Advent in the Word. Luke 1

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Advent in the Word:  December 1. Luke chapter 1.

This Advent we will read together the entire gospel of Luke, a chapter each day from December 1 to December 24.  We will hear the entire story of Jesus in a month. There is great storytelling in this gospel. I hope you will be inspired by what we read together. 

Today, we start at the beginning.  We will hear of two households. Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph.  Both are visited by an angel, Gabriel, a messenger from God. Both respond to the messenger with questioning doubt.  Both will also sing a song of joy and triumph, of divine justice and mercy. An angel is a messenger from God. Have you ever received an angel or been one yourself?  Have you ever offered words of comfort, encouragement, hope, or promise to someone?    

This first chapter is all about expectations.  God’s people, Israel, expected a Messiah---an anointed King from the house of David, to rule Israel and bring about peace.  They expected this Messiah to battle and defeat the enemies of Israel, especially the Roman Empire who occupied their land, taxed the people, and exploited their resources and labor.  Israel waited for God to act decisively and powerfully on their behalf. For centuries, the people felt abandoned by God as they waited in silence for God to speak to them and act for them.  What are our expectations of God?  

Elizabeth and Zechariah are an older couple, childless, but faithful to God and one another.  Mary is a young woman, engaged to be married to Joseph. Both of these women will unexpectedly conceive and bear sons.  Both of these pregnancies are miraculous. We think about families; those struggling with infertility and pregnant unwed, single teenage girls. God is in their lives. The angel announces that it is God’s power at work in them. In the small and insignificant, God acts.  In unexpected and impossible ways, God moves us.

This is a story of two sons. John and Jesus. Both with their own significance. Both with their own calling and purpose.  Both teachers. Both will follow a spiritual path. Both will invite others to join them.   Both will suffer violence. Stories about two people, two brothers, will come up throughout the gospel of Luke. Pay attention to them.

This is a story about people, ordinary people put in extraordinary and even dangerous circumstances.  It is a story about God acting in human families, showing up in homes and dreams. God acts through two brave women.  This is a story that may remind us of the story of the birth of Moses in Exodus chapters 1-2. Or the birth of Samuel in 1 Samuel 1 and 2.  Consider those stories as precedents to Luke and likely what he had in mind in his own storytelling.  Luke is riffing on some old tunes.

God answers the prayers and cries of God’s people.  God does come with power and with vulnerability. God comes into our humanity, filling us with God’s own self.  

Tomorrow, chapter 2.  Of shepherds and Emperors; infants and eldely folk.   

Cornerstones

On October 13, 1889 the first cornerstone of Zions Lutheran Church on Main Street in Akron, PA was laid.  83 years later, a new cornerstone was laid for a new building.  The old cornerstone was placed beside it.  These stones are the foundations of new buildings. Now they may represent the past, but then they symbolized a present and future hope. And that is what we are invited to see. 
Many changing, struggling, or dying institutions- like the church-cling to a nostalgic view of the past.  We remember and long for those halcyon days when our worship services were full of participants, our Sunday school classes full of kids, our staff and leaders full of energy and commitment.  Our institutional memory dates between 1965 and 1985, when many small mainline churches experienced the most growth and participation.  This is when baby boomers brought their families to church.  We forget that it was not always this way.  Consider that the first 50 years at Zion, communion was given and receive twice a year.  And for the first decade, the average number of communicants was 22 people.  The first 3 pastors over the first 20 years never communed more than 51 people.   The first two decades, the first three pastors baptized a total of 30 people.  They buried 26 people. 
Yes, Zions once had a worshiping attendance that exceeded 150 people, in the late 1970s and through the 1980s.  But declining worship attendance has been the pattern ever since then.  And I want to say, So What?  Zion has been many congregations over 130 years.  13 pastors, hundreds of people.  We are blessed to have a descendant of a charter member on our current church council.  Very few people here have institutional memories that preceed the 1940s.  Most of us who remain have memories of that golden age between 1965 and 1985.  I was born and raised in a Lutheran congregation during those years.  And I'm grateful for it. But those days are long gone.  We have to do the next thing, lay the next cornerstone, build the next church for our children and grandchildren.         
The church is at its best when it is taking risks, starting new ventures, planting and building something new.  Followers of Jesus live on the edge, on the margins, on the outer limit of institutional structures.  When we become stagnant managers of institutions, we avoid risk and ignore God's calling on us.  There is no call story in the bible that allows for the called person to keep on doing what they've been doing in the comfort of their own lives.  Abram and Sarai, Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Mary, Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Peter, Paul, Stephen, the disciples, the deacons, the evangelists and pastors---all were called to leave and go; to surrender and follow; to trust and move; to die in the hope of resurrection promises. 
In my tenure as pastor, we have explored the edges within the comfortable confines of the congregation.  Peter's Porch has allowed us to make contact, to welcome and serve our neighbors---and especially those who struggle with food, housing, health, and financial insecurity. We have been a stable and caring presence for about a decade now, serving breakfast and clothing and food to the guests we welcome here once a month. 
Dinner Church has been the furthest we have traveled beyond ourselves.  And we have met Jesus in those people we have encountered along the way.  I will never forget parking lot baptisms during Peter's Porch or the brave testimonies we have heard from people struggling with addiction, suffering from abuse, searching for an identity, longing to belong.  I have seen Jesus gathered around a big table, rich with food, where strangers become family and all the voices are expected to be heard.  Those gatherings cannot happen with 50 people.  They are extended family size gatherings that are ideally between 20 and 40 people, including children and adults from three or more generations.  I have written about and practiced dinner church for four years.  I believe in micro-churches; small, relational, mission-focused communities that gather with intention for spiritual connection. 

