’s song bears out “the promise made to our ancestors” in our own work for justice and peace today. These are the things that make our spirits rejoice in God our Savior.
Today’s passage begins “In those days Mary set out,” with little or no explanation of what “those days” include. The situation is this: Elizabeth is six months pregnant with the child who will grow up to be John the Baptist, whose conception, birth, and vocation were foretold to his father Zechariah by the angel Gabriel. However, Zechariah has been struck speechless because he wouldn’t believe Gabriel’s message. Contrary to Zechariah’s lack of faith, Elizabeth, his wife is rejoicing that her barrenness has been relieved and she has been vindicated by God’s empowering her to conceive. In that respect Elizabeth stands in the line of Hannah the mother of the prophet Samuel.
Just before this episode, Mary had also been visited by Gabriel, who announced to her that she would conceive and bear a son, despite her protest that she was a virgin. Gabriel continues by telling her that this son would be called the Child of the Most High. Mary receives this startling news by saying “Let it me with me according to your word,” giving her “Yes” to God, and so co-creating with God the possibility of blessing and salvation.
But because she is not yet married, and to conceive and bear a child would put her in a very precarious and potentially life-threatening social position in Nazareth, and possibly a precarious position with Joseph—so perhaps Mary decides she needs the wisdom and guidance of an older woman who can understand her unusual situation. That is why she “set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country,” where Elizabeth and Zechariah live, to stay with them for about three months.
When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting, it touches off a series of recognitions. Such “recognition scenes” were a staple element of classic Greek literature, and Luke, being a fine storyteller in the Hellenistic style, uses that Greek literary element to good effect in his narrative. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the unborn John the Baptist in Elizabeth’s womb recognizes the presence of the unborn Jesus in Mary’s womb, and leaps for joy. Elizabeth then recognizes the meaning of her baby’s movement—not just a random kick, but a ready greeting—and in turn recognizes Mary as “the mother of my Lord” and “she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
This recognition on Elizabeth’s part is the work of the Holy Spirit, which empowers her to identify realities she herself could not have witnessed firsthand. Mary, in turn, recognizes the work of the Spirit in Elizabeth’s sudden knowledge, and responds by singing her famous song, the Magnificat.
It is in this complex weave of recognitions and recognitions-within-recognitions that the witness to the coming of the Christ emerges. No one element alone tells the whole story; but together these women and their unborn children proclaim the advent of the God into the world in human form. Emanuel, God with us. They are therefore living signs of the Great Reversal: two women, insignificant in the eyes of their male-dominated patriarchal culture—one old and one young; one previously barren and one just entering her childbearing years; neither possessing any particular dignity nor power— yet they are the first to recognize the embodiment of God’s holiness in a human form.
Put another way, in more relational terms, Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships—with each other, with God, with Zechariah and Joseph, with the townspeople and villagers; relationships both of support and subjugation, both suspicion and rejoicing—Elizabeth and Mary’s relationships form the social matrix in which God can bring forth new possibilities for the realization of justice, peace and love. Those new possibilities are gathered most obviously in the unborn John and Jesus, whose potentials will unfold in their adult lives of ministry and mission. But those new possibilities are also immediately evident in Elizabeth and Mary, in the inspiration and insight and songs they share, in the way their lives are redirected by the potentials for justice and peace God opens up for them.
The new life promised in Mary's pregnancy, is the focus of Luke's story, as it fulfills God’s promises to all humankind, but one wonders how these two humble women must have felt about what was happening in their own lives. Henri Nouwen says, "Who could ever understand? Who could ever believe it? Who could ever let it happen? But Mary says, 'Let it happen to me', and she immediately realizes that only Elizabeth will be able to affirm her 'yes'. For three months Mary and Elizabeth live together and encourage each other to truly accept the motherhood given to them." As Nouwen reads this story, neither woman had to wait alone for the extraordinary events to unfold, slowly, as pregnancies do: "They could wait together and thus deepen in each other their faith in God, for whom nothing is impossible. Thus, God's most radical intervention into history was listened to and received in community."
