What is your sacrifice?: April 19, 2019

Good Friday

            On April 12th, 1963, while Martin Luther King was in the Birmingham jail because of the demonstrations against segregation, eight prominent Alabama clergymen (including the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama) published a letter in the local newspaper.  The letter urged people to cease their support of Martin Luther King as he was inciting violence, despite the peaceful intent of the protests.  Four days later, on Good Friday, Martin Luther King wrote a lengthy response to these clergy men.  The letter is referred to as “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It would be impossible for me to summarize it as the letter as it is approximately 7,000 words, and they are all important words. 

            The letter was critical of what King referred to as the “White Moderate”—those who supported desegration but wanted to wait until a more appropriate time.  King was also critical of the white churches.  He wrote: “But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.”

            It is not a coincidence that he wrote these words on Good Friday, a day when the church talks the most about Jesus’ sacrifice, a day when we are reminded of the betrayal of not only Judas, but Peter and the other disciples who abandoned Jesus when he needed them the most.  At my last church we always did a drama for Palm Sunday. As the assistant, it was my task to cast the drama.  There were of course a few people who I called on several times.  At one point one man said to me, “How come I always have to be the bad guy?”  I responded, “The only good guy in this story is Jesus and no one wants to play him either.”  It’s true.  If you look at all the people in the story that we hear every Palm Sunday and every God Friday (which includes Peter, the chief priests, Pilate, the soldiers, the crowd), no one ever comes out looking good.  Only Jesus, and he gets crucified. 

            Of course the biggest betrayal comes from those closest to Jesus--his disciples.  We all know about Judas and his outright betrayal.  We know about Peter’s denial.  Yet there were 10 other apostles.  Where did they go? Where were they during the trial?  Where were they at the crucifixion?  The Gospel of John mentions that one of the 12 apostles was at the foot of the cross.  The Gospel does not name the disciple.  It only refers to the “beloved disciple.”  I sometimes wonder if that was done so that we could all see ourselves in that spot.  There were some women (including Jesus’ mother) who were at the foot of the cross, but the other 11 disciples were missing.  

            We can’t be sure why they are missing, but since the Gospel tells us later that they went into hiding because they were afraid, I assume they were trying to save themselves.  They were afraid that if people associated them with Jesus, they would either be arrested or crucified.  I do not blame them. They were terrified and I would have been as well.  They were not ready for this kind of sacrifice.

            I often wonder if I would have been brave enough to support Martin Luther King as a white pastor at that time.  I just heard a pastor talk about the experience of having to flee in the night because his father had the audacity to work with African American pastors in the 1960s.  His life was threatened.  The life of his family was threatened.  His father risked a great deal to stand with African American pastors and he paid a price.  I am not sure I would have been that brave. I would have almost surely been part of the white moderate. 

            In the quote I read at the beginning of this sermon, King said that we need to recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church.  Yet we can see that before the early church was born, the leaders of that early church made a lot of mistakes. They weren’t ready to sacrifice, not until after the resurrection.  They needed to witness not only Jesus’s sacrifice, but his triumphal re-entry. 

            It’s hard to reclaim that sacrificial spirit because we have been comfortable for far too long.  Most people don’t come to Holy Week service.  Sometimes it is because work or family makes that difficult.  But sometimes I think it is because we would really rather just skip over the sacrifice and rejoice in the triumph of the resurrection.  We feel that the sacrifice already happened and now we can just enjoy the benefits of that sacrifice.  Unfortunately, without the sacrifice, as Martin Luther King said, we forfeit our authenticity.  If we cannot stand up for unpopular truths and marginalized groups, then we are no longer the church that the early apostles created and ultimately died for. 

            I am not going to tell you what sacrifice looks like for you.  Only you can know that. But for me, it means that I can no longer let fear determine my actions or reactions.  I cannot constantly worry about what other people will think.  Good Friday asks us all to consider what sacrifice looks like for us.  If you are already the kind of person who likes to “tell it like it is,” then doing that more, isn’t really a sacrifice.  For some of us sacrifice will look like more listening and less talking.  For some of us, it will be about speaking out more.  Only you and God can know what sacrifice looks like for you.  But I can tell you one thing, if the sacrifice feels good and is easy, it’s not sacrifice.  If it makes you a little sick and anxious, it just might be. 

            While sacrifice is not easy, it is not the end.  At the end, we have resurrection.  Martin Luther King never gave up on the church and Jesus never gave up on his disciples.  He forgave them after his resurrection and they were transformed into a new p eople---a people bold enough to proclaim the Gospel in a hostile environment.  The last line of Martin Luther King’s Letter was: “Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”  That is what Christian hope looks like.