I think large congregations are important.  They can offer inspirational worship, lots of resources, a well- trained and gifted staff, and many learning opportunities.  But anonymity is rarely transformative and large congregations struggle to build caring, sustaining relationships.  They have to work hard to create more intimate experiences for people to get connected to one another. Big churches have to figure out how to create small churches within themselves.  This is because the heart and soul of church is a small group of people struggling to follow Jesus, encourage one another, do justice and serve humbly together.  Jesus did not recruit 5,000 hungry people.  Jesus recruited the 12 disciples.  And he sent them to feed those hungry people.  Some of them followed and shared and practiced and embodied his teachings.  Most ate the bread and went home.  I am personally focused on finding followers. And I think more Christian leaders should be.  Many people are not interested in large churches.  Too structured, too hierarchical, too consumeristic, many people want a more personal and relational community of faith and love.  Rather than financially manage and maintain a building, some people will connect to smaller gathering spaces.  House churches are emerging as an alternative to larger congregations.  We don't have to build new buildings to be the church.  But we can't be the church if we don't build new relationships through which people come to encounter Jesus and experience God's powerful grace. 
Cornerstones may also be new ideas.  A new way of being the people of God.  What are we building together?  What must be torn down to make way for the next thing God is calling us to do?  What if we joined forces with a large congregation (St. Paul Lutheran, Lititz) in order to become the church meeting on the edges?  What if we were the ones to start house churches and dinner churches and Peter's Porches in other places?  What if we risked the "stability" of weekly Sunday morning worship gatherings, in order to be on mission weekly? 
On Sunday, October 13th we will explore and envision our next cornerstone, even as we celebrate our first one.         
               
   

race, faith, and forgiveness

Last week, a white woman was convicted of murder.  She was a Dallas police officer who shot and killed a young black man in his own apartment.  She mistakenly believed he was trespassing in her apartment and shot him in the chest.  She wept on the witness stand in her own defense.  She expressed remorse.  On the night of the shooting, she apparently expressed her concern that she might lose her job over the deadly mistake.  Her lawyers used a sort of stand your ground defense, suggesting that she was defending herself and her apartment from what she believed was a break in.  As a police officer, she is trained to shoot with deadly accuracy.
After she is found guilty of murder, the younger brother of the victim offered her forgiveness from the stand.  He said he loved her like anyone else. He asked the judge for permission to giver her a hug.  They embraced.  Afterward, the judge herself gave her a hug and her own personal bible.  Both the judge and the victims's brother are African American people and Christians.  They offered the forgiveness of sins and a life in Christ for the defendant.
Many people were stunned and moved by their public witness, a testimony to their faith in God.  The victim;s parents were surprised by their son's testimony.  In their devastating grief, they were not yet willing to offer forgiveness.  In  fact, they continue to seek justice for their son. His murderer faced a life sentence; the prosecutors asked for 28 years ,the age of her victim, Botham Jean.  She received ten years, with the possibility of parole in 5.
If the racial identities had been reversed.  If a black man had accidentally shot and killed a white woman in her apartment, the trial and sentencing would have been much different.  No doubt, he would face the death penalty in Texas.  No doubt, there would be a lynching and little in the way of public forgiveness.  Race plays a major factor in sentencing. African Americans make up 14%% of the U.S. population and more than 40% of death row inmates.
Racial bias played a significant part in the murder of Botham Jean, in the trial, conviction, and sentencing of his murderer, and in the response by the judge and the brother.  A white woman experiences sympathy and forgiveness.  African Americans are expected to suffer violence and forgive.  They're supposed to behave like Christians, to model Christ like behavior.  Black grief and cries for justice are heard as excessive emotional outbursts.   The racist double standard is that the white person is offered a chance for restored innocence, while the black family's grief and anger is perceived as excessively punitive. 
What's troubling is that forgiveness is good, godly, Christ-like and worthy of imitation.  Its just that black folks are either being punished by white folks for being black or they're forgiving white people for violently mistreating them because they are black.  The expectation and practice of public forgiveness suggests that its okay for white people to abuse, hurt, or unjustly treat black people.  It excuses racist acts like the one that took Botham Jean's life and the lives of Michael brown, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray.  White people can and should be forgiven for their crimes against black men.  This is the painful truth of a racist society.  Quick to forgive, we see the psychological effects of internalized racial oppression.  In the name of Jesus, the system is perpetuated.   
In this case, should the sentence have been longer?  Would that have brought about justice?  Should they have withheld the public act of forgiveness?  Botham Jean's mother commended her son for his courageous and faithful act in the courtroom.  But she also demanded reform to a corrupt and racially biased criminal justice system.  And she is right.  Her son's death must lead to change in law enforcement practices and in rooting out racially baised profiling that turns deadly when coupled with gun violence. 
How do Christians wrestle with this?  Do we show mercy and offer forgiveness? Do we seek justice for the oppressed?  Do we lift up the systemic racism that causes these deadly encounters?  Do we pray?  Do we give away bibles and "let God do the rest of the work?"
I think Christians need to have an open conversation about racism, about violence, about systemic oppression, and about repentance.  Forgiveness without the hard and necessary work to transform  unjust systems is complicity with injustice.  Justice without forgiveness is often retributive and punitive.
The hardest work begins inside my own heart and mind.  How am I confronting my own biases, prejudices, and privileged place in a racist system that favors whiteness and maleness?  What stories do I still need to hear in order to change?         
   

  

Green Team News

This week was the UN Climate Action Summit and a global climate strike led by Greta Thunberg, a sixteen-year old Swedish activist. Millions of people around the world marched for climate justice on Friday, because the largest carbon emitters on the planet (U.S., China, and India) are not doing enough to reduce their impacts. We are facing a very uncertain future on the planet. The time for action is now! There is no debate about climate change. It is real and there is plenty of evidence. But even if it weren’t as dire as predicted, Christian are called to love, cherish, care for, and protect the earth. From Genesis to Revelation, humans are called by God to serve the creation and bless the earth. Earth is our only home, created by God for life to flourish. Our home is threatened. We are to blame. We have to act.

Three billion birds have disappeared from North America in the past 50 years due to habitat and climate disruption. Like the canary in the coal mine, this news about bird loss indicates that ecosystems are collapsing. Floods, wildfires, massive storms, and heat waves threaten many populations. We are facing a mass extinction event. 150 to 200 species (plant, insect, bird, mammal) go extinct every day! This is upwards of 10,000 times the natural rate of extinction.

Every one of us must do our part to reduce carbon emissions and curb the effects of global warming and climate change. As Lutherans we are called to enact climate justice. Perhaps nothing we do will be more important in the next decades than what we do to impact the earth.

