It's Time to be Brighter: February 8

Isaiah 58:1-12 & Matthew 5:13-20               Year A, Epiphany 5              

     In the Episcopal Church, we don’t refer to people as saints, unless we are talking about all Christians. However, we do recognize certain people who have inspired others as a result of their faith and actions.  We have a calendar of those people.  On Feb 13^th, we celebrate Absalom Jones.  Absalom was enslaved to a wealthy Anglican in Delaware.  He expressed an interest in reading and was soon moved to the house where we created opportunities to educate himself. 

A few years later, the man who enslaved him sold his mother and 5 siblings, and took Absalom with him to Philadelphia where he joined St. Peter’s, our sister church at the time.  Absalom worked days but received an education in Quaker schools in the evening.  He then got permission from his enslaver to marry and was married by Jacob Duche who was the rector of Christ Church at the beginning of the revolution.  He purchased her freedom and after a lot of hard work, was eventually allowed to buy his own freedom. It took him decades because his enslaver didn’t want to free him.

Absalom started attending St. Georges Methodist Church where he and Richard Allen were lay preachers and grew the church dramatically. Around that same time, (1787) they formed the Free African Society which held religious services as well as doing work for the community. They even helped raise the money to add a balcony at St. Georges.  But as soon as that balcony was built, the white congregants said that African American congregants had to sit up in that balcony that they had paid for.  So they walked out.  In 1792, they built the First African Church—which would become the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas. Absalom Jones and his church decided to go with the brand new Episcopal denomination while Richard Allen went on to form Mother Bethel, the first African Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1802, Bishop White (who is buried right there) ordained Absalom Jones as the first African American Episcopal priest. 

Absalom Jones believed God acted on behalf of the poor and oppressed and that Christians were meant to do so as well.  During the height of the yellow fever in 1793, while others fled the city, Absalom stayed and cared for people and even dug their graves.  He truly shined with the light of Christ for people in this city in the 18^th and 19^th century, and remains as a light in our church today. 

            It was disheartening to see those panels at George Washington’s House being torn down just a few weeks ago.  In addition to telling the story of those enslaved by George and Martha Washington, it also told a small part of the story of Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, and the churches they created.  It’s one of the reasons I spent a little extra time telling the story of Absalom Jones, because when those stories are silenced by others, it’s up to us to tell those stories. It is up to us to shine the light.

            Three of our four readings use the image of light in the darkness.  It’s a familiar and powerful image in the Hebrew Scriptures, the Christian Scriptures and many other religions.  The reading from Isaiah is similar to our reading from Micah last week. The people are once again trying to please God with rituals and sacrifices of animals.  They were frustrated as they felt that they were ignored by God.  They were doing many of the same things that had pleased God in the past. They were depriving themselves of food and comfort.  They were rolling around in ash and wearing sack cloth.  These were not easy things to do.  In their own way, they were trying.

But the problem was, what they were doing was self serving.  While they were doing these sacrificial acts, they were also oppressing their workers and serving their own interests as opposed to those of others.  God said, “Is not this the fast I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice…to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke?”  He went on to tell them to share their food with those who were hungry, care for the unhoused and those without clothing.  I talked about this last week---how justice for God means taking care for the vulnerable.

            Unlike Micah, Isaiah displays more hope, probably because it was a much longer book.  While Micah has 7 chapters, Isaiah has 66 chapters.  There is more space for growth in Isaiah. He said, if you can do all these things (help the oppressed go free, care for the vulnerable), “then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like noonday…you shall be called the repairers of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.”  Your light shall shine in the darkness.             

            That goes well with the text from our Gospel reading.  Our Gospel reading is a continuation of what we had last week.  We see more of this theme of light.  But while Isaiah speaks of the future (your light shall shine), Jesus speaks in the present tense. “You are the salt of the earth…You are the light of the world.”  Jesus brought light to this world with his life, his death and his resurrection.  While that light has dimmed at times, it has never gone out.  When Jesus ascended to heaven, he left that light with his followers.  We are inheritors of that light. 

Maybe this is your first time in church in a long time, or have only been coming a few months.   Maybe you have been coming your whole life, but you just don’t think you have the light.  God has given all of you the light.  You are all the light of the world.  Say it to yourself, “I am the light of the world.” It sounds a bit arrogant. It’s not.  You are not the source of the light, but you are a vessel of the light.  And without people carrying the light and shining the light for others, then people forget about the light. They forget about the truth.  They start thinking that darkness is the norm.  It’s not.