You and I and those gathered around you this morning are joined in community with each other. We are those who are blessed to hear the Good News about Jesus Christ today. It is to us that God has come again this Christmas: Emmanuel, God with us. It is through us that God will complete God’s work, through our relationships with each other, through our joint efforts to take that Good News to our own families, friends, and acquaintances, and to the greater community around us here in Seattle.
The question we must ask ourselves this morning then is how will we recognize the presence of Christ within and among ourselves, what will we do to bring into reality God’s justice and God’s peace in our own lives and in the lives of others? How will we redirect our lives to make it possible for us to accomplish the new opportunities God desires to bring forth for us, for our church, for our community, for our city, for our world?
Like Mary and Elizabeth we do have a choice: We could reject God’s presence with us this Christmas. Or we could accept the Christ Child into our lives again and also accept with Him the blessings God wants to give to us and to bring about through us? Will you sing joyfully and boldly with Mary this Christmas about the promises of God?
Sunday, October 18, 2009
This Isn't What I Signed Up For! Mark 10:35-45
"This isn't what I signed up for!" my fellow student exclaimed as we looked over the syllabus for the college course we were going to take that semester. "I don't have time to put in this much work. This was supposed to be an easy 'A!'" He was obviously not ready to face the long reading list and papers and projects the professor required. So he dropped out before the second class
.
There are times in our lives that I think we all want to scream, "This isn't what I signed up for!" We wanted a different outcome, a different turn of events, something different than what we think we have received. We invest ourselves in a dream of a possible future and work hard to achieve what we think we want and desire. Then something happens. The economy crashes and we lose the job we always wanted. A relationship goes sour and we are no longer with the person we thought we'd committed our lives to being with. Disease strikes and we are forced to adjust our lives to accommodate something that we never imagined possible.
So I believe it was for the disciples in Mark 10:35-45 when John and James asked for the privilege of being named Jesus' top commanders in the new religious government they think he will set up when they arrive in Jerusalem.
Jesus has been honest with them, in fact, in verses 32 to 34 which immediately proceed today’s reading, he has told them that he is going to Jerusalem to face tribulation, suffering, and ultimately death. But the disciples keep ignoring what he tells them. Why? Because: "This isn't what we signed up for." The truth that Jesus is telling them just doesn't fit with the dream they have created of what their future with Jesus would be like.
To demonstrate the truth of this, the other disciples upon hearing what the two have asked of Jesus get quite upset with their fellow disciples. Can't you just hear the squabble: "Well, if you're in charge, don't go expecting me to follow your orders." Or, the famous one my children always used on me, "Why does she get to be the boss? That's not fair!" Jesus has to get the boys together for a sit down talk and calm them down before they can work together again.
You can’t much blame the boys for their misunderstanding. They have given up everything to follow Jesus. They were the counter-cultural revolution of their day, but they were still trapped in thinking like the rest of their society. They have committed themselves to Jesus and that commitment should be acknowledged and applauded. They want Jesus to succeed, but they are having a hard time giving up their traditional viewpoint of what success will mean for Jesus and for them. However, this is entirely new territory Jesus is taking them into. It might look like the same thing they have experienced before, but it is going to be, oh, so different than they have ever imagined.
They base their idea of a successful Jesus on what they know: the ruling Sanhedrin council in Jerusalem and the formative power of the Roman Empire which has taken over the known world. Won’t success for Jesus look like it does for everyone else? You really can’t blame them. It isn’t that they are so dense and so stupid that they don’t understand what he is telling them, it’s just that this situation is so vastly foreign to their experience that they just can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that being defeated, being tortured, being killed, could somehow bring about a positive anything positive for them. Why hitch your wagon to a sinking ship?
Jesus tells them that even if other people follow the pattern of "Lording it over each other," that kind of behavior doesn't belong in the New Community of God he is trying to create. He goes on to tell them "Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served-and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage." (The Message)
What does it mean to be in community together without anyone else "Lording it over" the rest of the community? What does it mean to be a servant, literally a slave, to everyone else? That concept doesn't sound quite right to most folks. But it is the truth that Jesus taught his followers-and that includes you and me. How will we live out that truth in the New Community of God we are creating at MCC Seattle? What would it mean for us to give our lives away as a ransom to release the captives that are being held hostage in our society by wrong ways of thinking, and wrong ways of acting?
