Liberal and Affirming

A couple of months ago I was asked by a respected colleague if I would like to speak at one of their weeknight worship services.  These services are supposed to be more casual, open to the public, and for the broader community more than for the congregation itself.  In fairness, he sent an email to all of the local faith leaders with whom he has a relationship in our community, asking if any of us would be interested in speaking.  I am a raging extrovert and I love public speaking opportunities.  I said "YES".  It would be in May.  I had time.  But I immediately began to think about what I might share there.  I thought I would talk about the Wittel Farm Growing Project, which I started and direct.  We farm a 40 acre piece of land in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County.  We plant, grow, and harvest with volunteers.  Last year about 500 volunteers served on the farm.  Everything we harvest is donated to Lancaster County food relief organizations.  We work with about a dozen food banks and pantries.  So I thought maybe I would tell the story of the farm and my leadership there.  (I left the family farm to follow a call to ordained ministry.  20 years later, I'm farming to fight hunger. Never thought I would put my farming experience to use in the church and community.  God has a sense of humor).  I love to tell this story and invite people to imagine how God might call them to use their gifts and experiences in life to serve neighbors.  Maybe I would mention what its like to be called to grow food, care for the land, and serve the earth during a time of climate and ecological crisis. Knowing that some evangelicals don't believe in climate change or a Christian call to Earthkeeping, I wondered if that would be acceptable or even heard. I believe that we learn when our perceptions and understandings are challenged.
A couple of weeks ago, my colleague emailed me.  He was embarrassed and apologetic.  It seems that I was the only faith leader who said "yes", but his worship team said "No thank you".  They did not accept my acceptance of his invitation because I am a liberal and I have taken an "affirming" position on social media regarding LGBTQ neighbors.  They did not want to affiliate with me.  Even when my colleagues assured them that I wouldn't seek to offend them, that was not enough.  They were worried that my presence in their building would be perceived to align them with a liberal supporter of LGBTQ rights, participation, and full inclusion in the Christian community.
My first response was, "Hey, a free evening!".  My second one was lament at how deeply divided the church has become in this culture.  We cannot be in the same room with one another when our biblical morality causes conflict.  We prefer the comfort of like-minded or "right-minded" friends.  The enemy is anyone who doesn't think like me or believe what I believe.  We focus on the things that separate us instead of the things that unite us, that we hold in common.  This is part of what is killing the church in the west.
I notice in the gospels that Jesus holds company with synagogue leaders and Pharisees, Samaritans and sinners.  He brings people together who supported Roman policies and hated Roman policies.  He was rejected and ejected from the synagogue.  He protested in the temple.  He debated religion with scholars.  He healed and included people kicked to the margins of society.  He challenged economic and ethnic norms that created inequality, poverty, and wealth.  He told people to give without expecting anything in return.  He fed hungry people without demanding employment.  He favored the underclass, the disadvantaged, and the overlooked.  He touched families that experienced grief.  He made people's broken lives whole.  He sought to give them a chance to live.  He longed for God's heavenly kingdom to be manifest on earth in the human community.  He enacted justice, liberation from suffering, and merciful inclusion of every marginal person.  From children to mentally ill ethnic non-Jews.  Jesus was a liberal in his social policy of love--of neighbor, enemy, God and one another. 
I am labeled in the community as a "liberal pastor."  And apparently that is bad, unchristian, unfaithful, evil.  If "love your neighbor as yourself" is a liberal policy, then what does it mean to be a conservative Christian? I am tired of the "evangelical conservative Christians" having the public microphone and telling the world that a Christian thinks and acts and sounds like them.  And that their values and concerns are exclusively Christian.  And that their moral judgments represent the whole Christian church. And that real Christians vote Republican and love Trump. I am tired of one-issue evangelicalism whose lithmus test for authenticity is the size of your church, the wealth and fame of your preacher, and your stance on sex and abortion.  (Related issues).  What of the Christians who led the abolition of slavery or civil rights or opposed the death penalty or oppose war or serve the poor or welcome the refugee or offer healing or serve the earth?  What about the Christians who feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, and  house the homeless?  Liberal Christians or progressives or the Christian left must build and announce a counter narrative, an alternative to the gospel of prosperity and exclusion that is poisoning the air we breathe and the waters in which we baptize.  I am a white, educated, cis-gendered heterosexual Christian man and I experience the privilege that offers me all the time.  I have voice and vote and leadership experiences and get- out- of- jail- free cards and access to people and places and things.   I'm usually the host of the meal and the head of the table, not the unwelcomed guest.  I can't even imagine what it is like to be excluded because of my race or gender or sexual orientation or religious faith.  But I am willing to become an ally, a friend, and a companion to those who do experience exclusion and oppression and hate because of who they are.  I am willing, because I'm a liberal or progressive Christian.  I'm willing to fight with and for people who are treated like crap by the church and the policymakers. 
I don't like labels, but I would rather be excluded for who I include than included for who I exclude.  I do believe in full inclusion, welcome, and the beloved status of every person.  I do believe the church is supposed to be a sanctuary for marginalized and oppressed peoples, minority groups, and those without the power to secure their own rights and protections under the law.  Black and brown bodies, women's bodies, LGBTQ bodies, addicted bodies, mentally and physically ill bodies, asylum seeking refugee bodies, poor and hungry and homeless bodies---these matter to God and to Jesus and to the church he builds.  I see how the church has harmed people by excluding them, rejecting them for who they are, and denying them a relationship with God.  I would bet that the church makes as many atheists as the world makes. People don't believe in a church whose god is abusive and hateful and inaccessible.  People long for a God who frees people from their captivity to prejudice and hatred.  A God who frees people to serve others, to experience the fullness of life in community, in which they are accepted, loved, respected, and cherished.  I intend to serve that God--the God of the prophets, the God of Jesus, the God of the apostles.  If love and grace and inclusion make me too liberal, then I will wear that!  Yes, I am a liberal pastor.  I stand in the long biblical tradition of the prophets and in the life of Jesus Christ; I long for the full and complete freedom and inclusion and vitality and health of every living person, every living thing in God's good creation. Until all are free, none are free.  To be free is to be accepted as God made you.  To be free is to be you.  To be free is to have agency and safety and access to sufficient provision.  To be free is to live without fear, without discrimination, without the threat of violence.  To be free is to have choice and to choose life, to choose mercy, to choose service, to choose to embrace others as beloved siblings.  Call me what you want, God has called me beloved child and servant.  Nothing matters more. 
    