            One of the reasons I became a priest was because I realized that I loved to talk to people about God. I love hearing the stories of the Bible and hearing people’s faith stories.  Stories matter.  That is why it breaks my heart that those panels were taken down.  I am not going to talk about the politics of the decision…instead I want to focus on what we can do now.  It’s so easy to resign ourselves to powerlessness.  We are not without power. 

The first line of our reading from Isaiah is, “Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet.” I saw on Instagram that residents of Old City are taking turns standing at the president’s house and reading the words from the panels.  People are hanging up construction paper and writing in chalk over those blank spaces where those panels once were. They aren’t vandalizing anything, but they are finding ways to bring the stories of those 9 enslaved people back to life. 

            I was at one of the vigils a few weeks back and there was a woman holding a sign that said something like, “Jesus said to love your neighbor.”  I heard her tell someone else she was from an Episcopal Church and while she had been to many protests, this was the first time she had felt comfortable holding an overtly Christian sign.   That made me both happy and a little sad. For several decades, it’s been a certain kind of Christian that has been loud while the rest of us have just stayed in the background and talked amongst ourselves about how Christians aren’t speaking up enough. 

Well it’s time for us shy and reserved Episcopalians to get a little louder.  Actually, I don’t want us to be louder. We don’t need any more loud people. I want us to be brighter---not just so people can see our light, but so we they can see God’s light, how it shines on everyone…not just certain people someone decided deserves it.  You are the light of the world.  Don’t cover it up. Don’t let anyone cover it up.  Because it’s not our light. It’s God’s and everyone needs to see it.

 

What Justice Means: February 1

   Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12                          Year A, Epiphany 4                                                              

                A few weeks ago we renewed our baptismal covenant, which is mostly the Apostle’s Creed with some questions at the end.  The final question is, Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  The answer is, I will with God’s help.  I would say that most Christians agree that striving for justice is a good and noble thing.  Yet it would seem, we don’t all agree what justice means. 

          We often associate justice with courts or the consequences of unjust actions. In the Bible, justice is only used to talk about punishment and consequence 10% of the time.  The other 90% is caring for the vulnerable.  The Bible even defines who the vulnerable are.  Biblical scholars use the phrase, “quartet of the vulnerable” to refer to 4 groups that the Bible often references when talking about who the people of God need to care for.  These vulnerable groups are the poor, the orphans, the widows and the immigrants.  These were the groups of people who were most marginalized, most at risk when the Bible was written. (Remember that the Bible was written over hundreds and hundreds of years, so this wasn’t just a narrow snapshot in history.) Those groups are still vulnerable, some to lesser degrees than others.  I could give you numerous examples of places in the Bible where care of the vulnerable is mentioned, but that would take a long time.  It’s in the books of the law, it’s in the prophets, it’s in the psalms…it’s definitely in the words of Jesus. Justice is about caring for the vulnerable and the oppressed.

          That is why we can be fairly certain that when Micah writes, “do justice” that is what he’s talking about.  These 8 verses from chapter 6 of Micah are kind of quirky.  It’s hard to know who is talking.  It’s theoretically a conversation between God and the people of Israel, but it would seem that in the first few verses, God’s answers on behalf of the people of Israel.  One Hebrew scholar said this was a good example of God using sarcasm.  He starts by asking, “O, my people, what have I done to you? In what way have I wearied you?”  God doesn’t let them respond.  Instead he basically says, “Let me tell you all the things I have done for you…starting with saving you from slavery.” 

The people then get a chance to speak and ask, “With what shall I come before the Lord….” Then they proceed to give examples of things that they can sacrifice.  But all the sacrifices are rituals and some of them are absurd. Thousands of rams with tens of thousands of rivers of oil? Maybe they could have come up with thousands of rams….but rivers of oil? Clearly they are trying to overwhelm God with all that they have, their resources and wealth.

Then God responded with the words that would be quoted by activists, pastors and leaders for thousands of years. “O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness and to walk humbly with God.”  God doesn’t want your stuff, especially those rivers of oil that don’t actually exist.  God wants you to do justice, love kindness and walk with God.

 It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it?  We don’t hear the people’s response.  God goes on and frankly, it’s not looking good for the people for the rest of the Book of Micah.  God remains disappointed with them which leads me to believe that they didn’t respond well to his call to justice. I think they decided they would just continue to take advantage of the poor and oppressed and maybe keep up with the empty rituals.  I guess it was easier to find 1000 rams, slaughter them, and burn them than actually doing justice, loving kindness and walking with God.

 In some ways we haven’t changed much.  We still demand clear answers from God and then find creative ways to ignore them.  Over the centuries the church has been very creative when it comes to things we argue about.  I had one colleague whose church spent a year arguing about the carpet.  When Christ Church removed the stained glass windows for cleaning and then decided to keep the clear windows, people left the church. Every church has a story like that.