First of all: what we become as a church may not look like what we think we know a church should be. We tout numbers and finances as the keys to success in the life of any church. How many members do you have? How many attend worship? How much money was given? How much money is being spent on mission and ministry?
We ask ourselves those same questions every single Sunday. We report those facts to you in the bulletin and in the weekly email newsletter. But do those facts really tell the whole story about what our congregation is becoming and doing? Are our own views of what it means to be a successful church being taken over and hijacked by what we have experienced in other churches, or what we have heard about from other churches?
Maybe we are looking at the wrong churches for our model. Maybe we should stop looking at the large evangelical churches that pack the pews weekly, that have the cutting edge musical groups and bands, and the video projectors and super-sized sound systems. Maybe we should start looking at churches like the Church of the Savior in Washington DC, founded in early 1940’s by Gordon and Mary Cosby and five other friends to be a different kind of church and have a different kind of ministry than any church ever had. They have never had large numbers or big budgets, but they have had a remarkable ministry that has affected not only their own community as their influence has reached literally around the world.
(From the Church of the Savior website) “From the beginning, church members sought to embody Christ in intentional and sacrificial ways, welcoming radical diversity and calling all to be ministers through the generous sacrifice of their own personal time, energy and resources. Interpreting the call to discipleship as the integration of two journeys in community—an inward journey to grow in love of God, self and others and an outward journey to help mend some part of creation—the church became the catalyst for numerous helping ministries...."
They are formed now by six independent community ministry groups that focus on their particular vision of ministry and make it happen in radical and revolutionary ways. Their membership orientation lasts three years, not two hours.
“Today, 60 years later, Gordon and Mary Cosby and others continue to play with new ways of becoming the authentic Church. What might happen in our hurting and distrustful world if people started coming together in small groups deliberately organized around perceived differences—of race, economic class, gender, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc.—and from that point of diversity vulnerably opened their lives, told their stories, unmasked their shared addiction to a socio-political system that has kept them alienated, and then together they began to take steps toward healing and justice?”
Secondly, building the New Community of God will mean that we make sacrifices in our lives to be available to and for each other during the week. We cannot expect to make an impact on the greater metropolitan area until we begin to make an impact on each other. What does it mean to become a servant, or dare we say the word, a slave to others? Is that idea really as demeaning and degrading as we Americans tend to think?
Jesus and the disciples spent a lot of time together. They didn’t just meet on Sunday mornings for worship and then depart without seeing each other for an entire week. What will a stranger experience when he or she comes into our community? Those of you who have been around here for awhile should be able to answer that question. Are we treating each other like we should be treating each other? Are we making space in our lives for each other? Or is the thought of having to change your schedule to accommodate another appointment with another person, no matter how important the idea is of building community together, contrary to what you personally want for yourself? The New Community of God we need to create won’t just happen. It will need to be created by you and me as we work together, worship together, fellowship together and live together.
What have you done this past week to make space in your life for someone from our church that you don’t normally associate with, or spend time with? Are you making a personal effort to build the community we want to establish by what you do and say with those who God has called together in this place? Look around this room right now. Is there anyone you don’t know? Perhaps someone that you don’t know by name? You don’t know where they work, or even if they work? Do you know their favorite song or their favorite food? Do you know what’s really troubling them about life today? As long as there is someone in this church that you do not yet know, really know, then your work as a servant to them isn’t yet completed and may not even yet have begun.
Invite someone out to eat with you. Invite folks over to your home. Go out to the theatre with them and then talk with them over a cup of coffee about the play or the movie. The experience together isn’t about the food or the movie, or the play, it’s about talking together, spending time together, getting to know each other, discovering what another person needs in his or her life and then being a part of filling that need for them. That’s what being a servant to others means: caring, sharing, loving, and creating a life together. It will take personal sacrifice and commitment by each of us if it is to ever happen. Thinking about it won’t make it happen. Just talking about it won’t make it happen. It will take action by you and me to make that New Community a reality in our lives with each other…daily.
