Sermon: What you are. (Feb. 9, 2019)

Epiphany 5A

February 9, 2020

Isaiah 58

Matthew 5:13-20

INTRODUCTION

         Last week, the prophet Micah offered us this summary of what we do as people of faith: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.” Today, our texts will take that what, and tell us how. First, Isaiah. Isaiah is speaking to the Israelites as they are returning from being in exile for the past 70 years. After the Jerusalem Temple had been destroyed, they had been sent to live in Babylon, away from all that they knew about faith. Now, they are back, and trying to figure out how to live lives of faith without everything they had known before. They are fasting, which they understand to be a good thing, but even as they fast (and wonder why God isn’t impressed), they are oppressing their workers, and doing all kinds of things that are the opposite of what their faith calls them to. Isaiah calls them back to the essence of their faith: share bread with the hungry, free the oppressed, clothe the naked. Do these things, and your light will shine. Do these things, and you will see God working among you.

         That light bit ties us right into the Gospel reading, as Jesus tells us we are the light of the world. Today’s reading continues the Sermon on the Mount – last week we heard the Beatitudes, in which Jesus speaks to a crowd of broken and hurting people and calls them blessed. Today he tells those same people they are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Salt and light: two things essential for life!

         Today we have a baptism, and the rite will quote a part of this Gospel text, about letting your light shine. As you listen, hear these instructions in our texts today as describing the life of a baptized child of God, and consider how well you personally, and the Church as a whole, are living into this description. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         It has been a huge news week in America. Superbowl Sunday, Monday a botched Iowa caucus to officially begin presidential primary season, Tuesday the State of the Union address, Wednesday a historic acquittal vote for the president’s impeachment, Thursday the president’s response to that vote, developing news on the coronavirus throughout… each day has brought some other juicy piece of news to get people all riled up. And I don’t know if you have noticed, but as a result, the name-calling and attacks and derogatory discourse has been on steroids. The news has been hard enough to consume, but add all the mudslinging and it really becomes too hard to take. Whether the dancing at Super Bowl was demeaning to women, or empowering, whether Iowa deserves to be the first state to primary if they’re going to mess up democracy like this, rejected handshakes and ripped up speeches, voting your conscience or needing to grow a spine… these are some of the nicer things I have read in social media. And, some of the vilest things of all that I have seen, which are not to be repeated here, are coming from people who identify as Christian!

         What most breaks my heart is when the attacks are not thoughtful criticisms of someone’s actions (I actually appreciate and even enjoy these reflections, as they help me evaluate my own opinions and perspectives), but when they attack the person him or herself, aiming to undermine their very humanity. Not “you did something terrible,” but, “you are garbage.” The criticism is not about what the person did, it is about who they are. On one such derogatory post, I couldn’t resist commenting, saying, God made each one of us good, in God’s own image, and loves us all, even though we often mess up – so criticize actions all you want, but who are we to undermine what God has called beloved? (Someone subsequently told me I was “exhausting” and called me a “crazy lady” for bringing God into a conversation about the State of the Union. And so it goes.)
         Maybe the reason I was so sensitive to that this week is that our Gospel lesson says exactly the opposite. You remember where we left off – Jesus is speaking to a crowd of misfits and broken people, lowest rung types, and has just called them each blessed. Now he goes on, saying to them, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Did you notice this? He didn’t say, “You should be the salt of the earth,” or, “You will be the light of the world, if only you do this…” No, he says, “You are” those things, already! Today, in a world where light and salt are two cheap and available commodities, it is easy to overlook how profound a promise this is. Salt and light, after all, are both necessary for life, and in Jesus’ time, they were not cheap. Salt was literally worth its weight in gold, only accessible to the very rich. Light was fine in the day, but at night, it was expensive to light your home. So, in calling the crowd salt and light, Jesus is saying, “You are valuable. You are precious. You are life. You are one who causes things to grow, and who brings understanding and clarity, and who heals, and preserves, and who helps to melt the iciness of the world. You are – already! – all of those things, because you are mine and I am with you.”