          It’s so much easier to argue about the details rather than actually doing justice, loving kindness and walking with God.  Doing justice is caring for the vulnerable. It’s ensuring that the people who are being treated horribly are treated well. It’s about relationship and empathy.  We know that’s a lot harder than ritual. 

What about loving kindness? We are all nice people.  We are in the city of brotherly love.  Right? Loving kindness is much deeper than simply being nice or polite.  The Hebrew word translated to loving kindness is hesed.  You see it all over the Old Testament.  One person described it as “reordering life into a community of enduring relations.” Not so easy.  Kindness (in this context at least) isn’t about simply being friendly. It is about our obligations to one another. If one suffers, we all suffer. It means we recognize that we are all in this together. 

We don’t have to look far to find the people who are suffering.  It is the poor, those who have no place to call home, people who are seeking a better life in this country but are being hunted like animals, the children who don’t have enough food, the elderly who don’t have anyone to work on their behalf, the lonely, those addicted to drugs and alcohol….I am sure you can fill in more.  There is no shortage of suffering.    That also means that there is no shortage of opportunities to do justice.

          What about walking humbly with God? Have we finally gotten to one that might be a little easier?  Most people assume that means walking with humility.  We could benefit from some more humility in this world.  Can you imagine how our conversation and policies could change if we all (and I mean ALL) admit that maybe we aren’t infallible, maybe we are capable of being wrong.  Think of the progress that could be made if when we were wrong, we just admitted we were wrong. But I think the emphasis is actually supposed to be on the walking…walking with God.  When the word walk is used in this context, it’s not just about the act of walking…it’s used to describe one’s orientation to life. So the question is, how is our life oriented to God?

          Just in case you are thinking, well that’s just the Old Testament. Jesus wasn’t actually that demanding.  Look at our Gospel reading. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”  The Beatitudes are all about reorienting our lives to God and caring for the vulnerable.  Anytime we try to make that kind reorientation, people get mad…because otherwise Jesus would not have had to warn people that they would be persecuted and reviled.  We see that happening today. People who are protesting in Minneapolis are being killed, arrested—persecuted and reviled.   We can and should lament that—especially the killing, because that is tragic and unjust.  This is what Jesus was warning us about in the Beatitudes.  When we prioritize the needs of the vulnerable, people will be persecuted and reviled. 

That terrifies me. I don’t like being reviled. I don’t want to be persecuted. I much prefer to go along with the flow.  Today scriptures are clear.  “Do justice, love kindness, walk humbly with your God.” Forget the rams and the rivers of oil.  That is not what God wants. God wants justice.  God wants kindness.  Most importantly, God has every intention of walking this walk with us.  Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?  The answer is, I will with God’s help. 

God Through Us: Jan 4

Matthew 2:13-23                                                        

                My son Joshua has played a variety of parts in many different pageants.  He was the baby Jesus when he was 8 months old, then a sheep for a few years.  When he was 2 ½, he was a reluctant sheep.  He was in a very outspoken and independent phase.  I was terrified of an outburst.  But he did fine and then the pageant directors surprised me a little.  They added an epilogue which included the story of Jesus returning from Egypt with his parents. Jesus would have been about 3 when he returned from Egypt, so they put Joshua in the place of Jesus. Joshua wandered back center stage looking extremely confused and a little scared and I found myself tearing up.  They weren’t really happy tears.  It was the first time I imagined Jesus as a scared child being taken out of the only home he had known (which was Egypt) and brought back to a land his parents had fled because their son’s life had been at risk.  It must have been traumatic for them all.

It was unsettling to feel that grief in the midst of a Christmas Eve pageant.  However,  I think that being unsettled can sometimes be good, even at Christmas.  Christmas is wonderful and joyful day, but there can also be a small (or even large) degree of grief in the midst of it.  It might be a parent or a spouse who has recently died, a child who can’t share the holiday with you, a family that is a little fractured…every loss feels that much bigger on Christmas.  So while it’s not typical or comfortable, today we are hearing the story of the sadness and the loss that happened on the very first Christmas. 

            This story from our Gospel today is referred to as the slaughter or massacre of the innocents.  Typically the reading leaves out the part about Herod killing the children under the age of 2 in and around Bethlehem, but I put it back in. I think the people who put the lectionary together were trying to keep the focus on God’s saving act rather than the actions of a corrupt and power hungry ruler.