****I encourage you to read the full letter: https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Cause a Scene: February 18, 2017

Year A, Epiphany 7                                                                 
Matthew 5:38-48                                                                   

            In seminary, one of the requirements was that we interned in a hospital as a chaplain.  We would visit people and mostly listen.  But then we met in a group which was essentially group therapy that was supposed to help us evaluate our behavior.  One the things that was ground into us was that we could never use the phrase, “You make me feel…”  We could say, “I feel sad because of something  that a patient said.”  But we could never say the other person made us feel something because then we were not taking ownership of our feelings.  Not only that, in doing so we were giving someone else power over our feelings. That is not the healthiest mindset and it does not help y ou help others.

In many ways, this concept of power was what Jesus was addressing in our Gospel today.  He was doing so in a very unique way.  If someone hits you, turn your cheek so they can hit the other one.  If someone steals you shirt, give them your coat too.  If someone takes advantage of you by making you carry their luggage for a mile, carry it another mile! This is not just unique, it’s plain crazy. Is this really how Christians are supposed to act---like doormats? It makes us appear weak, doesn’t it?  Who would ever want to associate with such weakness?

            As usual, there is more to this text than meets the eye.  First of all, remember who Jesus was talking to at this time.  These statements are part of the Sermon on the Mount---which we have been listening to for the last month.  Jesus was talking to a large group of followers, most of whom were poor.  They were also Jewish people living in Palestine, which means they were under Roman rule. They had very few rights.  Some of the examples that Jesus used in this reading were examples of people who had lost their rights and who were being taken advantage of. 

Let us consider the prevailing culture of the time.  Defending honor and avoiding shame (especially public displays of shame) were prevalent themes.  It is also a theme throughout the Old and New Testaments.   Battles were fought because one’s honor had been offended.  Family and friends were divided because of honor and shame.  Punishment was given to restore honor.  Often times the retaliation or punishment was greater in proportion to the crime itself.  The Old Testament sought to address this disproportion by limiting retaliation by essentially saying, “no more than an eye for an eye.”  For example, if someone punches you in face, it would not be appropriate to then kill them.  By the time Jesus was born, Jewish law had evolved by specifying a monetary fine for certain crimes.  Jesus of course, took it a few steps further.

            In Middle Eastern culture, to slap someone’s face was extremely offensive.  Just like today, people don’t usually slap people when they want to harm them.  They want to make a point.  You will notice from our reading that Jesus specifies the right side of the face.  Assuming that most people are right handed, to slap someone on the right side of the face, would mean you would have to backhand them.  This was pretty much the worst kind of insult you could inflict on someone.  It dishonored the person being slapped. The way to regain that honor was to return the slap.  Jesus was telling people to resist the urge to slap back.  By resisting the urge to retaliate, you were basically saying, “I cannot be dishonored that easily because you don’t have that kind of power over me.” 

            In the 2^nd example, Jesus says that if anyone wants to sue you for your coat you give them your cloak as well.  This is commonly explained, “If someone takes your shirt, give them your coat as well.”  That is not an accurate translation.   At the time, this was actually a legal transaction.  If you were in debt (which a lot of poor people were---and still are for that matter), you would give your coat as pledge that you would repay the debt. At this time the coat was more of a tunic (and undergarment).  Poor people would almost surely have two of them. While losing one would be a loss, it would not be a life threatening.  What would be life threatening would be losing your cloak.  A poor person would only have one.  It was used not only to shield you from the cold during the day, but as a blanket at night. 

Why would Jesus tell these people to give up their cloak after they had already given up their tunic?  This meant that you were naked.  In using this example, Jesus was being more metaphorical than literal.  By giving up your clothing, you reveal yourself.  But not only do you reveal yourself, you reveal the shame of the person who is forcing  you to reveal yourself.  It becomes evident to all how extreme and unfair the punishment is.  It brings things out in the open.

            The third example is referring to the right of the Roman soldier to force a Jewish person to carry their load (whatever that might be) for a mile.  This was also a way to shame the community because it was further proof that someone had power over them.  However, there were limits to the power.  The Roman soldier was only allowed to force the Jew to go one mile.  If they went more, the soldier could get in trouble.  By going the extra mile, the person was once again displaying the unjustness of the society that they were living in.  While a mile was perceived as reasonable by the Romans, more than that was uncivilized.[1]  It got people’s attention.