Sometimes the news is so bleak and hopeless about climate change, the adaptive changes humans must undertake so drastic, that we feel paralyzed. So here are a few things you might consider in the hours, days, weeks, or even months ahead.

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Get educated about climate change, the growing ecological crisis, and personal steps we must take collectively. Check out: https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Environment_IPCC_Report_Resource_1811v2.pdf

Reduce your personal impacts.

1. Buy local. Research the environmental aspect of a company before you buy their product our shop in their store.
2. Purchase ecofriendly products: from bathroom tissue to kitchen trash bags, there are companies that make and sell environmentally friendly products you use every day. Check out: www.whogivesacrap.org.
3. Consider a household energy audit. Check out your electric generation supplier. Are they generating electricity with renewables (solar, wind)? Switch to a 100% renewable energy generator.
4. Compost food waste. We will make 5 gallon buckets available for every household to begin composting. Bring your compost to St. Paul. The green team will use it here and at Wittel Farm.
5. Consider solar panels for your home.
6. When shopping for a vehicle, take emissions and gas consumption more seriously. Consider a hybrid or electric vehicle. 
7. Bike or walk to school or work more often
8. Refuse single use plastics: sandiwich bags, drinking straws, plastic grocery bags. Check our www.creationjustice.org/blog/52ways-to-care-for-creation for more ideas.
9. Sign up for Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in PA action alerts to learn about how you can support public policies that promote climate justice.  
10. In 2019, St. Paul and Wittel Farm are teaming up with the Lancaster Conservancy to develop native habitat, plant trees and gardens. We encourage your participation.  

The one about your power to heal

In Easter season the church worships, ponders, and considers the resurrection of Jesus.  We are not so much interested in proving the validity or historicity of the claims that God raised Jesus from the dead.  It cannot be proven scientifically.  100% of human experience contradicts the claims of Jesus’ disciples.  We have before us ancient texts, written by Jesus’ followers who tell us what they saw and heard, what they experienced.  Empty tombs and appearances of Jesus in the flesh are only part of that story.  In fact, if we read the gospels, Acts, and all the letters—the easter stories take up only a small part of the material.  Not that much is actually said about the risen Jesus.  In Mark’s gospel, he doesn’t make an appearance and the empty tomb story is a mere 8 verses that ends with the terrified women fleeing the tomb in silence.   Luke and John have extended stories about the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus and on the beach beside the sea.  But even these stories are strange.  Jesus appears, disappears, is recognizable and hidden from their recognition.  He is there, but on his way somewhere.  Going to the Father.  It is told by Luke that after 40 days Jesus ascends, is taken up.  St. Paul records that he appeared to the women and apostles, to 500 people, and finally to Paul himself as one born at the wrong time---as if to say his vision of Jesus was by happenstance, at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Or right place at right time. Not sure what he meant, actually.  Nevertheless, the resurrection was an event that reimagined the power of God and the people of God.  Rather than a divine liberation and rescue of all the people of Israel,  God rescues Jesus from death.  This Exodus was not like the first.  And it did not put an end to Roman oppression.  One could ask, what about the lived experience of the people of God changed as a result of Jesus’ death and resurrection?  This is a critical question for us.  Because we need to have an answer to this accusatory question.  If the answer is, nothing, then why does it matter?  And if it doesn’t matter, then why worship or any devotion whatever?  I suspect some people might say, Jesus was a good teacher.  His teachings inspire.  Living like Jesus is the right way to live.  But was it?  His revision of Torah that rejected purity laws got him crucified.  Jesus didn’t so much teach his followers how to live as how to die.  Basically serve others, pouring yourself out for the needy, until you die. Ok.  Very few people will actually do this.  The rest will fail miserably.  If martyrdom is the Christian life, most of us will opt out.  So what of the lived experience of the people of God changed as a result of the resurrection of Jesus?  That is perhaps more significant than proof of his bodily resurrection.  How did they live after that? 

Peter and John are arrested, standing before the same Jewish leaders that accused Jesus and had him dragged before Pilate and killed.  The High priest was a powerful man of influence and justice in Jerusalem.  He was the shepherd of the flock of Israel, whose job was to keep the peace and the commandments so that the Romans would allow them to practice their religion.  This meant identifying and silencing zealots and extremists.  Were Peter and John two of them?  They healed a man at the gate of the temple.  Then they proclaimed that Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead as a sign of God’s favor and vindication in their conflict with Jesus that ended in his crucifixion. If so, Jesus won.  And they said that faith in his name healed that man.  So they arrested them for stirring up the crowds with talk of resurrection from the dead.  And they questioned them and Peter responded with the verse we heard. But verse 13 says it all:  Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were ordinary uneducated men, they were amazed and recognized them as companions of Jesus.  When they saw the man who had been cured standing there they had nothing to say.”   Peter has been speaking boldly and publicly about Jesus.  It seems that the confrontation between Jesus and the authorities did not end with his death on the cross.  The assumption was that the movement dies with its leader.  But now a new leader has emerged.  Maybe even more than one.  Cut off the head and two new heads emerge.  Peter’s proclamation about Jesus is clear and very Jewish.  He is bold enough to accuse them of killing Jesus, quoting Psalm 118 a Messianic Psalm.  Basically Peter is saying, Jesus was the Messiah, the king.  You killed him.  God raise him from the dead.  That power also healed this man.  If we are being accused of doing a good deed by healing a sick man, let it be understood that we are not guilty.  Jesus is!  And they can’t arrest Jesus.

