Second Sunday after Epiphany

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

John 1:43-51​

There’s a scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” after George and the angel Clarence have dried out from their icy plunge into the river, when they go to local watering hole, a place George remembers as Martini’s. The bartender Nick owns the place now and it’s a seedier and more raucous place than George remembers. And a belligerent Nick asks George, “And that’s another thing. Where do you come off calling me Nick?”

In today’s gospel, the question Nathanael asks Jesus is, “How do you know me?” but I imagine he has that same sneer and aggravated tone as he questions Jesus. Irritated. Cynical. Skeptical. After all, he was already halfway there when Philip told him Jesus came from Nazareth. Nathanael and Philip were from Bethsaida and Nazareth would have been their hometown rival, like Shelby and Kings Mountain. Eugene Peterson, in the Message, paraphrases Nathanael’s question, saying, “Where did you get that idea? You don’t know me.”

Psalm 139’s assures us that contrary to what Nathanael, or we, may think, God does know us. The psalmist declares “You are acquainted with all my ways…Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” (v. 3-4) Returning to The Message, Peterson says it this way:

You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of your sight. You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too— your reassuring presence, coming and going. (v. 3-5)

John Ylvisaker’s hymn “Borning Cry” echoes the psalmist:

I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.

God formed our inward parts and knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, so, yes! God knows each one of us. (v. 13)

Despite being known by God, we can probably all recall times in our lives when we were incapable of hearing or seeing God.

When like Samuel we didn’t yet know God. The text says “visions of God were not widespread.” Whatever ministry he was engaged in, it didn’t include hearing God speak or seeing God move. It took Eli telling Samuel that the Lord was speaking for him to respond.

Or like Nathanael our own biases keep us from seeing God. When Philip first told him where Jesus was from, Nathanael was dismissive, asking, “Can anything good come out Nazareth?” Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth becomes an obstacle, obscuring his vision, so that he could not see God’s own Son standing right in front of him.

Or even like Eli who must have seen clearly once, serving the Lord as the temple priest, but could no longer see. While his eyes may have been clouded by cataracts or his vision may have deteriorated because of old age (2:22), the text can be read less literally. We know that Eli had allowed his sons to abuse the power of the priesthood, seizing the best offerings and laying with the women who came to present sacrifices. Perhaps his failure to hold them accountable for their selfishness and exploitation affected his ability to see the Lord clearly.

It is one thing to be known by God, and another to see or hear God. But, then, when we do hear God speak or see God’s work happening in the world around us, each of us must decide how we will respond.

Samuel, for one, is tentative. Eli tells him to answer the Lord saying, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” and Samuel responds to voice calling out to him saying, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.” Hebrew professor Robert Alter cites a sixteenth century scholar when he wonders whether Samuel drops “Lord” from his response deliberately. Was Samuel feeling skeptical or dismissive, uncertain about who he is addressing?

However, he feels initially, he listens to the Lord and then, reluctantly he delivers to Eli the dismal but unsurprising news that the Lord intends to remove Eli’s priestly authority. (Alter, 188)

Nathanael responds more immediately with adoration and praise. He is transformed when he realizes Jesus wasn’t playing games. The recognition that Jesus had seen him and knew him prompts his reply, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (v. 49)

How will we answer God’s call to us?

This weekend we commemorate The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who would have been 92 if he had had not been assassinated in 1968 when he was only 39 years old. An Atlanta preacher, King grounded his calls for racial justice in Scripture and theology. On Friday, April 12, 1963 - Good Friday that year - King was arrested during protests in Alabama, and a few days later he wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, addressing white moderate Christians who, he charged, were “more devoted to order than to justice; who [preferred] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

King wrote critically, naming his disappointment that the very same people who he believed would be coworkers with God “have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”

And he urged his audience to “repent not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

King’s words challenge me. I’m uncomfortable. After all, I want to be one of the “good” Christians.

I’ve learned a lot about white supremacy, systemic racism and my own biases in the last twelve years.

But I confess that when the Capitol was attacked on January 6, I knew it was wrong, evil, and sinful, but I was ignorant of the ways in which our brown and black siblings in Christ were brutalized, watching such a very different response to the non-violent protesters, and even to the violent rioters, than we have seen before.

I know I’ve quoted The Rev. Dr. Yvonne Delk before; she is the one who taught me, “What you see depends largely on where you sit.” From where I sit, I could not see what Bishop Yehiel Curry of the Metro Chicago Synod of the ELCA, saw and shared later: that, if the rioters had been brown or black, they would have been shot. I have since heard that echoed by the voices of other black and brown siblings here in North Carolina.

During the summer, after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, as our synod and denomination engaged in conversations about racial justice, The Rev. Dr. Shanitria Cuthbertson, who pastors Emmaus in West Charlotte, described conviction as “being convinced and confident that something is true.” The work of the Holy Spirit, conviction leads us to acknowledgment, admission, sight and Godly sorrow –a cycle of restoration.

What I experience when I hear Dr. King’s words is Holy Spirit driven conviction that helps me see how I perpetuate injustice and the sin of racism by my own appalling silence.