            By making these requests, Jesus was not asking people to be weak.  He was asking for strength and refusal to be shamed no matter who had the perceived power in the situation.  This power differential continues in our society in many ways.  Some of these ways are less obvious than others.  How many of us, regardless of whether we feel poor or oppressed, have given someone else power over ourselves—meaning the power to affect our feelings and our self-worth?  It is pretty common. There are hundreds of self-help books devoted to the topic of self-empowerment.  We don’t need the self-help books, because Jesus addressed it here in the 1^st century. 

The main difference between Jesus and the self-help books is that Jesus was not just talking about self-empowerment; he was talking about God-empowerment.  If your identity and your essence is rooted in God, then no person, no entity can shame you.  To be rooted in the identity of God means that you are inherently good and beautiful as you are made in God’s image.

Not only that, we have the power and the responsibility to stand up for those people who are being oppressed.  Jesus was not saying, “If someone is treating you unfairly, you might as well just give in and not cause a scene.”  He was saying, “Cause a scene--but not with violence, with honesty and your God given power---the power that no one can take away from you.”  Martin Luther King and Gandhi were both inspired by these words of Jesus. They were empowered by these words.  They changed the world with these words. 

In many ways Jesus died because he refused to appease the power structure of his day.  Then Christians did a crazy thing.  They took the cross, a symbol of Roman oppression and cruelty and they turned into a symbol of hope and redemption.  Let us remember that when we gaze at the beautiful crosses in our churches. They were not always so beautiful.  They were bloody and cruel.  Jesus transformed the cross and has also transformed us so that we can continue to be symbols and enablers of transformation in this world.  Later in the Gospel of Matthew Jesus told his disciples, “‘Have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.’”[2]

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[1] Explanations of the 3 examples were found in: Let the Scriptures Speak by Dennis Hamm   http://liturgy.slu.edu/7OrdA021917/theword_hamm.html

[2] Matthew 10:26-28a

We live: August 23, 2015

Year B, Pentecost 12  (Feast of Jonathan Daniels)                      
Luke 1: 46-55                                                                                     

            I went to Gettysburg College.  Gettysburg is known for being one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War as well as a turning point in the war.  While the history of the war does not have an overt influence on campus life, it has subtle influences.  Our main administration building was used as a hospital for both union and confederate troops.  There are a lot of ghost stories involving that building, as well as almost every building on campus.  Some of the influences I have only seen in retrospect.  For instance, I love the Battle Hymn of the Republic.[1]  I do not usually like hymns that use battle imagery to depict the strength of God, but I love that hymn because we sang it in my college choir.  Every year our choir would go on tour and there would be one song that would be civil war era.  We sang the Battle Hymn when we were in the north and “I wish I was in Dixie” when we toured the South.  I don’t know if I knew that the Battle Hymn was a union song, but someone reminded me of that recently when I was discussing my love of the hymn.   The reason that the hymn has been at the forefront of my mind over the last couple of months is because our Presiding Bishop elect quoted pieces of that hymn in his sermon at General Convention.  The piece he ended with was “Glory glory Halleluiah!” 

            But that’s not why I chose this hymn for today.  You see, there was another well-known preacher who liked to quote pieces of this hymn in his sermons and speeches, The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  His last public words before his death were, “Mine eyes have seen the glory.”   This hymn was a popular hymn during the Civil Rights movement and today we are remembering a martyr of the Civil Rights movement.  His name is Jonathan Daniels.  This year marks the 50^th anniversary of his death. There were many martyrs of the Civil Rights movement, but one of the reasons that he is on our calendar of holy men and holy women is because not only was he a martyr, but he was an Episcopal seminarian. 

            In 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. challenged students and clergy to join in the march from Selma to Montgomery.   Jonathan Daniels left seminary in Boston and joined the march.  He returned to Boston and asked his bishop if he could finish the Spring term in Selma working with the Civil Rights movement.  He worked with voter registration, picketed local businesses, tutored African American children and brought those children with him to the white Episcopal Church.  He went to jail for picketing and after a week in jail he went to a local store to buy a soda.  He was with a couple of other people including an African American teenage girl.  A volunteer sheriff stood in front of the store with a rifle to bar their entrance.   When he aimed his gun at the teenage girl, Jonathan pushed her aside and was shot.  He was 26 years old when he died.

While the call of Martin Luther King Jr. obviously moved Jonathan Daniels to action, it was also a moment in evening prayer that propelled him to Selma. It was singing.  No, it wasn’t the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  It was the Magnificat.  “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirt rejoices in God my Savior…”  It is Mary’s reaction to her cousin Elizabeth’s proclamation that Mary is the mother of God.  It was a hymn of joy, but it was also something else.  It indicated her growing awareness that this baby she was about to give birth to was going to change the world.  Typically changing the world isn’t a smooth process.  You can’t change the world without stirring things up a bit. 