The community of the resurrection consists of ordinary people with no special abilities, competencies, or powers.  That’s good news for us.  Jesus powers their action. And ours.   Health and healing are signs of God’s mercy.  And when a sick person becomes well, many things change.  His social status changes. He need not beg anymore.  He is whole, so can participate in the community’s religious life.  His healing was not just physical.  He was seen, heard, received, and treated as one worthy of health.  They did not throw money at this problem.  They empowered him to stand.  Healing is spiritual---its about the whole person within a family. One might say everything changed for that person.  The risen Jesus lifts up people who have been made low.  The community of the resurrection acts under that power—the power of love to heal.  How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?  The church is called to respond to that question.  The love we dare is the power of the risen Christ in us to heal people. How have you participated in someone's healing? In a broken health care system in which there are no winners, what is our calling as a community of the resurrection?  What role do we play in health care?  Nutrition?  Education?  Addiction recovery?  Hospitality?  Are we a hospital, welcoming guests in need of care? Do we provide emotional healing or spiritual healing for those who have been wounded by a venomous version of Christianity?  What is your healing story?  Did you know that it was Jesus?   I have been seriously ill three times in my life. Once as a four year old, and twice as an adult. Yet, here I am to tell you that the Lord Jesus healed me so that I may share this good news with you.  Having been infected by Jesus' healing power, we are empowered to become healers in the name of the risen Jesus. How will you and who will you heal this week?  

the one about how faith frees us from fear

The doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews. This was the cultural experience of the first Christians on that first Easter.  Fear.  They were afraid.  And yet, none of them had been arrested alongside Jesus in the garden.  Despite his identity being questioned, Peter is not mistreated by the restless public.  It was clear that Jesus was the one victim and example the Jewish leaders wanted to make.  If you publicly shame and destroy the leader, the followers will abandon the cause.  Better that one man die for the people than all Israel suffer, said the High priest.  So, given this information why were they afraid? 

 The fact that some of the disciples were absent must have caused alarm.  Was Thomas betraying their location, like Judas?  Crucifixion under the Roman occupation was an effective tool to control deviance, to maintain authority and order.  What they did to the human body was gruesome, bloody torture.  Living under violent oppressors for decades, seeing random violence and the destruction of Palestinian bodies, having their land and resources taken from them they were a helpless and hopeless people. Intimidated into paralysis.  But Jesus had helped the people and given them hope.  Hope for freedom and peace.  But they had taken him from them too.  Violence and hopelessness breed a high level of fear.  The disciples had a reason to be afraid.  They had experienced the betrayal and death of their leader.  They were leaderless, lost, and possibly in danger.  What if they were labeled as deviants and seen as a threat and sought for arrest or even death? 

We understand fear.  Despite FDR’s statement, there is nothing to fear but fear itself, we continue to live in it.  Since 9/11 Americans have lived under a constant state of anxiety-producing fear, documented most prominently by sociologist D.r barry Glassner in his book “The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are afraid of the wrong things.”  We live in fear.  The fear of attack.  The fear of violence.  The fear of disease.  The fear of accidents.  The fear of terrorists, gunmen, and violent criminals.  Fear of the other, the non-white, young adult male. Fear of the stranger, the foreigner.  Fear drives daily politics.  Who is threatening us this week? If it bleeds it leads.  News is full of violence, making it seem common and local and universally threatening.  What is the level of concern you have for safety?  The local police are conducting building safety and active shooter trainings for churches.  We will attend one of these in two weeks.  Our doors are not locked.  But many people are suggesting that it is foolish of us not to do so.  And I believe they are right.

Most of the time, when we hear this gospel story, we focus on doubting Thomas.  I think his doubt is not the real matter.  His absence from the group is.  Why wasn’t he with them?  Where was he all week?  What does it mean that Thomas is both present and absent in this story that shows the disciples huddled together in fear?  Was he somehow less afraid? Was he hiding somewhere else?  During his absence, Jesus appears among them.  He shows them his wounds.  They are forced to confront their fear of crucifixion and the taste of disgust that accompanies their fear.  They rejoice that they have seen him.  They evidently leave the house and find Thomas.  This is the first sign that their life as Jesus’ people will continue.  I think this is why Thomas is absent.  So that they have a legitimate reason to leave the house, to seek him out and tell him the news. It restores their mission—to invite others to come and see Jesus!   A week later, Thomas is with them and Jesus appears again.  Like Thomas, Jesus is both present and absent in the story.  He shows up where and when they need him to be present.  He shows up so that others might also come and see.  But more than his mere presence, he gives gifts.  Peace and the Spirit breath of life.  Jesus passes on to them his own breath, his own spirit—that which gives life to his body he gives to them.  We all breathe the same air.  And in this way we are joined to one another. Jesus gives them a spirit of peace.  Can you imagine not feeling anxious or afraid or worried or concerned about safety?  Can you imagine feeling confident and brave?  Can you imagine risking your own safety to do Jesus’ work?   One of my colleagues was arrested on good Friday at a nonviolent protest at Lockheed Martin.  Others face threats because of their public witness. What gives them the courage?   

Somewhere between hiding in fear behind locked doors and the liberal and generous and public testimony about Jesus’ resurrection and the radical sharing of all their possessions, so that no one among them had need—something had happened to them.  Between John 20 and Acts 4, they become a different group of people.  No longer hidden, locked, afraid, they are boldly telling others about Jesus and publicly claiming their loyalty and faith in him.  What happened to them?  The body and the Spirit of Jesus happened to them.  The Thomas problem is how the gospel writer tells us that Jesus’ resurrection appearance was not a collective illusion or trauma induced hallucination.  It was real, happened more than once, and to specific individuals.  Jesus is both present and absent as the crucified and risen Christ. Why? He is free.  Free from death’s power, and therefore free from fear.  Only someone with faith and hope in the resurrection from the dead can be truly free from fear.  From locked doors to public sharing---this is what the body and spirit of Jesus does to the disciples.  He frees them from fear to love with power and joy.  What is he doing with us?  He gives us his body and spirit today.  He is present.  We hear his voice. Receive the holy spirit.  Blessed are they who have not seen and yet have come to believe. He’s moving us out of safety and comfort to confront the world with love and peace.     

