Sermon: On names and labels, and how they keep us from truth (June 28, 2015)

Pentecost 5B

June 28, 2015

Mark 5:21-43

            When my parents were expecting their first child, my brother, they talked about names just like all expecting parents do. Like all parents, they considered many factors: names they liked, names from their family history, names from the Bible, and perhaps most importantly, names that would not lend themselves to terrible nicknames once the kid hit school age. They finally decided on Luke – a strong name, and a biblical one. Who could mess up Luke? And yet, once he went off to school, guess what his friends start calling him? Puke. So much for avoiding terrible nicknames.

            Now, in Puke’s, I mean Luke’s case, his nickname was offered in love by his friends, so no harm done. But of course not all nicknames are this way. Often we are given nicknames that are what we now would call bullying – names that are meant to degrade a person, to bring them down, to make fun of them. And nicknames are tough because they tend to stick. Perhaps even my talking about this right now is making you squirm, remembering your own hurtful nicknames that some mean kid of even a family member gave you that stuck, and it ruined your whole childhood. Maybe it was a name linked to a characteristic, or maybe to just one event. The boy who threw up in class. The girl who was too fat for the PE uniforms. The boy who flunked out. The girl who got pregnant at 15. The boy who’s poor.

            Names and labels are powerful things. As it turns out, the saying is wrong: sticks and stones may break your bones, but words… can cut you to the core in a way that requires years of therapy to

overcome. We all know this – often from personal experience – and yet since the advent of language we have used our words to label and name, for better or for worse. Just look at the poor hemorrhaging woman in our Gospel lesson. That is how she is known: as the woman who has been bleeding for 12 years. Likely, this is the sort of bleeding that most women only endure a few days once a month, and in this 1^st century Jewish culture, that time is a time when women are considered ritually unclean. They are untouchable. They should not be in public during this time, lest someone else touch them and become ritually unclean themselves. But this woman does not endure this a mere few days a month; she has endured it consistently for 12 whole years. Because of this, she is also likely unable to have children, making her even less in the eyes of her culture. So, by no fault of her own, she has acquired several unwanted names and labels: the bleeding woman, the woman who can’t conceive, the untouchable woman, the woman who can’t contribute to society… And none of them is complimentary.

            Why do we feel the need to label others, anyway? Perhaps it is in an effort to make some sense of a situation, especially a situation that makes us uncomfortable, or that we can’t understand. By labeling something – an event, a person, whatever – we are able to box it up neatly, talk more directly about it, find faults, or solutions. Often, it also allows us, if we like or need, to remove ourselves from the difficulty of the situation. It belongs to this other category, which I have no part in.

            I have been thinking a lot about this the past week and a half, as our country continues to mourn following the events in South Carolina last week. It hardly took a few hours before the media was throwing around all kinds of labels. The shooter is a racist. The shooter is a terrorist. The shooter is mentally ill. This is the parents’ fault for raising him wrong. This happened in a church, so it is an attack on Christianity. It’s the Confederate flag’s fault. This is the NRA’s fault. This is the fault of people who are against gun – if those people had all had guns, this wouldn’t have happened. Now, there may be truth in any number of those statements. But the danger of jumping right to them is that it prevents us from taking a moment to really see the people involved. I certainly

Young Dylann and his father, submitted to NBC
News by Dylann's ex-step-mother, Paige Mann

have my opinions about the shooter, too, but what would happen if, before we make assumptions about what kind of person he is, and what kind of family raised such a monster, we took the time to really see him, to understand him? It sounds horrifying in this case, right? Who would want to get in the head of this guy? Well, let me tell you a few things to humanize him: his family raised him in the church, in an ELCA church, in fact, where he was baptized, confirmed, attended church camp, and still attended worship regularly. His father attended worship twice a week. In his own manifesto, Dylann Roof does not blame his parents, saying that they did not instill his views in him, nor did he want them to bear any responsibility for his actions. Suddenly, he is becoming someone who looks more like us: a good Lutheran boy from a devout family, who wants to take responsibility for his own actions, but who fell victim to being swayed by some perverse views on people different from him. None of this is enough to keep me from shaking my head in sadness and disbelief at what he did, but suddenly, he has become a person to me, and slowly but surely the labels either fall away, or at least are offered with slightly less vitriol.