As long as we don’t put this concept of becoming a real living community into operation then this church will remain a disconnected, lonely, group of people who come together once a week to sing songs and pray. There has to be more to being a church than meeting together once a week. We have to become Christ to each other. We have to begin to feed each other with the bread of life.
Thirdly, we must become meek and humble like Jesus. But first we have to stop putting ourselves down. Jesus was a humble and meek person, but those words don’t mean what we think they mean today. Jesus wasn’t a namby-pamby person who let other people walk all over him.
Jesus was meek. Meek meant power under control. It was a term horsemen used to describe a powerful stallion that was under the control of its rider. Meek means “power under control.” Jesus was a powerful person who used his power wisely and properly with the idea in mind of setting others free from those things that kept them in captivity be it social order, religious practices, or economic and political institutions.
Jesus was a humble person, not proud or arrogant, who saw himself realistically. Yes he was divine, but Jesus was also fully human. Being humble doesn’t mean waiting around for someone else to recognize your worth and ask you to get involved. Humble means knowing who you are and getting involved in what needs to be done and using the power you have to effect change in the world.
We must begin to see ourselves realistically for we are God’s messengers sent to serve God’s people. Jesus said he was a ransom for many in order that they might be released from their imprisonment in the social, religious, and political order of the world. Being a ransom means Jesus was of great enough worth that his actions and words gave freedom to the prisoners of the world. Jesus released us from our own personal prisons so that we might continue his work and ministry to the world around us.
Jesus knew who he was and what he could do and he began doing it: creatively, energetically, wholeheartedly and without any reservation. Jesus saw the vision of God’s New Community and Jesus worked to achieve that vision in reality by giving and sacrificing himself. Do you know who you are? Do you know what you could be doing for the cause of Christ? Are you holding back from taking part in becoming all that this church is meant to become to this community? We can’t achieve the vision of the future of MCC Seattle without you, without your sharing the work and the joy with us.
Knowing who you are means that you understand what you might be able to do to help and that you won’t wait for someone else to ask you to volunteer, but that you will step forward and volunteer your time, your talent, your experiences, your education and training, your wisdom and most importantly your love with the rest of the people in this room.
This is an important week, an important month in the life of Washington State. Stand up for God. Stand up proudly as a Christian. Stand up proudly as a Queer person and vote to approve Referendum 71 to keep the domestic partnership law. Stand up also and vote no on Initiative 1033 which would only make the current economic conditions harder on working people, on schools, on governmental efforts to help the poorest in our society.
Be responsible Christian citizens and vote! Stand up, speak out, take action! Be Christ to the world today and every day. Be a Christian servant to others.
.
There are times in our lives that I think we all want to scream, "This isn't what I signed up for!" We wanted a different outcome, a different turn of events, something different than what we think we have received. We invest ourselves in a dream of a possible future and work hard to achieve what we think we want and desire. Then something happens. The economy crashes and we lose the job we always wanted. A relationship goes sour and we are no longer with the person we thought we'd committed our lives to being with. Disease strikes and we are forced to adjust our lives to accommodate something that we never imagined possible.
So I believe it was for the disciples in Mark 10:35-45 when John and James asked for the privilege of being named Jesus' top commanders in the new religious government they think he will set up when they arrive in Jerusalem.
Jesus has been honest with them, in fact, in verses 32 to 34 which immediately proceed today’s reading, he has told them that he is going to Jerusalem to face tribulation, suffering, and ultimately death. But the disciples keep ignoring what he tells them. Why? Because: "This isn't what we signed up for." The truth that Jesus is telling them just doesn't fit with the dream they have created of what their future with Jesus would be like.
To demonstrate the truth of this, the other disciples upon hearing what the two have asked of Jesus get quite upset with their fellow disciples. Can't you just hear the squabble: "Well, if you're in charge, don't go expecting me to follow your orders." Or, the famous one my children always used on me, "Why does she get to be the boss? That's not fair!" Jesus has to get the boys together for a sit down talk and calm them down before they can work together again.