The one about the Eunuch, sexual discrimination, and the church's accompaniment mission

We follow a three year lectionary cycle of scripture readings following the life of Jesus and the church year.  We are in season of Easter year B.  The cycle allows us to hear about 70 % of the bible in 3 years.  If we hear all four readings every Sunday, which we don’t.  I’m telling you this for two reasons; one we hear a lot of the bible in worship, but not all of it.  There are good parts that we never hear.  So you have to fill in the gaps yourself.  At home.  With a bible.  Two,  I don’t choose the readings we hear or I preach on.  They’re chosen and sometimes they’re crap.  Sometimes the lectionary is like going on a date with someone you sort of know like a friend set you up?  Sometimes that date is amazing, and you talk for hours and have a ton in common and you can se yourself being in love with this person.  And sometimes its like that date, a dud, the one where you have nothing in common at all.  Nothing to talk about.  No attraction. Just a desire for it to end so you can go home and watch a movie on the couch.  This is the lectionary.  Sometimes it’s a treasure field.  And sometimes its like dumpster diving for a half-eaten piece of fruit.  All of this is to say that about 60% of the time I feel like I’ve heard treasure and have treasure to share.  And 20% I’m still looking for the half eaten banana. 20% is reserved for treasure that I just miss because I’m too tired.  Its not you, Jesus, its me.  Sorry.

Today is a treasure trove.  I could preach three sermons.  So here’s one.  Philip is a Christian and a deacon in Jerusalem.  His job was to serve the poor in the name of Jesus, so the 12 apostles could devote their time to preaching and teaching and writing the gospels.  Instead, a persecution scatters the Jerusalem church and prohibits them from distributing to the poor.  So Philip is waiting.  And Stephen, his fellow deacon is stoned to death for preaching about Jesus.  So Philip doesn’t apply for that position.  Who would?  Then he is sent by the Spirit.  He is dropped into a story.  An Ethiopian Eunuch, in the court of the Queen, and the treasurer of Ethiopia, is traveling home from Jerusalem, in a chariot.  Reading a scroll of the Prophet Isaiah.   This is a very black, very wealthy man.  He is Jay Z.  Wearing Armani.  In a Limo. He is literate.  Though he is likely reading Hebrew and apparently struggling with it.  A personal scroll of the prophet Isaiah was a treasure itself.   He is a worshiper of God.  Jewish religion and theology was known around the ancient Mediterranean.  It was old.  They proclaimed one God, the creator. Their temple was a wonder to behold.  Their sacrificial worship was a massive religious machine.  He is a Eunuch.  A mark of slavery.  Though not to be correlated exactly, this text opens us to acknowledge sexual and physical discrimination.You’ve heard of transgendered or gender nonconforming or queer? These are aspects of sexual identity that I didn’t know about until recently.  I thought people were male or female.  I was ignorant.  But just because we don’t have knowledge or understanding of something or someone doesn’t make them wrong or abnormal.  We get to learn, to grow, to change.  Neither the eunuch nor the 21st century gender nonconforming youth chose a path of vulnerability and discrimination for themselves. This Ethiopian man was someone with a very high status, who was likely dismissed in Jerusalem because of his low status as a eunuch---they were outcasts in Roman and Jewish society.  Gender non-conforming, transgendered, queer.  Not accepted.  Not welcomed.  Branded on his body as a nobody. Unable to participate in the worship of God. He lives with physical humiliation.  He is status inconsistent in a world that loved and required status consistency.  Black men who make it in this country still experience status inconsistency.  The privilege of wealth or education and the disadvantage of being black make for an uncomfortable life.  Philip is sent to this man.  And asks if he understands what he’s reading.  Philip doesn’t seem to notice the external issues---wealthy, foreign government official, branded on his body as a nobody. He sees an internal struggle, pain. He is reading a passage from Isaiah about someone who has experienced humiliation.  And he wonders, is this about Isaiah or someone else?  I think this man went up to Jerusalem to worship and was rejected there because of his status as a eunuch.  I believe he was humiliated in Jerusalem.  Isn't it amazing that he opens this text from Isaiah about humiliation?  I think his question is this;  How is it that my humiliation still haunts me, despite my place in the court of the queen of Ethiopia?  How am I both royal and a nobody at the same time?  I wonder if he heard his own story in Isaiah?  A royal figure who gets rejected in Jerusalem because of his nonconformity.  Philip share the gospel about Jesus with him—a gospel about the Son of God, the savior of the Word.  Titles reserved for emperors. From the house of David.  A King of the Jews, a prophet, a preacher, a healer, a teacher, the hope of the people.  Crucified.  Physically Humiliated.  But raised from the dead.  God turns Jesus’ humility into the power of salvation and life.  Especially for those who experience humiliation and shame.  Jesus death and resurrection means that God loves the rejected ones; the Eunuchs and the gender noncomforming and the transgendered and the queer and the black man and the cis-gendered, heterosexual white upper middle class pew sitter.  So this Ethiopian finds water in the desert, because God is crazy, and says what is to prevent me from being baptized?  Well, eventually the church would.  But on that day, before all the rules and dogma and exclusionary sexual morals, nothing could prevent it. Because nothing can separate us from God’s love for us.  Not even bad religion.  And he was washed and welcomed as a child of God.  And the spread of Jesus’ message leaves Israel in the abused and humiliated and loved body of an African man.  Black and brown bodies received this gospel before us.  They are our ancestors in faith.  Our great grandparents.  What wisdom they have to offer us, if we’re willing to listen.  Just as quickly as Philip entered the story, he left it.  Holy encounters may be brief, confrontational, and transformational.  But these personal one to one accompaniment relationships are where real authentic gospel ministry happens.  This accompaniment mission is how the gospel is shared, transmitted, and spread.  Not by forcing people to read the bible, but by coming alongside people who are wrestling with their shame and pain and humanity in the context of their faith in God.  You may meet someone tomorrow who changes your life, who guides you, shows you God’s love and grace anew, makes you feel welcome and accepted and treasured.  Or you may give that to someone else.  Either way, that’s where we see the risen Jesus.  Amen.            

    

Covenant Series, part 2. Abram and God's future

From Second Sunday in Lent. Based on Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16.  The covenant with Abram and Sarai.