And this conviction leads me to Godly sorrow that our black and brown siblings whose inward parts were formed by God and who were knit together in their mothers’ wombs  ̶ siblings created in the image of God and imbued with dignity from God  ̶ have daily experiences where they are told that they have less worth or dignity than another person whose skin is fairer.

And that Godly sorrow leads me to want to love fiercely and out loud. King wrote in this same letter:

Was not Jesus an extremist in love? – “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you?” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? – “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? – “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? – “Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God.”… So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

My prayer is that, being known by God, we will hear and see God at work around us, and respond by being extremists for love and justice.

Amen.

Lectionary 29C/ Proper 24

Luke 18:1-8

When a much-anticipated movie or book is released, people rush to watch it or get their copy, devouring it as quickly as they can. And then they inevitably want to tell others all about it. Warning whoever is listening they’re about to give away something important about the storyline, they say, “spoiler alert!”

I remember when the seventh and final Harry Potter book was released. It was summer and our daughters were with their grandparents, and I had the luxury of being able to read the book cover to cover without any distractions. This was the early days of social media and spoiler alerts were easy to avoid.

Today, you have to turn off the tv, and stay off your phone if you want to escape someone else’s take on a story. And in today’s gospel we see that the impulse to tell others what we think is happening in a scene or a story is ancient.

Our gospel this morning includes yet another parable, and Luke is quick to tell us what it’s about. The gospel writer says it’s about “the need to pray always and not to lose heart.”(8:1) If we let him, he will take away any chance we have to listen to the characters for ourselves and draw our own conclusions.

But we’re not going to let him do that.

Instead, we’re going to look at the text of the parable in verses 2 to 5 and listen for what God is saying, recognizing that the verses before and after the parable are Luke’s commentary on it.

The first character Jesus introduces us to is the judge. The parable’s often titled “the widow and the unjust judge” but it’s Luke, not Jesus, who identifies him as “unjust”, later in verse 6.

In verse 2, Jesus says the judge “neither feared God or had respect for people.” In the Small Catechism, Luther teaches that the very first commandment “You shall have no other gods.” means that “we are to fear, love, and trust God above all things.” Luther then teaches that our fear and love for God directs all of our human relationships. The judge doesn’t follow the commandments
given to us by God
to govern our relationship with God or with others.
He denies God.

When I hear Luke’s word “unjust”, I immediately think the judge is corrupt or dishonest, but what Jesus describes isn’t necessarily a criminal or a miscreant. It is someone turned in on himself, selfish and self-centered, without regard for God or neighbor.

The second person that Jesus introduces is the widow. I recently re-read an article that talked about how different words are “marked” or carry assumptions with them.[i]

The unmarked form of a word carries the meaning that
goes without saying -- what you think of when you're
not thinking anything special.

I think “widow” is a marked word. When we hear widows named in Scripture, we may remember Anna, a prophet at the Temple in Luke Chapter 2, the widow at Zarephath who met Elijah (1 Kings 17) who Luke references in Chapter 4 or the widow who gives all she has to the treasury in Chapter 21. In Luke’s telling, all of these widows are aged and alone, with little means of their own.

But maybe not.

Amy Jill-Levine, Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, suggests that because Anna’s husband goes unnamed but she is introduced as “the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher” explicitly connecting her to the Northern tribes of Israel that were taken into exile, she “represents the tenacity of holding on to her identity.” Levine also notes that the widow at Zarephath argues with Elijah, advocating for her son who is ill, instead of submitting to his demands. And finally, the widow who gives her two coins clearly had her own money and choices to make about how she used it. No one had exploited her. These women all have “agency and individuality.”[ii]

In the translation we just heard, Jesus tells us that the woman kept saying to the judge, “Grant me justice against my opponent.”

But the word translated here as “justice” is ἐκδικούμενα
(ek-dee-kó-mena) which is “vengeance” or “revenge”,
not the κρίσις (kree-sis) that we recognize from the prophet Isaiah’s instruction to “learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)

Hearing the woman sought vengeance changes how we hear the parable. Vengeance or revenge is consuming; it distorts how we view the world and events. It isolates us from others who do not share our passion. Reconsidering how we imagine “widows” and casting the woman as vengeful makes her character less sympathetic or morally exemplary.

Continuing the parable, Jesus tells us that the judge relents. We shouldn’t mistake his action as a change of heart, or repentance, turning toward God. Still adamantly denying God and neighbor, he is motivated by self-preservation; in our translation, it says the woman will “wear him out” but the Greek is actually a boxing word that is better translated as “beat on him” or even “give him a black eye.” He acts because he feels threatened, not compassionate.

So now what?

Jesus doesn’t commend the judge to us as a moral exemplar. The judge remains turned inward, searching out the most expedient way to get rid of the fuss and bother that interacting with his community brings.

And Jesus isn’t commending the woman’s dogged pursuit of vengeance to us either. After all, in Leviticus we hear the Lord command Israel,

You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…. (Leviticus 19:18)

and in his letter to the Romans, Saint Paul writes

Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." (Romans 12:19)

As we have listened to the parables, we have learned that Jesus often told these stories to disrupt and prompt us to see the world a different way. So perhaps this parable points us to think differently about what justice is, and how it’s achieved.