You can’t much blame the boys for their misunderstanding. They have given up everything to follow Jesus. They were the counter-cultural revolution of their day, but they were still trapped in thinking like the rest of their society. They have committed themselves to Jesus and that commitment should be acknowledged and applauded. They want Jesus to succeed, but they are having a hard time giving up their traditional viewpoint of what success will mean for Jesus and for them. However, this is entirely new territory Jesus is taking them into. It might look like the same thing they have experienced before, but it is going to be, oh, so different than they have ever imagined.
They base their idea of a successful Jesus on what they know: the ruling Sanhedrin council in Jerusalem and the formative power of the Roman Empire which has taken over the known world. Won’t success for Jesus look like it does for everyone else? You really can’t blame them. It isn’t that they are so dense and so stupid that they don’t understand what he is telling them, it’s just that this situation is so vastly foreign to their experience that they just can’t quite wrap their heads around the idea that being defeated, being tortured, being killed, could somehow bring about a positive anything positive for them. Why hitch your wagon to a sinking ship?
Jesus tells them that even if other people follow the pattern of "Lording it over each other," that kind of behavior doesn't belong in the New Community of God he is trying to create. He goes on to tell them "Whoever wants to be great must become a servant. Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. That is what the Son of Man has done: He came to serve, not to be served-and then to give away his life in exchange for many who are held hostage." (The Message)
What does it mean to be in community together without anyone else "Lording it over" the rest of the community? What does it mean to be a servant, literally a slave, to everyone else? That concept doesn't sound quite right to most folks. But it is the truth that Jesus taught his followers-and that includes you and me. How will we live out that truth in the New Community of God we are creating at MCC Seattle? What would it mean for us to give our lives away as a ransom to release the captives that are being held hostage in our society by wrong ways of thinking, and wrong ways of acting?
First of all: what we become as a church may not look like what we think we know a church should be. We tout numbers and finances as the keys to success in the life of any church. How many members do you have? How many attend worship? How much money was given? How much money is being spent on mission and ministry?
We ask ourselves those same questions every single Sunday. We report those facts to you in the bulletin and in the weekly email newsletter. But do those facts really tell the whole story about what our congregation is becoming and doing? Are our own views of what it means to be a successful church being taken over and hijacked by what we have experienced in other churches, or what we have heard about from other churches?
Maybe we are looking at the wrong churches for our model. Maybe we should stop looking at the large evangelical churches that pack the pews weekly, that have the cutting edge musical groups and bands, and the video projectors and super-sized sound systems. Maybe we should start looking at churches like the Church of the Savior in Washington DC, founded in early 1940’s by Gordon and Mary Cosby and five other friends to be a different kind of church and have a different kind of ministry than any church ever had. They have never had large numbers or big budgets, but they have had a remarkable ministry that has affected not only their own community as their influence has reached literally around the world.
(From the Church of the Savior website) “From the beginning, church members sought to embody Christ in intentional and sacrificial ways, welcoming radical diversity and calling all to be ministers through the generous sacrifice of their own personal time, energy and resources. Interpreting the call to discipleship as the integration of two journeys in community—an inward journey to grow in love of God, self and others and an outward journey to help mend some part of creation—the church became the catalyst for numerous helping ministries...."
They are formed now by six independent community ministry groups that focus on their particular vision of ministry and make it happen in radical and revolutionary ways. Their membership orientation lasts three years, not two hours.
“Today, 60 years later, Gordon and Mary Cosby and others continue to play with new ways of becoming the authentic Church. What might happen in our hurting and distrustful world if people started coming together in small groups deliberately organized around perceived differences—of race, economic class, gender, age, sexual orientation, political affiliation, etc.—and from that point of diversity vulnerably opened their lives, told their stories, unmasked their shared addiction to a socio-political system that has kept them alienated, and then together they began to take steps toward healing and justice?”
Secondly, building the New Community of God will mean that we make sacrifices in our lives to be available to and for each other during the week. We cannot expect to make an impact on the greater metropolitan area until we begin to make an impact on each other. What does it mean to become a servant, or dare we say the word, a slave to others? Is that idea really as demeaning and degrading as we Americans tend to think?