  

What if Abram said "No?" What if he said, "I'm too old, too tired for this." It’s a long journey.  It’s scary.  I don’t have what I need, I don’t know how to respond. What if Abram chose comfort and stability over leaving and going and trusting and obeying the LORD?  Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share this origin story.  Its worth noticing that this is Genesis 17, and that God has been communicating with Abram since Genesis 12.  This is actually the fourth time God has made a covenant promise to Abram, with the hope and expectation that Abram would receive the promise and live his life as if it were true. God had to talk to Abram four times in order to get through to Abram!  Have you ever had to say the same thing, give the same direction four times before the person you’re taking to hears you?  If you’re married or have children, this has happened to you.  How many times do I have to tell you?  Didn’t you hear me?  I’ve told you four times where we’re going.  We listen worse to the people closest to us.  Abram listened badly to God.    

 God promised descendants, land, and a national identity.  A nomadic people will become settled. To live as if it were true would be for Abram to see his life as one filled with meaning, significance, and hope far beyond himself. It’s also worth understanding that Abram is a representative character and not merely an individual as we think of an individual.  Abram saw himself as an insignificant member of a tribe or clan.  Individuality is a modern thought about the person.  Abram was part of a group, perhaps its leader, but still an interdependent tribe or ethnic group.  Later known as Israel or the Hebrews.  Abram represents to us the revelation relationship between this God and this God’s people.  This God is invisible, yet appears to speak.  We can hear God, too. But we have to listen.  And listening for God involves trust.   

 I love this text for so many reasons.  1.  If you are under the age of 99 you are eligible to play on God's creation restoration team. God is inconveniently disrespectful of retirement. You're not too old for this stuff.  This is especially important because our congregation has a number of elder adults in it. God is a lot older than you, so…you’re not done yet, God ain’t done with us.  2.  If you haven’t figured out what God is saying to you, maybe you’re not listening.  Listening to God involves silence, stillness, and Scripture.  3. God intends for covenant faithfulness to be generationally passed down. So, children matter as much as elders do. God is the creator.  If we want more youth and children in our faith community, then we have to be willing to do our part, to be fruitful and multiply.  Create space that is inviting to children and youth.  4.  God is exceedingly generous in the unfolding drama of creation restoration. The covenant is lopsided with God taking the brunt of the responsibility for the unfolding plan. 5.  There is hope for the future.  God invites Abram and us to imagine a future beyond ourselves.  I'm guessing that Abram could have said 'NO', but having said "yes" by falling on his face, he is changed. His life was about himself or a nomadic tribal experience of daily survival, until his life was consumed with the God who spoke and speaks. After that his life was about the descendent, the nations, the people more numerous than the stars who would call him "Father Abraham." It was about the land on which he walked.  The name change signifies that he received his life direction as a gift from God that changed him.  So, to what adventure is God inviting us to say yes? Is there a future child of God depending on our faithfulness today? You know, God doesn't need us to do anything, but our children do. And our grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It’s never too late to be faithful.  I see in the Wittel Farm and the growing community of children who worship and serve here a sign of God’s covenant promise to Abram in this place. Land and descendants!  But what are we willing to sacrifice, to change, to give up, to surrender in order to be faithful, fully committed to this walk with God? The promise cannot be fulfilled if we are stubbornly clinging to ourselves, our time, and our possessions.  This covenant is serious.  Involving flesh and blood.  Both Abram and Sarai are equally part of the covenant promise.  Sarai and Abram will die long before the covenant is fulfilled, though they will experience the joy and laughter of an infant named Isaac, which literally means laughter.  But they will not see a kingdom or a national identity emerge.  In four generations they will become slaves for 400 years.  But the promise is everlasting and continues. The amazing endurance of Jewish and Christian community, despite thousands of years of change, disruption, war, political upheaval, abuse of power, persecutions, holocausts, plagues, is testimony enough to see that God keeps promises alive. We are enduring a time of great challenge and change, in which faithfulness is tested.  What do we stand for?  What do we say as the community of Jesus?  How we love our neighbors matters. 

So what does it look like to live in the Abrahamic covenant? As a community of Jesus, we have been drawn into that family of faith. Our response to God’s activity, God’s voice has a name.  We call it discipleship.  The lifelong pursuit of Jesus, his way of life, and the formation of a community that looks and sounds more and more like him.  Eugene Petersen calls Christian discipleship “A long obedience in the same direction.”  It looks like the cross.  A lifelong pursuit of the life God is giving you.  Its like receiving, unpacking, and putting together a great gift.  Its like building a cathedral, one brick at a time over several lifetimes.  There were faithful Christians right here before us. Will there be faithful ones after us?

Parade Watchers or Protest Marchers

On Palm Sunday, the day after a massive student movement called "March for our Lives", marched on cities across the country to mobilize against gun violence and demand action.

Was it a parade or a protest march?  I guess it depends on your perspective.  Parades celebrate victory and power and cultural pride.  A parade gathers a crowd to celebrate life as it is, the status quo. Every fourth of July parade is the same.   Protest marches, on the other hand, demand change, justice, an end to oppression, often instigated by marginalized or disenfranchised people, those who are struggling with the way things are.  Protests provoke, challenge, and confront the powers that be.  Nobody gets arrested at a parade.  Was it a parade or a protest march?  We know what happens after Palm Sunday’s protest parade.  He’s arrested and put to death for rebellion. 

Pain.   Violence.  Destruction of bodies.  This is what we are confronted with in the story of Jesus.  The state and religious sanctioned killing of an innocent man.  Our vile familiarity with cruelty, our casual acceptance of violent acts perpetrated by those with power against those without, our callous disregard for the fragility and beauty and wonder of life, any life, one person’s life at best leaves us with shame or righteous anger.  We may feel the weight of the injustice and the shame of our cowardice in the face of it.  We may not.  We may accept death and dying as undeniable truth.  We may wonder why Jesus had to die?  For our sins?  Because of our sins?  As a consequence of sin, injustice, violence, prejudice, rage and hate that kills us. Those who benefit from the status quo are not interested in revolutionary change.  Protect what is mine, even if someone else bears the cost.  I am now aware that many black lives, southern black migrant workers, the grandchildren of slaves who worked on our farm-- bore the cost of my childhood and education.  I do not know how to repay that debt.  They bore the cross for me.  I did not ask them to do it.  I was not responsible for it.  But I benefit from it. This is why the message of the cross matters.  It tells us the truth.  We are in that story somewhere.  Politicians.  Religious leaders.  Crowds.  Police.  Executioners. Bystanders.  Fellow prisoners. Mourners.  Family members.  God, this keeps happening.  We keep doing this to ourselves. Yesterday’s march for our lives and that march on Jerusalem 2000 years ago have this in common:  a resilient hope, despite strong opposition, for political change that ends suffering and violence and brings peace to all people.  Call it the coming of the kingdom of God.           