This weekend, a Mississippi memorial to Emmett Till was rededicated. Kidnapped by two white men in 1955, the fourteen-year old black boy visiting family in the South was beaten and killed. His body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River three days later. The two men arrested for his murder were acquitted, and because of double jeopardy laws, were never convicted even after they publicly professed to what they had done. Till’s mother had her son’s body brought back to Chicago and his casket was open during his funeral to display the brutality inflicted on him. Today you can see that casket on display in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

There was no justice for Emmett Till, but more than fifty years after his death, a memorial commission was formed in Mississippi and people continue to work to tell the story of his death and work for racial justice now. One of the ways they tell Till’s story is through markers or memorial signs, and after the first three signs were vandalized with graffiti, bullets and acid, they constructed a more durable memorial that was rededicated this weekend.

Justice – setting things right – is what we hear the prophets argue for. It is what Amos calls for when, as Eugene Peterson wrote in the Message paraphrase,

“Do you know what I want?
I want justice - oceans of it. I want fairness - rivers of it.
That's what I want. That's all I want.” (Amos 5:24)

Where revenge is personal, justice is rooted in community and society. It isn’t about “getting even.” Instead, it is about correcting wrongs that have been perpetrated and systems that have gone unchallenged.[iii]

Where revenge is punitive and wants someone to suffer, to be hurt or feel pain, justice is restorative, recognizing that God cares for both victims and perpetrators and we are created for relationship. Restorative justice doesn’t eliminate accountability or consequences but seeks reconciliation and repairs relationships.

For all of us, who have a lot more in common with the widow and the judge than with Jesus, this parable is good news that gives away the ending of the greatest story we have. God doesn’t play the games that these two characters play. We neither have to pound on God for attention, or fear God’s disdain. God welcomes us with abundant love and gives us unearned grace in faith. God knows us fully, even we fail to love and fear God,
even when we are angry or vengeful,
or selfish and unmoved by the troubles of those around us.

And God invites us into this life with God, with each other and with the world, trusting us to seek justice, to set things right, that God will be known.

Let us pray…
Good and gracious God,
We give you thanks for your Son Jesus and for the grace you have given each one of us —
grace that is patient with us as we learn what it means to fear and love You; grace that strengthens our voices and encourages us to love our neighbors and seek justice in an unjust world.
Prompt us to listen to Your Word and what You are saying to us as You call us to follow Jesus.
Amen.

[i] Deborah F. Tannen. “Wears Jump Suit. Sensible Shoes. Uses Husband's Last Name”, New York Times. June 20, 1993, Section 6, Page 18.
[ii] Amy-Jill Levine. Short Stories by Jesus. 257-260.
[iii] Leon F Seltzer Ph.D. “Don’t Confuse Revenge with Justice: Five Key Differences.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolution-the-self/201402/don-t-confuse-revenge-justice-five-key-differences, accessed 10/19/2019.

Lectionary 25C/ Proper 20

Luke 16:1-15

Hearing the gospel for today, do you think Jesus just wanted to make sure people were listening? I have heard of university professors who add instructions at the end of the syllabus to test whether students read it in its entirety, and in seminary we joked about inserting random text, like lines from a favorite hymn, into our papers, just to see if they were really being read. Maybe that’s why Jesus tells the Pharisees this parable that appears to commend dishonesty.

Maybe Jesus just wanted to make sure he had their attention, but maybe not.

Remember what we know about parables. Sometimes, parables were a way to put two things such as the kingdom of God and a mustard seed or yeast (Luke 13), alongside each other to help us understand them. Other times the parables teach us about the kingdom of God through stories like the Good Samaritan where it’s easy for us to imagine who we are supposed to be in the story. Last week we were reminded that often the parables are there to challenge us or shake us up. And often they surprise us, awakening us to the way God is breaking into our lives and turning the wisdom of the world upside-down or inside-out.

At the time that Luke is writing, around 80 CE, the Romans occupied Palestine, and as the Empire demanded higher taxes, sometimes the rich who lived in the south “rescued” the small farmers in the north, who sold their land and stayed on as tenant farmers. Where once they might have harvested crops that provided food for themselves and their households, now the farmers were planting production crops to be sold to the Romans, and a manager would keep track of what was owed to the landowner.

The parable begins with someone making charges against a manager. We don’t know what he’s done, but the rich man calls him out and accuses him of being dishonest. There’s no denial; instead what we hear is his internal dialogue, or calculations, as he considers his options. And then Jesus tells us that the dishonest man acts quickly, speaking to the tenants and lowering the figures for what they owe.

We can speculate what he was doing. As a manager, he would have earned a commission, so perhaps he reduced their debts by the portion he would have taken. Or maybe he reduced their debts to hurt the landowner, or to ingratiate himself into their lives.  We cannot know his motive. And we don’t need to.

The result is that the tenant farmers have a little bit more for themselves and their households. The manager, who has power because of his position, chooses to use his power, while it lasts, to help others.

Jesus still recognizes the man for what he is, calling him the “dishonest manager” even when the rich man commends him. What is being commended isn’t the manager’s dishonest practices but the steps the man took to address the wrongs he had committed.

This isn’t a parable that obviously works as an allegory for our lives of faith. Featuring a dishonest manager and an opportunistic rich man, we aren’t eager to identity ourselves or God as one of the characters.