Justice Doing, Mercy Loving, Humble walking Faith in God

Justice doing is

Sitting at lunch counters and on buses in seats reserved for whites only;

Suing one’s master for freedom from slavery;

Leading your people on an underground railroad,

Going to jail for riding the whites only trolley car and going to the supreme court;

Marching from Selma to Montgomery across deadly dangerous bridges;

Standing up and telling the truth to powerful men until freedom is won for all;

Justice doing is

Marching and protesting and writing letters and campaigning and calling up your congressman or senator or governor to speak your mind on behalf of those who know injustice;  It is a demand that power serve the vulnerable, the least, the marginal, the small. It is a demand for the truth in politics and an end to corrupted self-interest. It is a demand for environmental protection and climate action to save the planet from greed and gluttony and abuse.  It is children marching to end gun violence in schools and children marching for the planet and children leading us to do what is right, even when it isn’t easy. 

Justice doing is

Going to rallies in Harrisburg on buses with strangers who become friends because our cause is the same, our hope is the same, our hearts are the same---until those who are wronged are given every right, we will keep up the fight for justice;  

Justice doing is inclusion and compassion and holiness and bodily presence, a blessing of rightness in a world full of wrong.  It is knowing what is right and acting for the right and demanding that what is right for me and for the white man and straight woman and for the wealthy family is also right for the black man and woman, the gay man and woman, the trans man  or woman, the poor man or woman. Justice doing is a courageous demand for freedom and equality and human dignity and opportunity and reparations for generations of wrong. Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  

Mercy loving is

Feeding and clothing and housing the hungry, naked, homeless poor.  It is generosity that relieves suffering by giving some of what I have to you so that you have what you need. It is good samaritan funds spent to keep a family housed or the lights turned on or the heat working in winter.  Mercy loving is holding space for someone to grieve, to fail, to struggle and to stay with them in it. It is empathy for the strugglers, whose lives are too hard, because isn’t it hard for all of us, aren;t we all strugglers on the journey?    