What happened to Jesus of Nazareth on that hill outside of Jerusalem was not and is not a unique, unprecedented, or unexpected event.  We will not turn Jesus’ crucifixion into a special divine act, an act of great courage or holiness.   The cross was not and is not a one-time event that happened to one man many called and call the Christ.  No.  Jesus was not crucified alone for a reason.  It was to show his compatriots that Jesus was not special, that he was no more or better than any other common unnamed prisoner of the empire.  Killed by the empire to protect the status quo, to demonstrate power and control, to assure everyone of their place in the world.  Palestinian Jews, the poor, the sick, the non-citizen, are at the bottom---are nothing, disposable, expendable, less than human.  So they can be treated as such.  Stripped, beaten, mocked, crucified, left for dead.  The empire destroys the body to show that they have the power to control the body.  To take life.  They decide who is free and who is not.  Who is good and who is not. Who benefits and who suffers.   Rome is not the only empire to use violence to control.         From European colonialists and slavers to totalitarian regimes.  Every war.  War is always about power and control.  Someone is trying to take it from someone else.  The crusades.  The holocaust. Hiroshima.  Apartheid.  Slavery and segregation.  Sometimes the Christians are the oppressed, sometimes the oppressors.  Sometimes the oppressed become the oppressors.  The abused become the violent abuser.  There is always innocent suffering, collateral damage.  In Syria. In Vietnam.  From the trail of tears to the mass incarceration of black and brown bodies, this country, this empire has its own way of maintaining power and control.  Segregate by race.  Marginalize, dehumanize, and destroy black and brown bodies.  In ghettos and prisons and impoverished schools and jobless communities.  We don’t crucify anymore.  Its too inefficient.  We have found far more efficient ways to kill.  Unarmed black bodies are targets.  From whippings to lynchings to drug wars and incarcerations and shootings.  If we want to understand Jesus and the cross, we have to look at communities of the oppressed and suffering.  We must look at the refugee, the disabled, the impoverished, and especially the non-white person of color.   

The effect of Palm Sunday is to snap us to awareness. So we can find our place in that story. In the crowd. As bystanders.  Onlookers.  Indifferent.  Or worse, ignorant.  Are we powerless victims?  Are we privileged citizens that can afford to look away?  If we have not grieved for the death of Stephon Clark, who was killed by Sacramento police last week.  If we have not grieved the murder of school children.  If we do not grieve the death of Syrian children.  What have we become? Fragile avoiders of pain? Parade watchers?  But if you find yourself marching with Jesus in the story, then its not too late.  We can become protest marchers, hoping against despair that the world changes, that the gun fight ends, that the war ceases, that nonviolence prevails, that love wins and peace comes to earth. May we march with that King and that Kingdom of peace to come. May we shout Hosannas and march on until it does.  Amen. 

The soil we're planted in

The soil you plant in matters.  My work with the Wittel Farm Growing Project in these last few years has given me much to reflect about in my life.  I grew up in a farming family in Upstate New York.  Started in the 1920s by my great-Grandfather Lenahan, we were a large commercial green bean farm and dairy, until the 1970’s.  Gradually, we transitioned from a commercial cash crop business toward a small market vegetable and fruit business.  We grew hundreds of acres of crops that we sold in a farm market store we built, similar to our Reiff’s or Hoover’s.  I grew up working on the farm, harvesting crops, tilling, planting, and selling.  As a teen, I loved taking my pickup truck load of fresh-picked sweet corn to a weekly outdoor farm market (like Lititz Farmers market) to sell.  I also loved to eat what we grew on the farm.  Summer was a daily diet of fresh fruits and vegetables.  It was hard work and in 1992 I left for College with a strong desire to follow another path.  I heard a call to ordained ministry while I was at Susquehanna University, a call to leave behind the family farm and pursue another work.  I never imagined that this path would bring me to another farm to grow fresh vegetables for hungry neighbors.  Along this journey I have learned many things about God, myself, and other people.  Now I am learning the role racism and white advantage has played in my life.     

I had my only encounters with non-white people on the farm.  We hired migrant Hispanics from Guatemala and Mexico to labor and live on the farm in the summers.  They taught me Spanish, hard work, and how to eat hot peppers.  They didn’t watch TV.  They played guitars and sang together.  They were generous and happy men, who sent their paychecks home. Nobody worked longer or harder than they did.  They rarely took a day off.  Now I know that their charm for me was based on racial inequality and white privilege (dominance).  At the end of the day, I went home to a comfortable place with my family.  These men spent months apart from their homes and families in order to support the children they left behind.  I will never have to do that because their work provided income for my family that helped me to go to College.   

I was always a passive racist, not personally prejudicial toward people of color, but not aware of systemic bias and oppressive inequality either.  Only now am I learning to become an active anti-racist.  Like an emerging seedling, I'm beginning to see the light above the soil in which I was planted.  I recently had a conversation with my parents about race, because I knew that our farm used to employ and house southern blacks migrants on the farm to pick 800 + acres of green beans in the summer time, in the years before mechanical bean pickers.  I learned that over 50 people came up from the south, men, women and children.  In the 50s and 60s, they came up to our farm, lived in crude shacks with no plumbing, and worked hard for very little pay.  They held dances and played music and drank beers on Saturday nights---to feel human and free, and not like a “negro”.  Now I understand that my family’s livelihood, my childhood, and college education were bought by the hard, cheap labor of poor southern black families.  It was understood then that they needed the work and that they were willing to live under those crude conditions. I don’t blame my ancestors, least of all my parents. (They were kids then). This was the way of things. It was a cultural reality, a system, a way of life.  My ancestors' ignorance and prejudices were embedded in the American story. How many of those black migrant workers were the grandsons or granddaughters of former slaves? Though I lived in a racially homogenous, predominantly white rural community, my life was also bound to the black experience in America in ways I am only now beginning to understand. This is hard to share. But it is my truth.  