But aren’t we all dishonest managers?

Five times between verses 8 and 11, we hear the word “dishonest.” The Greek words are ἀδικίας and ἄδικός which can also be translated as “unrighteous” or “unjust”.  Eugene Peterson who wrote The Message paraphrase of the Bible calls this character a rascal. That sounds about right, I think.

By our nature, apart from Christ, we are dishonest or unrighteous, rascals and scoundrels, captive to sin and to death, self-centered and self-indulgent.

In this parable Jesus contrasts what is dishonest or unrighteous with what is faithful or believing.

But faithfulness and believing are never the result of anything we do – no measure of hard work, earnestness, or ability will achieve them.

As Martin Luther wrote in the explanation of the third article of the Creed, “I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but [the Holy Spirit] calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies [or makes righteous] the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers.”

It is only through Christ, and the gift of unearned grace – what some might even call dishonest wealth – that each of us is wholly beloved and forgiven. Giving us what is his, Christ makes us children of God and heirs to the kingdom.

As Paul writes in his letter to the Romans, now we are dead to sin and alive to Christ, and as ones who have been brought from death to life, we are instruments of righteousness. (Romans 6)

As instruments of righteousness, we are given the power to intercede on behalf of the suffering, the sick and the poor.

Indeed, in our baptismal covenant we promise to “strive for justice and peace in all the earth”[i] and accept this responsibility to intercede on behalf of others. And we do have power; we have the power of the Holy Spirit acting in our lives and those around us, and we have the power of our voices to engage in difficult conversations; we have the power to use our vote on election day; we have the power to use our time to volunteer or write letters to the editor and congressional representatives.

This parable challenges us to look for the places where we could give up some of our power and wealth so that others might suffer less, despair less and hunger less.

There are ways we do this in our everyday lives, giving out of the abundance we already have:

• Many of you have donated hotel-size toiletries that we are able to give to people who don’t have anything.
• I know someone else who never pays with exact change; instead, she rounds up and donates the difference to charity.
• Scrolling through Facebook, I saw a post where a mother told a story about her son who had asked every day for a week for two of everything he usually took to school for lunch. She had chalked it up to growing pains, figuring the kid must be hungry. And then the boy’s mother got a note from another mother in his class thanking her for providing lunch for her child when she’d been in the hospital.

While these actions may feel small or incidental, they are ways we take steps to lessen the suffering, despair and hunger of others. But after Jesus finished the parable he told his disciples, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much;…” (v. 10)

The Good News we hear today is that God gives us the power to transform the world around us, sharing our inheritance as God’s children and making God’s kingdom present and visible here on earth, if only we will act.

Let us pray…
God of Righteousness,
Thank you for grace and mercy that makes us your children and heirs to Your kingdom and thank you for Your Son Jesus who shows us what Kingdom life looks like here on earth.
Show us ways that we can be instruments of righteousness in our community and world.
Empower us by Your Holy Spirit to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.

[i] Evangelical Lutheran Worship, ELCA. 236.

Lectionary 19C/ Proper 14

Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

This week the churchwide assembly for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) convened in Milwaukee.

In the ELCA we celebrate being one church body organized in three expressions – the local congregation, the synod, and the churchwide organization, and the churchwide assembly (#ELCAcwa) brings those three expressions together every three years. There, voting members elected by each of the sixty-five synods, as well as our synod bishops and assistants to the bishop and the Church Council gather to listen for where God is speaking and leading; to bear witness to God’s activity in the world; and to take action that shines God’s light in the world in solidarity with the poor, and oppressed, calling for justice and proclaiming God’s love for the world.[i]

I watched worship and plenaries on the livestream from the Wisconsin Center, and while there’s much that could be said about Roberts’ Rules of Order, parliamentary procedure and hot mic moments during the assembly, what made it extraordinary was the joyful worship and preaching that proclaimed that we are saved by a God whose grace has no limits, and the actions taken that spoke to how God’s kingdom is breaking into the world even now.

And, as I listened and watched, the words of our second reading from the book of Hebrews returned to me:

1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen… 3 By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.

Like us, the audience being addressed in the book of Hebrews “were not eyewitnesses to the ministry of Jesus and [they] lived in a community that had been founded some years before.”[ii] Like those “Christians who were having trouble holding onto hope when Christ did not return immediately after his resurrection”, we, too, wait for answers from God, and in the midst of daily life we can become discouraged that evil and sin continue to exist in the world. [iii] But the Good News of Jesus Christ is that we are not alone, or abandoned to our despair or our fear.

This text tells us first that faith is “the assurance of things hoped for.”(v. 1) Furman University religion professor John C. Shelley notes, “what we hope for is intimately connected to our faith.”[iv] In the gospel, Jesus tells us “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.” (Luke 12: 34) The places where we commit our selves – our time, talents and our money – reflect the desires of our hearts, and they reflect our faith because our lives are lived in response to the grace we have been given. The hopes we hold for ourselves, our church and the world cannot be separated from our faith.