I wonder how many people tried to truly see the woman in our Gospel lesson, the one who is known by her ailment? I wonder what was more painful for her: the disease itself, or living with the consequences of it, or perhaps, living in a reality in which no one even tries to truly see her, to know her, to hear her story, to understand her, to relate to her? When she sees Jesus in the crowd, she probably suspects that he can heal her hemorrhaging, but I wonder if the reason she reaches out to him, and then presents herself to him when he turns around, is that she knows that here is someone who can and who will truly see her, for all that she is. It does take courage to be truly seen by someone – that is why it is “with fear and trembling” that she presents herself – but perhaps she

knows, in some way, that her true healing and restoration will only come when she is healed not only in body, but also in spirit.

Jesus does see her. And when he does, he calls her “daughter” – restoring her to community, restoring her to wholeness. The word our translation translates here as “well” (as in, “your faith has made you well”) can also be translated as “whole”: “Daughter, your faith has made you whole.” Belonging and wholeness – this is what Jesus offers to this woman, previously labeled in all the wrong ways, now claimed publicly as a daughter of faith, and one who is wholly a part of the kingdom.

Taking the time to truly see the other may bring that other into wholeness and joy. But more importantly for us today, is how it affects us: if we are able to suspend labels and name-calling and putting people into a box, we will see people and situations more honestly and clearly – and this will in turn allow us to be changed, to be made whole like the woman in the Gospel story. As soon as we smack a label on something, it is no longer our responsibility. Taking the time to see and to know pushes us to examine ourselves, our own actions, our own role.

And this is why our presiding bishop, Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, has called Lutheran churches

ELCA Presiding Bishop, the Rev. Elizabeth Eaton

around the country into a day today of mourning and of repentance – for the ways we have benefitted from a system so destructive or demeaning to people of color (you may have heard the phrase, “white privilege” – this means that, because I am white, I will probably not be pulled over for my skin color, and if I am, I will be treated with respect. It means I can be pretty sure no one is going to come into our Bible study and shoot us because of the color of our skin), for the times we have made careless jokes or comments that actually cut away at who someone is or their heritage, for turning the other way and ignoring our brothers and sisters who are different from us, assuming that their problem is not our problem.

President Obama spoke eloquently about this in the powerful eulogy he gave at Rev. Pinkney’s funeral on Friday. He said, “Whatever solutions we find will necessarily be incomplete. But it would be a betrayal of everything Rev. Pinkney stood for, I believe, if we allow ourselves to slip into comfortable silence again. Once the eulogies have been delivered, once the TV cameras move on, to go back to business as usual. That’s what we so often do to avoid uncomfortable truths about the prejudice that still infects our society, to settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change – that’s how we lose our way again.”

Friends, we cannot lose our way again. We must find ways to enter into the need for repentance – it may start with education, perhaps a discussion group here at church, or reading books on the topic, or building a relationship with a person or group of people who look different from you. Please, if you have ideas about how we as a community might continue this conversation, don’t hesitate to talk to me about it; I am eager to walk this road with you. But for today, we begin with acknowledgment and with prayer. Let us pray…

God of restoration and wholeness, the tendency to separate ourselves from the earth’s ills is so strong in us, we sometimes don’t even realize when we do it. Grant us a spirit of wholeness, of relationship-building, of restoration, so that we might truly see all people as our brothers and sisters, and work together to build up the kingdom of God. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Stilling the storm in Charleston and America (June 21, 2015)

Note: I have been trying to process Wednesday night's shooting all weekend, and have much to say about it, but this sermon (which was rewritten three times) is a fairly accurate picture of where I am. I may end up reflecting more later, but for now, this will have to do.

Pentecost 4B

June 21, 2015

Mark 4:35-41

            Like many of you, I found myself on Thursday morning devastated and angry as I read about the horrific shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The church was founded by African Americans in 1816 – well before the Civil War – and has been an icon and center for the rights of African Americans over its 200 years of existence. On Wednesday

"Mother Emanuel" AME Church,
Friday evening vigil

evening, as you probably know by now, a young white man walked into the historic church during a Bible study and prayer meeting, and, after about an hour observing the gathering, he opened fire, killing nine people, including the pastor, who also happened to be a State Senator, a graduate of one of our Lutheran seminaries, and an ardent fighter for racial justice. The shooter informed his victims that he was motivated by hatred and prejudice toward African Americans, who were allegedly taking from him and his country what is rightfully his. In other words, it was a racist act. In fact, many are calling it an act of terrorism, which, by any meaningful definition of the word, it was.