Mercy loving is 

Opposing the death penalty and mandatory sentencing that robs our humanity and destroys black bodies, guilty of blackness if nothing else; and encouraging rehab for almost everyone because everyone has pain and everyone suffers and bleeds.  It is to want affordable health care for everyone because health is not about money. It is to welcome the asylum seeker and the refugee fleeing suffering in search of mercy; it is to oppose public policies that detain and imprison brown children and deport brown parents and reject entry to a better life for black and brown peoples. Mercy loving is to reject war and militancy as the first resort in global conflict or global conquest.  It is to insist that people matter more than profits and bottom lines.    

Mercy loving is

Caring for all the creatures like God cares for all the creatures; it is to adore pets and reduce ones impact on the planet and to be concerned about the planet’s health and to consider the needs of all living things when I leave my house and go out for a walk.  It is to plant trees and flowers and meadows and feed the birds and the bees and the bats and the butterflies. It is to reduce waste and single use plastic and the throwaway consumerism that kills so much, including the soul; It is to give a little extra to save the Koala and the Polar bear because they have value too; Blessed are the merciful for they shall be shown mercy.

Humble walking is a stroll, a meander, a  hike from my ego-centric self-indulgence toward a self-emptying, subsistence on God, the earth, and the others walking beside me.  It is the insistence that we depend, that life depends, that everything depends on some things we cannot do or accomplish or make ourselves. Humble walking visits the homebound and shows up at gravesides and sorts clothing and packs food and cooks breakfast and doesn’t ask what’s in this for me? Humble walking is worship; Because humble walking is walking toward and with someone else, and God is walking there too.  It is not arrogant strutting or mean tweeting or wealth boasting. Blessed are the meek for they alone will inherit the whole earth!  

What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.  Amen.   

Jesus did four things

I’ve never been arrested.  Not yet. 2020 might be the year.  I feel it coming. Sometimes you have to get arrested for change to come.  Christian history is full of arrests for the cause of justice and freedom and mercy.  John the Baptist was no criminal. John the Baptist’s arrest is a consequence of the Roman occupation and the oppressive policies they used to control the Jewish population in Palestine.  He was arrested for calling out, publicly shaming, or protesting the bad behavior of a certain political ruler--Herod Antipas. Jesus’ public ministry began as a response to John’s arrest.  And he begins to preach John’s message. Knowing that it was John’s mouth that put him in jail, he shouts it anyway! Change is coming, God is near! Change is coming, God is near. Change is coming, God is near.  He takes up John’s work, but he doesn’t stay in the predominantly Jewish south. He goes north to the Galilee of the Gentiles, so called because of the mixed population there. For over 800 years, northern Israel was ethnically mixed.  Judea and Jerusalem were much more Jewish. Israel was segregated, north and south. Some Jews were prejudiced against other Jews, and then there were the Samaritans. This is when oppression causes the oppressed to see themselves as inferior and divide themselves from one another.  It is always the powerful’s rule to divide the conquered in order to diminish them and weaken them, to hold them down.     

Jesus takes John’s message to a mixed community of Jews and non-Jews. Because suffering underneath was and is not an exclusively Jewish situation.  

Jesus invites fishermen to follow him.  He suggests that their skills as fishermen may become instruments of God’s work.  Their everyday skills and tasks could be applied to the mission field. They’re going fishin’.  Fishermen know the fish don’t come to you. You got to locate the fish, net the fish, catch the fish, clean the fish, fry the fish. Now I’m getting hungry.  And maybe that’s part of it. Are we hungry to connect with others? What’s our net? Where are the fish? Is the message so meaningful to us that we want others to hear it, know it, experience it?  And fishing is full of hard work and failure. You try one spot, nothing. Try another spot, nothing. Try another spot, jackpot! Go back there the next day, nothing. Fishermen know how to fail and keep going.           