         What a dramatically different message that is from what the world tells us, certainly from what I’ve read on social media this week. I heard about a study that concluded that elementary age kids, if they hear one negative statement about themselves (like, “you are stupid, you are worthless, you are a failure”), for every one of those, it takes ten genuinely offered positive statements to bring their self-esteem back to where it was. Ten! I suspect the number is similar for adults, probably higher for adolescents. Negative words are so powerful. That’s what makes Jesus’ statements so important, especially when insults and attacks on each other’s humanity are so prevalent. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. They have the power to drown out all those negative voices – the ones coming from outside, and maybe even more important, the ones coming at us from our own hearts. But God’s voice is louder. In our baptism, as we will witness in Arwen’s baptism in a moment, we are each called by name, called God’s beloved child, and promised God’s Spirit and presence with us, come what may. That’s a promise – nothing can change that. As our youth choir will sing later, “No matter what the world says or thinks about you, you are a child of God.” You are salt, and light. You are beloved. You are blessed.

         So that’s the number one thing I want you to take away from this sermon today: the knowledge that none of those voices that tear you down mean a thing, because Jesus’ voice is way more powerful, and he says you already are salt and light: precious in God’s sight and precious in this world. And so are JLo and Shakira, and Buttigieg and Sanders and Warren, and Trump and Pelosi, and McConnell and Romney and Schumer, and whoever on the internet is calling you a crazy person for talking about the love of God. All salt and light, every last one of them. All of them flawed, yet all of them children of God, beloved and blessed.

         The other thing I want you to take from this sermon is to consider what you’re going to do about that. When someone says so definitively that we already are something, whether it is salt and light, or beloved child of God, or maybe a good leader, or a powerful speaker, or a good mom – we are more inclined, aren’t we, even if we didn’t believe it at first, to start acting like it. We start to believe it, and to live as if it were true. And so how do we act like the salt and light in the world that Jesus says we are?

Isaiah gives some pretty good ideas in our first reading. Pay workers fair wages, seek a more just world in which people have what they need, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, shelter the homeless. All good things to work toward. But in light of this week’s turmoil in our country, and what will inevitably be a messy election season before us, I’d like to suggest that the first way to be salt and light in this time and place, is this: treat others as if they, too, are salt and light, as if they too are God’s beloved. If you must criticize (and sometimes this is warranted – Isaiah certainly does this, as have prophets throughout time criticized especially the actions of leaders and people in power, calling them to return to God’s way), talk to and about them in a way that focuses on their actions (“you are doing something bad”) rather than undermining who God has made them to be (by saying “you are bad”). You hear the difference in language? Criticize their actions, not their person. Imagine what this simple practice would do for our civil discourse, to practice first remembering, “They are beloved by God. They are salt and light.” See them as God sees them, and know that their actions do not change their status as beloved children of God, any more than your actions change your status. They, or we, will wander from the path, but Jesus still says we are salt and light, and that promise continually brings us back to the path, to be the healing, preserving, life-giving agents that he calls us.

         It’s hard, when we interact with so many people who are so different from us. In fact, just among the people in this congregation, people in this room right now, we have people with all kinds of different opinions and perspectives and values! But there is, of course, one very important thing that holds us all together, and that is a belief that our loving God made each of us so beautifully unique, and understands our brokenness; that this God loves us so much as to send us Jesus, to first proclaim to us in our baptism our belovedness, to promise us we are salt and light, to teach us to love our neighbors as ourselves. And finally to take all of our brokenness with him to the cross, bury it deep in a tomb, and rise again to bring us new life. We are all held together by a love that could do that for this here bunch of sinners, and by a love that then motivates and empowers us to be the salt and the light, to share that message with the world in word and in deed.

         Thanks be to God that we are all different, for our difference lets us spread God’s love further than we could if we were all the same. Let us be thankful for one another in those differences. Let us pray for each other in those differences. Let us commit to listening to and learning from one another in our differences, so that we will not stop growing into God’s vision for us. And may our differences make the lighting and seasonings of life all that much brighter and richer, and reflective of God’s own love and glory.