            However, the author of Matthew put this story in his Gospel for a reason.  Many biblical scholars have pointed out that there are no historical accounts of this mass killing of children under the age of two, but others have suggested that it was not an unexpected act from a man like Herod. He had killed his wife and three sons to protect his power, what was a few dozen children to him when it meant he could protect himself from the future king? 

This all started with the devoted magi who brought gifts to Jesus and his parents.  We all know that story.  Unfortunately since they were following a star, which never provide exact locations, they first went to Jerusalem and told people that they had observed a star and were looking for “the king of the Jews.” This might seem a little far fetched to us, but it was common for people to associate the birth of kings or great men with the appearance of stars.  When Herod heard that these wise men had come from far away in search of a king, he sensed a potential threat. He sought the counsel of his own advisors and they told him that the prophets said that this messiah was to be born in Bethlehem. He called the wise men to him and shared this helpful information with the request that they tell him once they found him so he too could worship him.  Fortunately the wise men were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they didn’t.  

            That is where our story picks up today.  Joseph was warned by an angel in a dream to flee to Egypt.  The angel doesn’t tell him why, but Joseph obeyed. (He was very good at following angelic directions.) The family fled in the middle of the night and traveled all the way to Egypt.  Egypt was part of the Roman Empire at the time, but Herod had no control there.  We don’t know why this fleeing was necessary until we hear of Herod’s response to the realization that the wise men didn’t return to him and tell him exactly where this baby was.  Herod ordered the execution of children age two and under. Fortunately, by the time he realized this and ordered this slaughter, Jesus and his parents had already fled, but Herod didn’t know this.  Unfortunately, many children were still killed, leaving families heartbroken in Bethlehem.

Then there is this strange reference to Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;  she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.”  There is only one Rachel in the Bible and she is in Genesis.  She was married to Jacob and bore two children—Joseph and Benjamin.  Neither of them died before she did, thus, leaving people confused by this reference.  It is believed that Matthew included these verses because Rachel is considered one of the matriarchs of the Jewish people.  This reference to her weeping is a reminder of the exile of the Jewish people to Babylon.  No doubt, countless people died.  Even though Rachel had died by the time the Babylonian exile happened and by the time Jesus was born, Rachel still wept for all those children who died.  It was a way to recognize the loss.

The author of Matthew loved to find ways to connect the story of Jesus to the story of the Jewish people.  Matthew is essentially resurrecting these lost voices of the mothers and fathers who lost their children long ago.   By including this in the birth story of Jesus, Matthew isn’t only providing a connection to the story of the Hebrew people, he’s also acknowledging the losses that have happened over the centuries…lives that have been lost through war and tyranny.  Every one of those lives was precious.  Every one of those people who died was a child of God (that includes all the people of Israel and Palestine—all the people of the world).  History forgets, but God never does.

            Why does this story of atrocity appear in the Gospel of Matthew?  Is it to show that Jesus escaped through God’s divine intervention?  If so, what does that say about the children who died? Why would Matthew even tell this story?  I think he knew it was important what kind of environment Jesus was born into--the fear that gripped his family from the moment he was born.

Just like families today who are forced to flee their homes looking for a place free of persecution, Jesus was part of a family that left their home looking for safety.  That is something that everyone deserves...to be safe. Fortunately, Herod’s reach was limited and they were able to find a place they could stay, even for a while.  It’s ironic that we focus so much around Christmas about the story from Luke and no room in the inn, when the bigger story is where they were welcomed.  They were welcomed in a foreign land for years.  Foreigners welcome Jesus and his family.

Once Herod died, they were able to return to their home…but not quite.  They still had to change course. They couldn’t go to the place they planned because of another corrupt leader. They shifted course one more time thanks to Joseph’s willingness to listen to God and follow where God guided him. 

While part of me finds it strange to have this story of heartbreak and violence so close to the Christmas story, another part of me sees that it is consistent with who Jesus was and who he still is. He is committed to not just serving the least of these, but being with the least of these, with the persecuted and the forgotten. 

But there is another piece of this story that we can overlook if we focus on the violence and persecution. Joseph listened to God every step of the way.  It was his faithfulness and devotion that allowed him to hear God’s word and allow it to guide them through life. I understand the importance of action and protest….but as Christians, we can’t skip the step where we listen for the wisdom of God.  Because if we listen, God will guide us on the right path.  We won’t be guaranteed success---at least not success as the world sees it.  Jesus was still crucified even after all that listening and protecting Joseph did.  But if we listen and lay down our pride and need for control, God will work through us. One of the words we hear on Christmas Eve is Emmanuel, which means, God with us.  After Christmas, we need to focus on a different preposition---God through us.  How can we help other by allowing God to work through us?