Jesus and the disciples spent a lot of time together. They didn’t just meet on Sunday mornings for worship and then depart without seeing each other for an entire week. What will a stranger experience when he or she comes into our community? Those of you who have been around here for awhile should be able to answer that question. Are we treating each other like we should be treating each other? Are we making space in our lives for each other? Or is the thought of having to change your schedule to accommodate another appointment with another person, no matter how important the idea is of building community together, contrary to what you personally want for yourself? The New Community of God we need to create won’t just happen. It will need to be created by you and me as we work together, worship together, fellowship together and live together.
What have you done this past week to make space in your life for someone from our church that you don’t normally associate with, or spend time with? Are you making a personal effort to build the community we want to establish by what you do and say with those who God has called together in this place? Look around this room right now. Is there anyone you don’t know? Perhaps someone that you don’t know by name? You don’t know where they work, or even if they work? Do you know their favorite song or their favorite food? Do you know what’s really troubling them about life today? As long as there is someone in this church that you do not yet know, really know, then your work as a servant to them isn’t yet completed and may not even yet have begun.
Invite someone out to eat with you. Invite folks over to your home. Go out to the theatre with them and then talk with them over a cup of coffee about the play or the movie. The experience together isn’t about the food or the movie, or the play, it’s about talking together, spending time together, getting to know each other, discovering what another person needs in his or her life and then being a part of filling that need for them. That’s what being a servant to others means: caring, sharing, loving, and creating a life together. It will take personal sacrifice and commitment by each of us if it is to ever happen. Thinking about it won’t make it happen. Just talking about it won’t make it happen. It will take action by you and me to make that New Community a reality in our lives with each other…daily.
As long as we don’t put this concept of becoming a real living community into operation then this church will remain a disconnected, lonely, group of people who come together once a week to sing songs and pray. There has to be more to being a church than meeting together once a week. We have to become Christ to each other. We have to begin to feed each other with the bread of life.
Thirdly, we must become meek and humble like Jesus. But first we have to stop putting ourselves down. Jesus was a humble and meek person, but those words don’t mean what we think they mean today. Jesus wasn’t a namby-pamby person who let other people walk all over him.
Jesus was meek. Meek meant power under control. It was a term horsemen used to describe a powerful stallion that was under the control of its rider. Meek means “power under control.” Jesus was a powerful person who used his power wisely and properly with the idea in mind of setting others free from those things that kept them in captivity be it social order, religious practices, or economic and political institutions.
Jesus was a humble person, not proud or arrogant, who saw himself realistically. Yes he was divine, but Jesus was also fully human. Being humble doesn’t mean waiting around for someone else to recognize your worth and ask you to get involved. Humble means knowing who you are and getting involved in what needs to be done and using the power you have to effect change in the world.
We must begin to see ourselves realistically for we are God’s messengers sent to serve God’s people. Jesus said he was a ransom for many in order that they might be released from their imprisonment in the social, religious, and political order of the world. Being a ransom means Jesus was of great enough worth that his actions and words gave freedom to the prisoners of the world. Jesus released us from our own personal prisons so that we might continue his work and ministry to the world around us.
Jesus knew who he was and what he could do and he began doing it: creatively, energetically, wholeheartedly and without any reservation. Jesus saw the vision of God’s New Community and Jesus worked to achieve that vision in reality by giving and sacrificing himself. Do you know who you are? Do you know what you could be doing for the cause of Christ? Are you holding back from taking part in becoming all that this church is meant to become to this community? We can’t achieve the vision of the future of MCC Seattle without you, without your sharing the work and the joy with us.
Knowing who you are means that you understand what you might be able to do to help and that you won’t wait for someone else to ask you to volunteer, but that you will step forward and volunteer your time, your talent, your experiences, your education and training, your wisdom and most importantly your love with the rest of the people in this room.
This is an important week, an important month in the life of Washington State. Stand up for God. Stand up proudly as a Christian. Stand up proudly as a Queer person and vote to approve Referendum 71 to keep the domestic partnership law. Stand up also and vote no on Initiative 1033 which would only make the current economic conditions harder on working people, on schools, on governmental efforts to help the poorest in our society.
Be responsible Christian citizens and vote! Stand up, speak out, take action! Be Christ to the world today and every day. Be a Christian servant to others.
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