         Let us pray… Giving God, we thank you for the assurance that we are the light of the world and the salt of the earth. Make us humble enough to love each other in the different ways we live out that promise, and courageous enough to faithfully live it out the particular way you call each of us to. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Blessed are the losers (Feb. 2, 2020)

Epiphany 4A

February 2, 2020

Micah 6:8, Matthew 5:1-12

INTRODUCTION

         I mentioned last week as I was orienting you to Matthew’s Gospel that Matthew paints Jesus as a sort of “new Moses.” You remember Moses, how he went up on a mountain and received from God the 10 Commandments, and presented them to God’s people to show them how God wanted them to live and act. Well today, Jesus will climb a mountain and do the same thing, as he begins telling a crowd that has been following him what it looks like to live out the kingdom of God here and now. And God’s kingdom won’t look like we might imagine – like power and might and winning. Sometimes it looks like being so empty and broken (mourning, persecuted, working toward peace) that you are truly able to receive the mercy and grace that God has to offer.

         The lectionary pairs these beloved “beatitudes” in Matthew with another favorite passage, the most well-known one in the prophet Micah. A little context for this will help: Micah’s community to whom he is prophesying is basically at this point surrounded by the enemy army, who is ready to attack, and things are understandably tense. The reason they are in this situation is that their rulers have been unjust, ungodly, and untrusting of God. Micah sets up the response to this behavior and its consequence like a sort of trial, with God as the judge, the mountains as the jury, and the sinful people of Israel on the witness stand. God asks, “What more did you want from me? I already have done everything for you!” Israel asks, “What could we possibly bring before God in return for all this?” and lists several impressive and impossible sacrifices. Micah’s response, though, presents the heart of the issue, and a summary of our life of faith: “What does the Lord require of you,” he asks, “but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God?”

         Both Micah and Matthew will present some pretty counter-cultural ways to live, to “walk humbly with God,” as Micah says. As Paul will point out in 1^st Corinthians, these might seem like foolish ways of living. But for those of us who believe in Christ crucified and risen, this way of living brings life. So, let’s listen.

[READ]     

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We included this text in our wedding. I’ve seen it chosen for several funeral services. It was even read at the Presidential Inauguration three years. It’s inspired countless books, and even been spoofed by Monty Python. The Beatitudes. It is certainly a beloved text, applicable to all kinds of different situations. Maybe it is because of its familiarity and frequent use, though, that this opening to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount has, over time, lost its punch. Despite its remarkable and table-turning description of God’s kingdom, the Beatitudes are often reduced to a list of platitudes describing a Christian life. And sure, that works for some of them – Christians should be merciful and pure of heart, for example, and they should seek peace.

Some of them, though, fall far short of the warm, fuzzy filter we’ve put on them. Some of them, I think, can be downright confusing, even discouraging, and I bet Jesus’ 1^st century audience would agree. You see, people in the first century were seeking exactly what people in this century seek: a strong, bold leader who would save them from the oppression and fear they are experiencing. Someone who will show that they have a spine, assert their power, stand up to evil, and get the people out of this mess! But now here is Jesus, in his first major sermon, and instead of making the big promises of grandeur that they crave, he says, “Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the grieving. Blessed are the humble. Blessed are those who are poor, hungry, thirsty, who seek justice.” Why didn’t someone interrupt him to say, “Uhm, Jesus, I think you missed the point. We don’t want to be those things anymore – meek, sad, broken. We were hoping you would save us from those things. How can you say we are blessed?? We sure don’t feel blessed!”

Yeah, these allegedly blessed groups of people are not the ones we are used to seeing as blessed. When do we usually say that, “I’m so blessed”? It’s when we have good things happen to us, right? Or maybe when we have come through something tough, made it to the other side. Saying someone is blessed when they are mourning, persecuted, meek, hungry, thirsty, etc. is so counter to our worldview, especially our American dream. We want to climb the ladder ourselves, not hang out at the bottom. Yet in Jesus’ sermon, he names as blessed not the winners, not those on top, but rather, those on the very bottom, the very vulnerable, the weak, the oppressed, those who have lost something or someone.

Why on earth would Jesus do that? Why would he side with this bunch of, shall we say, losers?

If ever there was a text in the gospel that shows Jesus’ priorities, this is it: it turns out, Jesus didn’t come to stand with the winners. I used to read this text as Jesus lifting up those who are downtrodden, preferring to focus on his use of future tense: “They will be filled. They shall obtain mercy.” I saw it as a text of hope for the future, like, “Wait it out, your turn will come, if not here on earth, then at least in heaven.” I guess that’s fine, but now when I read it, I see something different: I see that just by mentioning them, Jesus is already blessing those groups of people, right here, right now.