Jesus’ followers observed that Jesus did four things.  He went throughout Galilee; teaching in the synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom; curing every disease and sickness among the people.  These four things, Matthew says, characterize Jesus’ activity.  

Advent 3. December 17. Luke 17.

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=84970407 (Click the link to continue the story)

Forgive over and over again. 
A little faith does a lot.
We are worthless slaves.
Lord, have mercy on us!
Was none of them found to return, praising and thanking God, except this foreigner?
For in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.
Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.

A series of wisdom sayings are built into the narrative.  A chapter like 17 can feel a bit disruptive, with less narrative consistency and more sort of wisdom teaching.  But Jesus is inviting us into internal work, soul or heart work, mind-changing work.  The book "Breathing Underwater" by Father Richard Rohr applies the 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the Christian life.  He suggests that we are all in recovery from self delusions and denials about ourselves and God. 
We may ask ourselves, what teaching is speaking to me right now?  Is it a need to forgive someone who has wronged us?  We may hear that forgiveness is not a one-time thing, but that we may need to keep on forgiving again and again.  Sometimes a single past act continues to cause us pain and we need to talk our way into forgiveness.  Sometimes we focus on the scar and fail to see that time has healed us and the pain has dissipated.  Sometimes the pain persists and the offense lingers.  So, keep on forgiving.  Its for you, as much or more than for the one who offended or sinned against you. 
To the disciples, faith is accumulative and the more you have the better things will be.  Don't we even say, that person has a lot of faith or is really faithful?  Jesus says that faith is not like money.  It is like food coloring in water; a little changes everything. A little faith is powerful stuff, because it opens us up to a world beyond ourselves, our limited minds and senses. 
The slave analogy is hard to hear from Jesus' lips.  Namely because he suggests that his followers are like slaves, called to be obedient to their master.  I'm not sure how to deal with this right now.  But we must acknowledge it as troubling and perhaps archaic.  Is it a word we ought to forget now?  Slavery is never right.  The thought is, faithful people are called to obey God's commands. 
People are crying out for mercy.  Where have you heard their cries?  Yesterday, I heard the cries of a father and a mother whose children attend toxic public schools, where asbestos and lead threaten the health of their children.  How does Jesus respond to cries for mercy?  He stops, listens, acts, and sends them on their way to receive healing and rejoin the community.
Gratitude is a bold announcement of faith!  God has shown mercy.  God has provided.  God has protected.  God has rescued.  God has healed.  God has saved.  God has intervened.  God has spoken words of love and forgiveness.  Thanks is the natural response.
God is nearer than we see or think.  We are always looking somewhere else to some other place or time.  The grass is always greener, we say.  Jesus says God is present immediately and completely in the present moment, here and now. 
Surrender.  Let God be God.  Learn to trust.  How hard it is for us to do these things.  We are self-sufficient lovers of security.  We have fooled ourselves into thinking we protect ourselves with our wealth or homes or relationships or jobs or insurance policies or elected leaders.  We have been hurt by being vulnerable and trusting.  Self-protection is human, too.  To trust God is to give up on all the false securities. It is to stay vulnerable. This is not easy.  It is a lifetime of internal work.  We are all in recovery after all. 

   
             
      

POWER, power, and the faith to fight racism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbVlLri7X2A
(Click the link to view David Mosenkis's video on racial bias in PA public education funding.)

My congregation (Zion Lutheran, Akron, PA) is on this journey toward antiracism and has joined the fight against racial injustices that plague our institutions, governing systems and policies, local economies and housing markets.  We are a 100% white congregation in the whitest denomination in the U.S. Our lack of racial diversity is symptomatic. But my little, aging white congregation has been on a journey toward antiracism for almost two years and we are not alone.  We are part of something that keeps us moving toward becoming allies in the fight for racial justice.     