            Whether racism, or terrorism, or both, or just a hateful act, his motivation boils down, at its core, to fear. It was fear that comes from a lack of understanding and a lack of willingness to gain understanding about someone who seems different. It was fear that has been couched in a blindness to a need for change. It was fear that was nurtured by a culture where some State Capitols – including South Carolina’s – still wave the Confederate battle flag (itself a symbol of division and war), and where people of color are repeatedly treated more harshly by police (and without motivation to do so), and where the chance of a young black man going to prison is greater than the chance of him going to college.

            People don’t come up with perverse ideas and assumptions about other people all on their own; such perversity and hatred come from living in and being formed by a culture of fear of the other. It is a reality we need to face. Racism is a reality that we need to acknowledge, a societal sin of which we need to repent. But naming the fear that undergirds racism requires a vulnerability, humility, and self-awareness many of us are unable to take on - and I include myself in this. We would rather name the cause of tragedies like this anything but fear. We blame them on the failure of the mental health care system, on the need to tighten gun laws, on the need to allow prayer in public schools, on Hollywood and video games, on any number of scapegoats. These may all be true, but perhaps they also serve as convenient masks to hide the darkness, storms, and fears inherent in our culture, and those in our own hearts.

            What would happen then, if, instead of masking our fears, we named them, faced them, confessed them, and let the Holy Spirit speak to them? Or even, what if we let the power of Christ cast them out? I am drawn to this story about Jesus stilling the storm, and to the disciples’ desperate

question of Jesus: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Is this not the question of the people of Charleston right now, especially the people of Emanuel AME Church? Is it not the question of African Americans across the country? What is happening, Lord? Why are you continuing to let us perish in this place where even sanctuary is no longer safe? Why are our people being killed, arrested, beaten, judged unfairly? Do you not care that we are perishing?

            Of course it is also a question we are all familiar with. All around us, our loved ones are diagnosed with cancer, relationships are breaking and broken, families aren’t speaking, good jobs are hard to come by, we experience losses we were not prepared for. I know I have lifted this question to God before: “Do you not care that we are perishing?” And it has always been a question arising from humanity’s ills. I remember in one particularly difficult time in my life, a pastor friend of mine directed me to Psalm 69, which begins with the plaintive cry, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck… I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me… My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.” Why aren’t you helping, Lord? We are drowning! It has been humanity’s cry for generation upon generation. It is a cry that sounds like yet another tragic shooting. It is a cry that sounds like a devastating diagnosis. It feels like a flood coming up to our neck. It feels like a boat being bombarded by wind and waves.

            In these times, where do we put our trust? How easy it is to feel overcome by the waves bombarding the boat, to lose hope like the disciples seem to have done in the Gospel lesson. “Don’t you even care? We’re dying here!” Notice they don’t ask for help. They don’t express their trust in the living God asleep on a cushion in the boat with them. They merely exclaim in fear. I get that.

He Qi, "Calming the Storm," 2000.

That’s how I felt on Thursday after reading too many articles about the events in South Carolina. That’s how I feel when my friends – young, healthy friends – tell me about the bad news they got at the doctor. That’s how I felt getting bad news myself at the doctor a few years back. In times like this, where do we place our trust? In ourselves? In our doctors? Do we somehow place our trust in our own fears? Do we believe in the power of the brokenness of this world to overcome us? It doesn’t make sense, and yet, how easy it is to do this, to believe that evil will win, to throw in the towel and give up.

            And yet in the wake of the disciples’ desperate plea, Jesus awakes, comes to the deck of the boat, and performs a sort of exorcism on the sea – and with it, on the fears in our hearts that would overtake us, that would let us give in to perishing, that would keep our hearts and minds from trusting in the God, the only God, who can calm our fears. To those fears and doubts he says, “Peace! Be still!” once again allowing us to see that our power and our destiny do not come from fear. Rather, they come from a loving God, one who is with us in the boat all along, who assures us that even if we do momentarily lose our trust and our faith in Christ, he never leaves our side. It is not lost on me that the name of the church in Charleston is Emanuel – God with us. And indeed, God is, right with us in the boat: just as God was with each of those beautiful people as they were shot, with us when we

heard the news, and yes even there, weeping, as the shooter, himself a baptized child of God, let his own fear win.