I used a lot of information from this article for this sermon: Eugene Park, “Rachel’s Cry for Her Children: Matthew’s Treatment of the Infanticide by Herod,” CBQ 75 (2013): 473–85.

Heavenly Army: Christmas

Christmas                                                                                 Luke 2: 1-20                              Christmas Eve is my least favorite time to preach…partly because there are no new takes on this story.  It’s a story we all know so well, in so many different forms.  Yet, I would guess, that there are some things we don’t know as well as we think we do.  I remember my first New Testament class in college. I thought it would be an easy class for me as I had been going to church and Sunday school (which was called CCD in the Catholic Church) every week for my whole life. The professor, probably understanding that some of us were a little overly confident, started with a series of questions that seemed obvious, but were not.  We got most of them wrong.  One he liked to ask was, how many magi were there?  Well?  Anyone?  We all said three but then he pointed out, it never says how many there were, just how many gifts there were.  And the magi don’t even appear in our reading from Luke. 

It is the Gospel of Matthew that has the Kings and the star.  In Luke, we have shepherds and the heavenly host, but no star, no kings.  Those poor shepherds had no star to follow.  The angels told them that the sign they were to look for was “a child wrapped in bands of cloth lying in a manger.”  Bethlehem was (and is) a fairly small town, but it wasn’t that small.  They had to do some searching. 

                Those shepherds were motivated.  An angel had spoken to them and informed them that the Messiah, the Lord, had been born.  It wasn’t just one angel, it was an angel with the multitude of the heavenly host.  Now, when we see this depicted in movies or art, it’s usually a very gentle and bucolic scene.  There is a soft light, maybe one to two angels who don’t look scary or intimidating.  But if that was the case why would it say that the shepherds were terrified?  And that was before the heavenly host showed up. 

Until I started preaching this text, I never considered what a heavenly host meant.  Perhaps a few angels with harps? The Greek word that is translated to host is army. This was heaven’s army, all there to deliver a message.  Ironically, it was a message of peace: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those who he favors.”

                It’s an interesting juxtaposition, an army delivering a message of peace.  God sent this army not to fight, but to tell a few powerless shepherds that the Messiah had come down in the form of a helpless baby.  Most of us have probably held a newborn baby at some point.  They are tiny.  They can’t even hold their head up.  That is how God decided to show up, not with the heavenly army that would have probably been a lot more impressive, but a baby dependent on two humans who also had little power.

                I understand the symbolism of God coming to earth as a human so God could have the experience of walking with us. But sometimes I wonder, why wasn’t God born to a great king or political leader? Then God would not have to sleep in an animal trough.  Jesus would have been protected and his message would have gone farther because important and influential people would have been listening.  Jesus would never had to die because he would have been related to the people in power.  It would have been so much easier.  Or…if you are not liking that idea, Jesus could have been born to the same parents in the same place, but that heavenly army could have stuck around…just in case.  That would have been a lot less risky.  No one would mess with the guy who had the heavenly army backing him up.

                God could have taken any of those options, but no.  God chose to be born like any other child, to parents who were good and holy, but not people with power or influence. I love that about God, but sometimes it also makes me crazy and frustrated.  There are days when I think, we could use a heavenly host right about now, to straighten things out around here.  God has yet to take this recommendation from me. 

                Most days, I feel powerless and a little overwhelmed.  Sometimes that makes me feel weak.  What if we could take our perceived weakness and understand it for what it actually is, vulnerability. The beauty of that vulnerability is that it is something that our creator and savior understands, because he experienced it—as a baby who couldn’t hold his head up, as a young child learning to speak, as a teenager struggling with all the crazy stuff that happens, as a young man who would be abandoned by his friends and then die a horrible death.  That death didn’t make Jesus weak (even though some chose to believe it and maybe still do).  That death allowed him to rise again.  Could he have called on the heavenly host to rescue him from that gruesome death? Yes. But once again, God chose the path that aligned Godself with the most powerless and dejected human beings.

                That is what we celebrate on Christmas, a God who displayed power not with might and armies, but with compassion and love.  Don’t get me wrong, Jesus did miraculous things in his time on earth, but it was never to control people or display his greatness…it was to heal people (their bodies and their souls).  Jesus didn’t defeat the tyranny of the Roman Empire.  If he wanted to do that, he would have brought the army.  Instead, he lived in a way that displayed humility and service.  He died in a way that showed courage and surrender.  He rose again not to bring vengeance on the people who abandoned him, but to forgive them and inspire them.   

                On Christmas, we can and should bask in the warmth of his glory, but also remember that God’s work is not yet done, not even close.   It is up to us, to do that work.