One of the actions that the churchwide assembly took was to adopt a memorial that “encourages our synods and congregations to commemorate
the 50th anniversary of the ELCA’s ordination of women in 2020;
the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the ordination of women of color in the Lutheran tradition in the United States and
the 10th anniversary of the ELCA’s decision to remove the barriers to ordination for people in same-gendered relationships..."[v]

I am grateful the ELCA “recognizes the diversity of gifts that women’s ordination brings to this church”[vi] and to this congregation for calling me as Ascension’s first female pastor, but I lament that many congregations throughout the ELCA still refuse to recognize the calls of women in ministry, people of color and our LGBTQIA siblings in Christ. For all who have been told that they cannot serve, in our denomination or elsewhere, our churchwide affirmation of women in ministry witnesses that “the way of Jesus is the way to become who [each of us] most truly is,” as a child of God.[vii] Our action sustains hope for those who do not yet see a way forward.

The text also tells us that faith is “the conviction of things not seen.” (v. 1) As Shelley writes, “faith is not supported by the surrounding culture.”[viii] We forget sometimes how political Jesus was; he challenged the existing systems and leaders on behalf of those who were suffering or ignored and, ultimately, he was executed for it. In Luke’s gospel particularly, he speaks up for the poor, with more than 30 references to wealth, money, possessions and alms in Luke-Acts alone.

We cannot listen to Jesus’s words and think he doesn’t have something to say about how we spend, save and give.

Rolf Jacobson, a professor at Luther Seminary, tells the story of how he started tipping more and then realized he was noticing more the people who are dependent on tips. It’s not just wait staff at restaurants. It’s service personnel who don’t have living wages, and often don’t have benefits that provide healthcare or retirement savings. Again, we hear Jesus: “Where your treasure is, your heart will be also.”

Budgets are faith statements, and at the churchwide assembly, one of the first celebrations was that “Always Being Made New: the Campaign for the ELCA” exceeded its goal, raising more than $250 million in support of new and existing ELCA ministries. Those gifts will provide needed revenue to expand ministries for supporting congregations, leaders, and the global church and addressing hunger and poverty, and we can and should celebrate the ways God will be made known.

Later in the week, the assembly adopted the three-year budget for the churchwide expression which designated 75% of expenses to support and grow vital congregations here in the U.S. and to grow the Lutheran Church around the world; provide relief and development to help end hunger domestically and globally; provide coordination and support for churchwide ministries and support and develop current and future rostered and lay leaders in the ELCA.

Clearly, we long to participate in the beautiful kingdom work that God is doing through our church.

But then, one of the last pieces of business that the assembly engaged was the discussion of a cost-saving measure taken earlier this year that changed the healthcare benefits for the employees at the churchwide organization. The assembly was asked to consider restoring those benefits and the difficult discussion highlighted the challenge of managing money, people and ministry. It also, importantly, affirmed our own social statement that acknowledges how health and health care depend not only upon personal responsibility, but also upon other people and conditions in wider society. It states, “Such interdependence is at odds with the common message of this individualistic society, but it flows from the biblical vision of wholeness.”[ix]

We cannot make decisions about our lives and the lives of those around us apart from our faith.
In the verses that follow those that I read, the writer of Hebrews shares the stories of heroes of faith including Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and reminds us that, as Shelley notes, “faith may provoke hostility and ridicule…and it also presents itself as courage.[x]

Several of the actions taken this week by the assembly required great courage. After thirty years the ELCA has even fewer people of color than our predecessor bodies of the ALC and LCA did; in fact, we are the whitest denomination in the U.S. No single action or set of actions can change that reality quickly but the assembly took three actions that begin to address our history and our future. First, the assembly apologized to the African descent community for our historical complicity in slavery and its enduring legacy of racism in the United States and globally. The second action recalled the events of June 17, 2015 when a young man, baptized and raised in an ELCA congregation in the Carolinas, murdered nine people at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston; in commemoration of those nine martyrs, June 17 was designated as a day of repentance, grounded in prayer. And the third action was the adoption of an unambiguous resolution to condemn white supremacy, proclaiming that “the love of God and the justice and mercy of God are for all people, without exception.”[xi]

There is a Zulu proverb that says, “When a thorn pierces the foot, the whole body must bend over to pull it out.”[xii] We cannot follow Jesus but expect others do the hard and necessary work to address systemic racism in our nation and within the Church.

There are many more examples from churchwide assembly that connect faith and Scripture to our everyday lives and remind us that we are part of the Body of Christ in all its beauty and all its mess. I encourage you to learn more about the actions the assembly took, but also to look at your own decisions and see how your faith informs your live in the every day.

Our faith is alive – it is hope-filled; it is relational and it is public.
It is our faith in Christ whom we proclaim crucified and risen that gives us courage to confront evil and sin in the world with the confidence that God prevails. The writer of Hebrews assures us: we do not need to be discouraged and we are not without hope.

Let us pray…
Creator God,
We give you thanks for the world created by your word
and for Your Son who shows us Your Kingdom.
Forgive us when we fail to put our faith in your promises.
By your Holy Spirit, strengthen and give us courage to seek justice for all your children.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our Lord and Savior.
Amen.