            Normally I find the promise of Emanuel to be a comforting one. But in this case, I don’t hear Jesus’ rebuke of the waves and exorcism of our stormy fears as a comfort. You see, it is not a promise that waves won’t arise again. They will. It is not an allowance that because God is there, we can sit back and do nothing. We can’t. Rather, it tells us that God’s work through us on earth is not done. There is still fear in this world. There is still racism, and prejudice, and misunderstanding, and ill-informed conclusions. Jesus’ saving action on our behalf – both in that boat during a storm, and ultimately, on the cross – serves perhaps as a comfort, but also as a charge to us: a charge to remember from whom we get our life, a charge to trust in that God instead of our fears, a charge to keep ourselves from becoming tolerant of or even complicit in the brokenness and hatred of this world, and a charge to continue to work for justice and peace in whatever way we are able, just as we promised to do in our baptism.

If we are called to follow Jesus, then this is what it means. The gospel promise here is not that we are off the hook for any of this – rather, the gospel promises that as we enter into the often stormy life of working toward a world ruled by love instead of fear, and compassion instead of apathy, that Jesus remains, always and forever, Emanuel, God with us, in every storm we may face along the way.

            In closing, I’d like to offer this prayer that was shared with the world by the bishop of the ELCA’s South Carolina Synod. Let us pray:

God, our refuge and strength, you have bound us together in a common life. In all our conflicts, help us to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, to listen for your voice amid competing claims, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect.

  

Where hearts are fearful and constricted, grant courage and hope. Where anxiety is infectious and widening, grant peace and reassurance. Where distrust twists our thinking, grant healing and illumination. Where spirits are daunted and weakened, grant soaring wings and strengthened dreams.

  

We lift to you all those who suffer harm and especially the nine lost loved ones at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston: Rev. Clementa Pinkney, Tywanza Sanders, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson, Ethel Lance, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, and Susie Jackson.

  

We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

  

(Adapted from Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Additional Prayers page 76.)

Sermon: The kingdom of God is... (June 14, 2015)

Pentecost 3B

June 14, 2015

Mark 4:26-34

            Okay, I’ve got a pop quiz for you this morning: In the Bible, what topic does Jesus talk about more than any other? [Kingdom of God]

            Okay, next question on the quiz is more of an essay question: what is the kingdom of God? [take ideas]

            I asked this question of both churches’ councils this week as well as Bethlehem’s Wednesday prayer group, and I got some similar answers, and some very different answers from each group. The most common answer was that the Kingdom of God is heaven, the afterlife, the eternal life that faith in Christ promises. That is true, but it’s not the whole truth. In fact, as Lutherans we talk about the kingdom of God as something “already” here on earth, even as its full expression has “not yet” been

Thy Kingdom Come by John Lautermilch

experienced by those of us on earth.

And that is why we pray, at least once a week if not much more often, “Thy kingdom come.” Anyone ever thought about what that actually means when we say those words in the Lord’s Prayer? Martin Luther explained them, in his Small Catechism, this way: “[God’s] kingdom comes of itself without prayer, and yet we pray that it may come also to us.” In other words, when we pray for God’s kingdom to come, we are praying that we here on earth might live according to God’s will. In fact, you could say that “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” is actually just saying the same thing twice. So to say this prayer is to live as members of and participants in that kingdom.

            Well, if we are praying to be participants in God’s kingdom, it’s pretty important that we know something about what that is and what it means, don’t ya think? And that’s why Jesus talks so much about it. How convenient that two of the parables he tells about the kingdom of God are what we heard in our Gospel lesson today! Let’s take a look and see what we can learn.

            First we have the parable of the sower who scatters seed, but doesn’t have to really do anything to make the seed grow. He sleeps, he wakes, and the seed grows, then the grower harvests it. What can we learn from this parable about the kingdom of God? I think the first thing is that the

kingdom of God is active, growing. As soon as those seeds are scattered, the grain progressively grows and develops into something more than where it started. For this reason, in part, many scholars feel that “kingdom of God” is a poor translation, because the word “kingdom” doesn’t go anywhere. That is, Jesus cannot “kingdom” the world. The word in Greek translated here as “kingdom” can actually be treated as a noun OR a verb. A better translation, then, is “reign of God.” As in, we live under Christ’s reign, and Christ reigns over us and in us. It is an action. It has the ability to move and grow, just like those seeds the sower scatters. So, to capture that potential for action and growth, from here on out, I will refer to the “reign of God” instead of “the kingdom of God.” You with me? Okay, going on…