Some years ago, a dear friend of ours, Alex, was dealing with her mom, who was suffering from dementia. In one visit, she had recognized Alex, but did not recognize her own husband, to whom she’d been married 70 years. “He says he’s my husband,” she told Alex. “Who is he?” At one point in the conversation, she said to Alex, “I feel like I’m losing my marbles.” Alex’s compassionate response was, “That must be scary.” And that’s true, isn’t it? When we are in those uncertain places – mourning, hungry, confused, persecuted – it is scary. We do not feel blessed. We feel alone, and scared, even helpless.

In the wake of this encounter, Alex’s family had a conversation with her mom about the state of things. The gist of the conversation was to assure her: you are safe, and you are not alone. You are safe, and you are not alone. Now that is a word of blessing. And that is the word that I hear in Jesus’ sermon. Not, “It’ll get better, just wait and see.” Not, “It’s really not so bad.” But rather, “You are safe with me. I am standing with you and holding you in my arms. You are not alone. You are mine, and I am with you always, and especially right now. You are blessed. I love you.”

I wonder how Jesus’ original audience heard those words? We know from the verses immediately preceding this, that Jesus had been teaching, healing, and casting out demons, and that crowds of people were following him from place to place. This crowd is made up of those same downtrodden, lowest rung types who truly needed to hear these words. Can you picture it?

Now what about today? Whom are you picturing, who needs to hear these words? If Jesus were to stand on a mount today and say these words, who would need to hear, “You are safe, you are not alone, you are blessed”?

         Blessed are those suffering from dementia, for they are not alone.

         Blessed are the immigrants and refugees, for they will find home.

         Blessed are the imprisoned, for they will know freedom.

         Blessed are the addicted and their families, for they will have life.

         Blessed are the workers, for they will receive fair pay.

         Blessed are the food insecure, for they will be nourished.

         Blessed are the children, for they will get what they need.

         Blessed are the elderly, for they will not be forgotten.

         Blessed are the minorities, for their voice will be heard and considered.

         Blessed are those who are persecuted for working for social justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

         Rejoice and be glad, for great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

         “The prophets who were before you” – prophets like our buddy, Micah. That last line of this today’s text from Micah is, as I said, a summary of a life of faith: “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” I have often seen these words on banners in church sanctuaries and fellowship halls – and with good reason. They are good words for all of us, but especially for those of us in a situation where we can serve those same vulnerable populations to whom Jesus speaks. Do justice, Micah says: stand with and speak for those in need, seeing to it that they get what they need to thrive. Love kindness: the response when we truly try to understand the plight of another and are moved to compassion. And finally, walk humbly with your God: relying not on ourselves, but on God’s own grace and providence to give us all we need to live the way God calls us to.

How will we live out this command, today? What does it look like to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God in 2020? Here’s one thing I’m going to do. 52 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and many others called for a “revolution of values” in America. They sought to build a broad, fusion movement that could unite poor and impacted communities across the country. This movement was called the Poor People’s Campaign, and sought to address the most pressing issues impacting the poor and low-income people in this country. Fifty years later, this unfinished work has been picked up once again, by the new Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. This non-partisan movement, which partners with faith and labor leaders and organizations across the country, works at every level to bring awareness and change to the issues most affecting the 140 million poor and low income people in this country, and encouraging people toward moral civic engagement – around the very same issues Jesus concerned himself, in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. This Friday, at 7pm, the Poor People’s Campaign’s national tour will be stopping in Rochester. The Rev. Dr. William Barber, one of the movement’s founders, will be here to speak. I’m eager to hear him, to attend the event, and to find ways to engage in serving those same people whom Jesus called “blessed.” If you would like to join me in attending this event and learning more, please let me know – I’d love to go as a group, so we can walk humbly with our God together.

Whether this, or some other way that suits your particular interests, values, beliefs, and capabilities, know this: that wherever you walk, Jesus walks with you. Jesus walked for you all the way to the cross, and walked out of the tomb to bring us new life, so that we might continue the walk toward and for those in need – for those who are already blessed, but are even more so by us bringing the light of Christ into the darkness.

Let us pray… Holy God, you have promised to stand with the weakest and lowliest of your children, and you have called us to do the same. Bless us and walk with us as we strive also to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with you. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.