[i] Constitution, Ascension Lutheran Church.
[ii] “Hebrews”. Enter the Bible. Luther Seminary.
[iii] David E. Gray. “Hebrews”, Feasting on the Word.
[iv] John C. Shelley. “Hebrews”, Feasting on the Word.
[v] Legislative Update, https://www.elca.org/cwa-2019/guidebook-web-version, accessed 8/10/19
[vi] ibid
[vii] Shelley.
[viii] ibid
[ix] https://www.elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Health-Care, accessed 8/10/19
[x] ibid
[xi] Legislative Update, https://www.elca.org/cwa-2019/guidebook-web-version, accessed 8/10/19
[xii] The Right Reverend W. Darin Moore, Bishop, AME Zion Church, speaking at ELCA CWA 8/8/2019.

Lectionary 12C/ Proper 7

Luke 8:26-39

This morning, imagine you have set down a book and then had to go back and reread the last chapter or two to remember what had taken place, or you watched a season finale in a television series and then had a couple of months to forget what had happened. That is where we find ourselves this morning. Because while we are in the “year of Luke”, the third year of the revised common lectionary cycle, we’ve had only one Gospel lesson from Luke since Easter. So it may be helpful to be re-introduced to the third gospel.

Luke’s gospel is one of the three synoptic gospels with Matthew and Mark, and while they each have different purposes, these three gospels share common sources and content with each other. Luke’s gospel, the latest of the three, was written more than ten years after the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Roman army and, at the time it was written, the people of Israel were living under occupation and subject to Roman law. The contemporary belief is that the writer of the gospel was a member of the Christian community, and at home in the Greco-Roman culture. Perhaps he was a Gentile Christian or a covert from Hellenistic Judaism.[i]

Certainly, one of the prominent themes in Luke’s gospel is that Jesus Christ is not only a prophet like Moses and the Jewish Messiah but that Jesus brings Good News to the whole world, especially to those who are excluded or marginalized.[ii]

Earlier in Luke’s gospel, Jesus was traveling from town to town in the region of Galilee with his disciples. When, in verse 26, it says “they arrived in the country of the Gerasenes,” they had just crossed the Sea of Galilee.

It’s helpful to remember that anytime in Scripture when water is crossed – the crossing of the Reed Sea when the Israelites fled Egypt, the crossing of the Jordan into the promised land of Canaan , or the crossing of the Sea of Galilee – it signals to us that God is at work doing something new.[iii]

Today’s gospel tells us that Jesus willingly went to a Gentile or non-Jewish land. We know that first from the geography of the region, which shows the Decapolis east of the Sea of Galilee; the Decapolis being a region of ten cities that were “centers of Greek culture.”[iv] But it’s also clear from the text because there are swine or pigs that wouldn’t have been found in religiously-observant Jewish households where people would have believed that contact with the animals would have made someone ritually unclean.

But Gentiles and pigs aren’t the only untouchables in this story.

Luke tells us that when Jesus came ashore, he was met by a man from town who was possessed by demons, naked and lived among the tombs. (v. 27) Both his illness and his living conditions assured that he was cast out from the town and by the people in the countryside. Luke goes on to say that the man had been bound and chained but he always broke free from his shackles and withdrew to deserted places. A street person – unnamed and experiencing homelessness – he is only identified by the ones who possessed him – the thousands of demons called “Legion.”

Recently I heard again a TED talk given by the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie who talks about the risk we take when we let ourselves define a person or a group of people by a single attribute. Citing the danger of what she calls “a single story”, Adichie describes times when she has been subjected to a single story from people who “only knew about Africa from popular images… of beautiful landscapes, beautiful animals, and incomprehensible people, fighting senseless wars, [and] dying of poverty and AIDS.” And then she confesses times when she, in turn, has been the one who has told a single story, such as the flawed one she learned from the American debate over immigrants and refugees, the one that says that Mexicans and Central Americans are animals and rapists bringing drugs and crime into this country.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, the single story told by the Nazis was heard in their “portrayal of the Jews as disease-spreading rats feeding off the host nation, poisoning its culture and polluting the Aryan race… as butchers and …as aliens.”[v]  That single story was accepted as Truth even as millions of Jews were deported and housed in concentration camps where six million people were executed.

Adichie reminds us that,

The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.

She offers that listening to many stories about a people or a place restores dignity to the people to whom the stories belong and gives us a way to engage with each person as wholly human. [vi]

Refusing to fall for the single story, Jesus sees the Gerasene man as more than just the demons who possess him. He recognizes him as wholly human, a beloved child of God, created in God’s image.

What struck me in reading the gospel this time wasn’t the miraculous healing that the man experienced, with the demons driven into the herd of pigs and sent down the steep banks into the water. (v. 33) What caught my attention was the reaction of the people who saw what Jesus did

First Luke tells us the swineherds who witnessed the events ran away to tell others. Now when we hear the story of Jesus’ birth, we’re told those shepherds made known what had been told them and all who heard it were amazed” and, picturing Bethlehem, I imagine that they told the story with reverence and awe. But when I hear that the swineherds ran away to report the incident of the man’s deliverance, their actions sound much more ominous, like people inciting a mob to riot.

Perhaps that’s because when the people do come to see for themselves, Luke tells us they were seized with fear. (v. 35, 37)

They didn’t throw their arms joyfully around the man who’d they seen tormented and tortured. They didn’t find a place where he could live or offer him food, or even listen to his story. They were afraid.