What is your race story?  What is your experience with people of color?  How have you benefited from being white? I understand how uncomfortable these questions and this conversation can be for us.  I am uncomfortable, too. But I am also enriched by this awareness of race and by a growing passion to actively resist and oppose the systemic racism that effects American life in so many ways.  I cannot live in ignorance or denial of my own story anymore.  And I believe God is calling me again to till this soil and plant seeds of courage and water with hope and ready us for a harvest of love and understanding, justice and reconciliation. 

In peace,

Pastor Matt         

The rainbow and the cross

God's protection and peace be with you wherever you go this week.  What a week it has been. One that may have provoked questions like these: How can you believe in a Good God when the world is so bad?  The chaos, cruelty, violence, and injustice point away from a benevolent creator.  What sort of a God creates this and then threatens his creatures with the possibility of hell after death? As if this isn’t bad enough.  The best we can say is that the worst hasn’t yet happened to me or to those I love.  But it sometimes feels like I’m waiting for that to happen.  There is a capricious randomness to the whole thing.  After another mass shooting at a public school and the subsequent rage, sorrow, and powerlessness that follows, I wonder how long.  How long until it gets me or how long must we live under the pall of violence and death? Do we hunker down?  Protect our own? Lock the doors, arm the ushers?  Should all of us be trained gunmen? This doubtful cynicism is symptomatic of a culture of death, violence, and powerlessness.  And it is spiritually dangerous, because it perpetuates the dehumanizing effect of violence and makes it acceptable, even necessary.  It leads us to wilderness survival against the threats around us.

In other news, in a scene of gruesome poetic justice, an infamous South African poacher was attacked and eaten by lions.  Which suggests that the whole animal kingdom is hardwired toward violent retribution.  All that remained was his rifle and ammunition.  The world is deadly enough without those manmade killing machines.  We’ve just become more efficient at it.  The most efficient killers the earth has ever seen.  When will there be peace?  How do we make it?

The Noah story with its rainbows and doves, is the most beloved of the bible stories.  You’ll never find a children’s first bible without it.  And yet it is the deadliest.  The flood, the ark, the animals, Noah and his family, the rainbow.  Benign images in a picture book.  We forget that the purpose of the flood was to cleanse the earth of the violence, cruelty, and chaos of humanity.  The creator’s original blessing and intent for creation had been rejected and distorted by the image-bearing creatures, who saw God in themselves and decided to take that literally.  Argument erupts over power, who’s in charge, who’s the most right, the greatest, the highest ranking.  Fighting and killing ensues. Brother against brother, we’re told. A civil war among God’s first children. So, God takes action and puts an end to the violence with one violent, destructive, death-dealing act of power---a mighty flood.  But, God rescues Noah and his family and all the animals.  And then the God of the bible does a radical, unprecedented, and misunderstood thing.  God makes a unilateral covenant with Noah.  Now a covenant is a binding legal agreement, a partnership relationship, a quid pro quo.  In the ancient near east covenants ended violence between warring tribes or bound two families together in mutual agreement over land or women.  Typically, a covenant is conditional and requires both sides to agree to some compromise arrangement.  Give and take.  But this covenant is different.

The almighty, powerful creator binds Himself to his creation with an unconditional promise.  Never again will I destroy the earth with a flood.  God will not be responsible for the destruction of the earth and its creatures.  God binds himself to them as protector and savior, not violent dictator or destructive overlord.  The rainbow is a reminder, not to us, but to God. This covenant is unconditional and eternal.  God will not use violence as a means to achieve peace. Ever.  God will use patient forebearance and forgiveness as that means.  In fact, at the right time God will descend and walk the earth, literally entering the wilderness, the chaos, cruelty, and violence of human civilization in order to rescue us from it.  In Jesus Christ, God continues to live out the Noah covenant—coming not as a military messiah or powerful destroyer of evil, but as a teacher and healer and forgiver of sins.  In Jesus, God floods the earth with life and love.  And the wood that built the ark will also build a cross.  Just as the ark once saved Noah, so the cross saves us. Jesus’ death is life for us. It is symbol of God’s devotion to our lives, God’s protection, God’s promise not to abandon or forsake us.  I believe that Jesus Christ was present in that school, is present in every school and nightclub and concert venue and city street and abusive home and refugee camp and prison.  Jesus joins our journey through the violent wilderness that is civilization as we’ve made it, in order to remake it “on earth as it is in heaven.” The God of the bible has not given up on this project to make a peaceful home with us.  And the good news is that God continues to act.       

I believe that the rain, the snowfall is not God’s destructive power any more.  I believe they are God’s tears.  And that God’s hope is that we will be moved by those tears to stand against the violence and the suffering and the chaos.  God has given us what we need to bring peace.  God has bought us time, taught us a way to walk in love and compassion with neighbors and enemies.  Commanded us not to be afraid.  Sent the Spirit to give us power and wisdom and courage to act for justice, to do what is right, to cry out against this culture of violence and death.  This culture that idolizes guns and protects the rights of those who want to use them to commit murder, so that the best justice the culture can offer is the death penalty or life in prison or death by cop or suicide for the perpetrator of the crime.  Death is what we have to offer.  We can stand against this culture of violence and death.  We must be rainbow people—promising never again to act with violence and anger toward one another.  We must seek to understand trauma and anger and disconnection and alienation---the sin that tears the human family apart.  We must enter more deeply into the suffering of others, into their stories, their grief, their shame, their fears, their despair.  And we must affirm the covenant relationship—that God in God’s mercy and love has chosen to become vulnerable and human, in order to draw near to us, to show us love, to heal us, and to lead us toward the rainbow of non-violence.  Lent begins with the Noah covenant of protection and non-violent peace-making, with the God who enters the wilderness with us. The rainbow and the cross.  May they be for us talisman of hope and the promise of a new creation that is yet to be born, one for which we long with all our hearts and work towards with all the tenacity and courage we can muster as the covenant people of God.  Amen.