Primarily we are working with POWER Interfaith, a statewide antiracism organization based in Philly.  To learn more about POWER click here: https://powerinterfaith.org/.  

We are forming an interfaith coalition in partnership with POWER in Lancaster County.  Over twelve congregations are currently participating, many for more than two years now, in the formation of a faith-rooted antiracism organization.  Eventually, we will become Lancaster POWER Interfaith.  In the meantime, we are participating in a statewide education campaign to end education apartheid and the gross funding inequity that exists in PA.  (See the video above.)  We attend rallies, call and write our elected officials, and seek out additional congregations to join us in this work.  We also continue to learn the history of racism, to analyze current events and policies, and become aware of implicit biases and prejudices that prevent us from building a changed community of justice for all the children of God.  

We have realized that the invisible hand of white privilege  has isolated us from the struggles of black and brown neighbors.  We have not acknowledged our silence, our complicity, our acceptance of white privilege that perpetuates a racialized culture and systems that do harm every day.  Four hundred years ago, the seeds of racial division were sown in the Virginia colony.  The U.S. was organized racially as a mechanism to divide and hold power in the hands of wealthy, landowning, white elites.  The U.S. constitution codifies racial segregation in the 3/5 clause.  Even the 13th amendment, abolishing slavery, opens the way to criminalize blackness, setting the stage for Jim Crowe, lynchings, and mass incarcerations.  (At the bottom of this entry, I have named 6 books worth reading in the next 6 months.)     

Advent 3. December 16. Luke 16

https://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+16 (Click here to continue the story)

Wealth and greed and dishonesty seem to be on Jesus' and Luke's mind in this chapter.  Jesus seems to have a problem with all three of these things.  They do something to the soul, turning us inward, making us selfish and dishonest for the sake of our self-interest.  The wealthy struggle to divest of their wealth, even for compassion's sake and for another suffering human. But Jesus believes in a great economic reversal in which equity and justice will be established and the poor will be glad in the kingdom of God. 
Economic inequality is pervasive, systemic, transcendent of time and place, deeply embedded, and immoral--robbing the poor of basic dignity.  These parables highlight the 1st century Palestinian situation under Roman imperial taxation, in which the poor were exploited.  Our present day circumstances, under free market capitalism, exaggerates income inequality and the ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poor.  Jesus' parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus at the gate illustrates how selfish greed and acquisitiveness can overthrow our basic humanity, making it possible to ignore or even reject the person in poverty before us.  We do so at our own peril, says Jesus.  He suggests that our present greed has eternal consequences.  I'm not sure what that means, but I am sure most Americans would be shocked to hear it.  Our fascination with wealth and our desire to obtain it at the expense of the global poor endangers millions of people.  We see the consequences of our blind consumption in the climate crisis we now face or deny. 
It is impossible to escape the judgment leveled against the rich in these texts.  Not the first words of indictment in this gospel; they began with Mary's song in Luke 1.  Luke sees the gospel as a great liberator of the oppressed and poor, the great equalizer of the poor and rich, the maker of a social justice-reoriented world where all have enough and none are invisibly forgotten or neglected.  May it be so.             

Advent 3. December 15. Luke 15.

http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=209021712 (Click the link to continue the story)