They were so afraid that they asked Jesus to leave. (v. 37)

As often as we witness suffering from a distance and pray for people who are living with illness, I want to believe if I witnessed a miraculous healing, I would rejoice and give thanks, but whenever I think I would have been more faithful or obedient than the biblical characters, I know I am probably fooling myself.

They may not have liked having a demon-possessed man in their midst, but he had lived imprisoned or alone, always keeping his distance. They thought they knew this man’s story and where he belonged. They had succumbed to the allure of the single story.

Jesus challenged their understanding of the world around them. And that was unacceptable, so they asked him to leave. After all, the problem wasn’t with them. It was that troublemaker Jesus.

But when Jesus troubles the waters, it is what’s known as “good trouble.” There are a lot of single stories out there and it’s easy for us to point at others and think we know their story, but Jesus calls us to be united under one Lord and reconciled with one another. And to help us on the Way, Jesus shows us another story, where each person is afforded dignity and seen fully, where we are asked to listen and hear how much God has done for them. Because each one of us, with our stories, is a beloved child of God, created in God’s own image.

Let us pray…
Holy and Redeeming Lord,
Thank you for creating each one us wonderfully in your image; forgive us when we will not listen to another person’s story or see them as your beloved child;
Forgive us when we are afraid.
Open our ears to hear and open our hearts to love each person with the love you have first given us.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus.
Amen.

[i] Fred Craddock. Luke. 16.
[ii] Craddock, 19.
[iii] “Pulpit Fiction.” https://www.pulpitfiction.com/notes/proper7c, accessed 6/18/2019.
[iv] “Decapolis.” Enter The Bible. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/resourcelink.aspx?rid=1277, accessed 6/22/2019.
[v] “Propaganda and Hoaxes in Nazi Germany: 80 Years Later.” https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201811/propaganda-and-hoaxes-in-nazi-germany-80-years-later, accessed 6/23/2019
[vi] https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en, accessed 6/22/2019


  

God will deliver us from our enemy (Numbers 17)

Worship from Sunday, June 21, 2015, 4th Sunday after Pentecost
at Ascension Lutheran Church, Shelby, NC

Introduction
Today we gather together as the body of Christ,

and, with our brothers and sisters, we mourn the nine people who were killed Wednesday night in the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

As you probably know, the suspected 21-year old shooter was arrested during a traffic stop here in Shelby by our city police. What you may not have yet learned is that he also was a member of an ELCA congregation in South Carolina, and two of the people killed were graduates of the ELCA seminary in Columbia, SC. As Presiding Bishop Eaton wrote in her response to the tragedy, “One of our own is alleged to have shot and killed two who adopted us as their own.”

During worship

During the summer children of all ages are invited to listen as we read from children’s literature. Today, I am going to read from Birmingham 1963 written Carole Boston Weatherford.

This story tells what happened in a Birmingham, Alabama church on a Sunday morning nearly fifty-two years ago. [After the reading] I wonder where God is in the story.

Let us pray:

God of our ancestors,

History shows us that even when evil, hatred and violence cloak our lives in darkness,

you remain Emanuel, God with us.

We commend to you the lives of the saints who were killed on Wednesday night as they gathered in your house:

Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41;

Cynthia Hurd, 54;

Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45;

Tywanza Sanders, 26;

Ethel Lance, 70;

Susie Jackson, 87;

Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49;

Myra Thompson, 59;

Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., 74

  

Holy God, we pray

...for their families, and all who love them, that they will know the comfort of your abiding love in the midst of their pain. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

...for the congregation of Emanuel AME Church

whose sanctuary has been desecrated that you would bring them to safety and restore peace to them; that they can find rest from their weariness and sorrow. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

...for our enemies, including the suspect Dylann Roof, that you will bring him to repentance and grant him forgiveness.Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

…for his family and the congregation of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Columbia, and for their pastor, that they will know your presence as they struggle to make sense of the incomprehensible. Hear us, O God.

Your mercy is great.

God, our refuge and strength, we give you thanks for the sanctuary we find here this morning, and we pray for your Holy Spirit to shine light into the darkness of our sin and our world, and guide our steps. We pray in the name of your crucified and risen Son, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

From the pulpit

Let us pray…

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

Last Sunday, we heard how Saul fell from favor and young David was anointed in his place, but he isn’t king yet.

He remains a court musician and a shepherd.

The youngest of Jesse’s sons, he is an errand boy,

delivering lunches and supplies to the Israelite soldiers

who are perched on a mountaintop, staring across a valley at their enemies.

One the other side of the valley, the Philistine army is poised to attack.

But nothing happens.

For either side to advance, they would have to cede their privilege and go into the valley. They would have to be vulnerable.

A Philistine infantryman, larger than any of the other soldiers,

a giant of a man named Goliath,

offers to fight one man from the Israelite army to put an end to the battle.

And no one steps forward.

As David is greeting his older brothers at the army camp,

Goliath repeats the words he had said before,

and David witnesses the deafening silence of the Israelites.

But David breaks the silence and speaks up, telling the king,

“Your servant will go and fight…”(v. 32)

Saul offers objections:

“Yes, but you can’t really do that, you’re only a boy and he’s an experienced soldier.”