            Second thing we can learn from this parable is that the reign of God is, plain a simple, a mystery. “The seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how,” Jesus says. Scholars over the centuries have spilled much ink trying to make sense of this line, which only appears in Mark’s gospel. Does it mean we don’t have to do anything? That we are given permission to live so-called Christian lives that are characterized not by love in action but by sloth and apathy? Doubtful! But if the grower doesn’t do anything and he doesn’t even know how this is happening, then what is our role? But I don’t think this particular parable is trying to tell us our role. I think it is, rather, urging us to notice and appreciate the mystery that is God’s reign. How many of us have had metaphorical seeds planted in our lives that may have seemed meaningless at the time, but progressively grew into something essential – we knew not how, but there it was. How many have found in themselves a strange stirring of the Spirit that they didn’t expect, and they knew not how but suddenly found themselves in a new sort of ministry, a new way of service, a new way of knowing God? God’s reign is indeed a mystery, moving in us and in the world in ways we cannot understand or predict, but rather, for which we can only offer our thanks and praise and awe.

            Ok, so we now know two things about the reign of God: 1) That God’s reign is active and growing, not merely a location, and, 2) God’s reign is a mystery. Let’s move on to the second parable, the well-worn parable of the mustard seed, in which a tiny little seed grows into a great big bush, big enough for birds to make homes and find shade in its branches. This is a parable we love to tame, saying, “Just a little bit of faith can grow big and strong!” It’s so nice, and the birds are so nice

Field of wild mustard

and it’s just a really feel-good parable, right? But to its first century hearers, this parable really packs a punch. First, a word about mustard plants: they are an invasive species. That is, they grow and grow, rapidly and increasingly and not always where you want them to. They are like the weeds in my garden which, even if I get them all out one day, they will be back again if I don’t get mulch on there right away (which, of course, I never do). They are like kudzu in the south, taking over whole fields. What then, does this plant have to teach us about the reign of God? That the reign of God is expansive, invasive, it grows in ways that we don’t expect, cannot tame, and might not even like! We may try to contain it, claiming it only for a certain group at a certain time, but in the end, it will grow just wherever and however it pleases. This can be uncomfortable and disconcerting for those of us who like to keep faith and God and church in a neat little box. But the reign of God cannot fit into a neat little box! It will burst out and grow – on the other side of the tracks, on the bad side of town, in the hearts of those of whom we are afraid, of those who are different from us.

            Which brings us to the last point I’ll mention today about the reign of God, and that has to do with those birds making their home in the big branches of this wild n’ crazy invasive mustard plant.

We think of birds as nice, beautiful, interesting. We even put feeders in our yards to draw them in. Not so in first century Palestine. In fact, just before this, Jesus has told the parable about the sower who throws seed on different kinds of soil (remember that one?), and the birds are the ones who come and snatch up the seed before it can take root. They are pests! They are undesirable. And yet, the reign of God welcomes even them. Indeed, it invites them in… just as Christ, throughout the gospel narrative, invites into his midst the undesirables – the sinners, the sick, the tax collectors, the sketchy women.

            And at the end of the day, that is what the reign of God is: it is Christ. It is where Christ lives and acts and has his being. He says to the disciples that the reign of God “is in your midst,” and he is referring to himself. As one Lutheran scholar writes, “Where [Jesus] was proclaiming good news, healing, calling for repentance, effecting justice, doing works of love – there was the activity he called the kingdom. He also summoned his followers to announce the kingdom and to be part of its activity, so it still goes on.”[1]

He summoned his followers to announce the kingdom and to be part of its activity – that is where we come in, where we become a part of the reign of God, where that prayer “thy kingdom come” starts to mean what Luther talked about, where it comes also in us.

I asked you at the beginning of this sermon, what is the kingdom, or reign, of God? And here we have at least the beginning of an answer: The reign of God is active – active in us, in our works, in the way we treat one another with love and work for justice and peace. The reign of God is a mystery – to be experienced in love and grace and thanks and praise. The reign of God is invasive, not to be contained, but to be marveled in. The reign of God is inviting, welcoming all to make a home in its branches. In short, the reign of God is Christ, reigning in our midst even now through our love for one another, our faith in a mysterious God, and our action on behalf of the needs of the world.

            Let us pray… Reigning God, your ways are mysterious to us, yet we long to understand them. Help us to understand your ways by living out the purpose of your Son: welcoming the stranger, loving the despised, forgiving the bound, and in all things, giving thanks and praise to you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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[1] Martin Marty, in Lutheran Questions, Lutheran Answers.