Rembrandt, Return of the Prodigal Son

This picture hangs in my office. No Jesus story speaks more to me than this one.  I have written, preached, studied, and appreciated this story for many years.  To me this is the entire gospel in one story. 
This chapter contains the three parables of lost things; lost sheep, lost coin, and lost sons.  I will focus on the latter story.  It is an extended story about a father and two sons, known as the Prodigal son.  The story is told  in the context of a serious accusation that the religious leaders lob at Jesus.  "He eats with tax collectors and sinner."  In other words, the company Jesus keeps damages his reputation, tarnishes his image as a righteous Jew, and erodes any teaching authority he may be exercising in his public life.  Jesus responds with these three stories. His point?  God rejoices over one sinner who repents, more than 99 self-righteous people who need no repentance.
A Father has two sons.  This is a Jewish story. Genesis is full of these stories.  Cain and Abel.  Ishmael and Isaac.  Esau and Jacob. God favors one son over the other.  Often, the favored one is not the one expected to find favor with God.  In any case, God favors forgiveness and acceptance and brotherhood over envy and anger and violent retribution.
A father has two sons.  The father in this story is absurdly kind and generous.  He is almost foolish in his submission to his sons' requests.  He is persistent in his acceptance of them, despite their behavior toward him and one another.  When the younger son asks for his half of the family inheritance, takes it and runs away, he is tells his father that he would rather have the money than the relationships.  He is telling his older brother that he doesn't value their rule as siblings or sons, that he doesn't respect the work, or that he cares about the family's future.  When the elder son confronts his father for welcoming the younger son home, it is clear he doesn't see himself as a son and heir but as a slave.  He sees his father as an employer or a benefactor rather than a loving parent.  And yet, the Father's actions demonstrate his compassion and love for his sons.
Does Jesus tell the story about himself?  Isn't he the prodigal son, leaving his father's house to spend his life with the sinners and the pigs?   Aren't the religious leaders the elder sons, self-righteous, bitter, and envious?  Don't they see themselves as hardworking, loyal, and deserving? 
Aren't we both?  Luther said, We are at once both saints and sinners.  Sometimes I'm envious of the impious and irreverent and immoral.  Sometimes I'm impious and irreverent and immoral. 
Do we know the Father's love? As a parent, I know that there is nothing my children could do to make me love them less.  They are loved.  Period.  And that's the point.   Prodigal or self-righteous snobs---God loves us all and welcomes us home and throws a feast for us.
I love the image of God's kingdom as a banquet or a gathering for a feast in Luke's gospel.  To me that is what heaven will be like.  The story of God, according to Jesus, is a family love story.  Different than mythologies in which all powerful deities exist but do not act in human history, the story of Israel's God is the story of a God who acts, who shows up, who rescues, who intercedes, who feeds, who nurtures, who protects.  It is a love story, in which God is parent and we are children.  This is the Jesus innovation on the story of Israel.

A great book on the parable of the prodigal son is Henri Nouwen, "Return of the Prodigal Son." 

Advent 2. December 14. Luke 14.

http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+14 (Click the link to continue the story)

Who gets invited to be guests at dinner parties?  When you host, how do you invite?  I have served two congregations that hosted community meals to feed hungry neighbors.  Those experiences have been windows into Jesus' kingdom or the kingdom of God.  Neighbors and strangers eat together; food is prepared and shared generously.  Mostly, people from low income or poor households attend.  Sometimes the servers eat with the guests.  That is when stories are told, tears are shed, prayers are requested and spoken, and people who often invisible in our consumer culture are seen and heard. 
Another place where I have experienced the Jesus table is at dinner church: a gathering of disciples around a meal for worship, prayer, breaking of bread, story, and song.  Dinner church is an emerging expression of church in the U.S.  It is a space of connection and relationship-building, in which we meet our neighbors, tell stories, pray, sing, and eat.  We always sing a spiritual called "The welcome table" that reminds us that all are welcome at the table of grace and that there are some who have been excluded, uninvited, or denied welcome by the Church.  We have heard Jesus' story from Luke 14 and believe that the table is a place of sacred encounter, in which both God and neighbor become present to one another in life-changing ways.
Where there is food and fellowship there is healing and hope.  All we need is a table, some empty seats, open hearts, and the humility to invite those neighbors who do not get invited because they can't pay their way.  We see the table and the food we share as a free gift.  There are no good excuses for rejecting a gift.  Who does that?  Who says "no thanks" to a free gift that everyone needs?  Jesus noticed that there were people who excused and absented themselves from the community.  They were too busy acquiring people, animals, land---consumers acquiring property.  Like his, our culture is acquisitive and consumer-driven.  We likely live in the most acquisitive and consumerist economy ever known  on earth.  How often our things, our possessions, our property become barriers to relationships.
It is at the table and the meal that good relationships are formed, strengthened, and sustained.
Who could you invite to eat with you this week?  What would make that a sacred experience?