“Yes, but you cannot go as you are; you will need armor and weapons.”

But David goes, armed with his staff, five smooth stones, and a sling.

And he slays the enemy soldier.

Some would say David was naïve, or foolish, but

David saw what no one else in the Israelite army could see;

sure, they knew the history of warfare and had battle plans drawn.

They could see the terrain and Goliath’s physical stature.

Even after Samuel told them not to pay attention to appearances,

they still based their decisions on what they could see and touch,

whatever was in plain sight,

and they let their fear bind them into doing nothing.

David alone, saw that this was not a battle between two armies of men.

This was between an historic enemy

and “the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.” (v. 45)

His courage was grounded in his knowledge of the God who we worship,

and the steadfast presence of God in the face of our enemies.

Four nights ago, nine bullets rang out in a church meeting room in Charleston, South Carolina, and pierced the sides of nine black bodies − mothers, grandmothers, sons, fathers and grandfathers. [i] Sadly, as I said earlier, and doubtless as many of you remember in your lifetimes, this was not the first attack against black people in a church. 

It was racism: actions against a group of human beings for no reason other than the color of their skin.

It wasn’t the first attack, and,

unless white churches like ours speak up, it won’t be the last. 

It was, what Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton has called,

“a stark, raw manifestation of the sin that is racism.

The church was desecrated.

The people of [Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church] were desecrated…”[ii]

Bishop Eaton urges us to,

“…to examine ourselves, our church and our [community]…

to be honest about the reality of racism within us and around us…”

It would be easy to respond like Saul, and say,

“Yes, but…” talking about race in our community and country will be uncomfortable.

It is easy to respond like Saul, and say,

“Yes, but…” confronting racism – speaking up in the deafening silence – will be scary.

It’s easy for us to name the reasons

that we shouldn’t confront this historic enemy

that has been piercing the hearts of our black brothers and sisters

not only for the past fifty-two years, but for hundreds of years.

But now is not the time to say, “Yes, but…”

Now is the time to echo David, and say,

“Your servant will go and fight…”(v. 32)

David’s strength is not his own,

but lies in his confession that God will deliver us from our enemy.

The enemy is not the people who are calling the Charleston shootings

a hate crime and racist violence.

The enemy is racism that, as ugly as it sounds, is part of our lives in our country.

It’s not always blatant; in fact it is nearly invisible,

if we don’t know people who aren’t white;

or we don’t listen to the stories of how whiteness and blackness differ.

Bishop Eaton goes on to urge us to “look with newly opened eyes at the many subtle and overt ways that we and our communities see people of color as being of less worth.”[iii]

After internship, I worked in a grocery store deli.

I heard a woman refuse to buy food prepared by our black cook.

I heard customers joke about workers’ accents, but,

because it would have been bad customer service,

I choked back a rebuttal.

All too often, we don’t want to offend or upset someone,

make a conversation awkward, or be accused of being political.

But the theology of the cross calls us to call a thing what it is. [iv]

This is racism. And racism is a sin.

And I am complicit.

Just last month, I parked my car on West Marion Street

and when I saw a young black man who I didn’t know,

walking in my direction on the sidewalk, I felt myself tense.

The irony is we were both going to participate in a monthly meeting

designed to build relationships across cultures here in Shelby.

It’s easy here, too, to answer like Saul, “Yes, but…”

But, no.

Lutherans don’t believe in a grading system for sin.

We believe sin is part of our human condition,

warping our lives and distancing us from God.

The racism embedded in our lives is sin.

Thankfully, we also believe in grace,

that unwarranted and unmerited gift from God that assures me

that I am a beloved child of God, forgiven for my sins.

Like so much of life, we aren’t going to do this work perfectly.

We will make mistakes and say things that someone doesn’t want to hear,

but we cannot be silent or blind or unaware any longer.

Confronting racism,

this historic, larger-than-life, enemy is hard;

it is uncomfortable and it is scary.

Racism won’t be taken down as easily or swiftly as Goliath fell,

but as the Church, we are called to speak up,

and, confident that God will deliver us from this enemy,

we must step up and act.

Let us pray:

Lord of Hosts,

We praise you for your promise to accompany us through the battles we face in life.

We give thanks for your promise to deliver us from our enemies.

We pray now that our eyes will be opened to where evil and racism are embedded in our lives.

Gather us and empower us, by Your Holy Spirit, to do the hard work of dismantling racism in our families, our workplaces,

and God, yes, in your Church.[v]

Move us to act in justice for all of our brothers and sisters.

In the name of your crucified and Risen Son,

Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

---

[i] Jennifer Bailey. “Rolling in Sackcloth and Ashes,” HuffingtonPost.com http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jennifer-bailey/rolling-in-sackcloth-and-ashes_b_7614210.html?1434649529, accessed June 20, 2015.

[ii] Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Thursday, June 18, 2015.

[iii] ibid

[iv] Martin Luther. Heidelburg Disputation, Line 21.

[v] Rev. Mindi, http://rev-o-lution.org/2015/06/18/prayer-a-call-for-justice-for-emmanuel-ame-in-charleston/, accessed June 20, 2015.