Mary stirred things up.  She was the only woman who the author of Luke allowed a full speech.  Right there in the beginning of the Gospel, a woman, Mary spoke as a prophet.  Mary dedicated only a couple of sentences to her own blessings.  She then moved on to heavier things. 

“He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” She was talking about a God who would speak for the oppressed and the marginalized.  He had already done so in choosing her, a poor girl living under the authority of the Romans.  She had no rights.  No one listened to her.  But God had listened.  God had heard the cry of his people and he was on his way.  He was going to bring down the powerful and lift up the lowly. 

Because we often hear these words in the context of the joy of Christmas, we don’t always notice how incredibly revolutionary they were.   In many ways, this was a rebel cry.  The magnifcat is not just a beautiful hymn that we sing at Christmas.  It’s more than that.  It’s a call to action.  It’s a reminder of who Jesus is.

Jonathan Daniels wrote of the moment he knew he would return to Selma.   He said, “As the lovely hymn of the God-bearer continued, I found myself peculiarly alert, suddenly straining toward the decisive, luminous, Spirit-filled "moment" … Then it came. "He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things." I knew then that I must go to Selma. The Virgin's song was to grow more and more dear in the weeks ahead.”[2]

We have made great strides since the 1960’s, but we still have a long way to go.  All week I have been hearing the Battle Hymn in my head, but not the part about swords, or trampling, or even altars.  What I hear is the arrangement we sang in college.  The final verse came in after the lofty “glory glory halleluias.”  It was quiet and gentle.  It spoke of the beauty of the lilies.   And then there was a crescendo at the line, “As he died to make men holy”. It got louder and more powerful when we sang, “let us live to make all free. While God is marching on.”

As I meditated about that, I thought of the martyrs of our church.  I thought of the saints who have come and gone.  But what really struck me is the call to live. “Let us live to make all free.”  I don’t have the courage of Jonathan Daniels or Mary.  I am almost certain I don’t.  Some of you might.  What I pray for is the courage to live the life that God has called me to.  Jesus died so that we could live.  That is what we do.  But we don’t live for ourselves.  We live for God and we live for one another.  And we sing the magnificat and the Battle Hymn so we can feel that stirring in our heart. When I am singing, I feel that for a moment like I can do anything while God is marching on.  I can do anything if I am marching with God.  Your song might be something else. It probably is. Find your song.  Find whatever it is that reminds you that you are strong and you are courageous.  You are both of those things because God loves you so much that he died so you can live.  We, Christians, we live so all can be free.  As long as God marches on, we live.

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[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVzbjbMBDGE.  I found Gettysburg choir singing this on youtube.  It was 1991, which was before I got there.  It’s the same arrangement we sang when I was there.

[2] http://elvis.rowan.edu/~kilroy/JEK/home.html

Oct. 26, 2014: Deuteronomy 34:1-12

Shattered Dreams

Year A, Pentecost 20                                       

 

            In a sermon Martin Luther King said that “Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”[1]  This was not the “I have a dream” speech that he gave on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.  This line came from a sermon that he gave 5 years later, 15 years after he had taken a leadership role in the civil rights movement.   The Biblical text he was preaching on was about King David and his dream of building a great temple.  God did not want King David to build a temple and so it did not happen.  While King David had many accomplishments in his life, this was one thing that remained unfinished, a dream that was never realized, at least not in his lifetime.

            Our Old Testament reading for today is not about King David.  This story comes before David.   It is another great leader of the Jewish faith and the Christian faith as well, Moses.  We have been hearing about Moses for several weeks now in our lectionary readings but we have only touched briefly on his life.  We’ve had glimpses of it in our readings.  We heard about the time when Moses was first called by God with a blaze of fire…a burning bush.  From the bush God called to Moses and asked him to lead his people out of Egypt.  He promised that the people would be led to a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that had been promised to them for generations. 

            Moses was not particularly excited about this assignment, but God promised that he would be with him the whole way, that he would lead him.  So Moses did as he was asked…he led the people out of Egypt.  It was not an easy escape.  There were plagues. There were armies.  There was a wall of water that they had to pass through.  Yet even with all of that accomplished, there was no immediate entrance into land of milk and honey.  Instead, the Israelites found themselves wandering in the desert.  They faced starvation and insurrection.  Moses dealt with their complaints.  In the midst of the trials, he also had moments of joy and fulfillment.  He witnessed God’s glory and received the Ten Commandments.   But he was challenged again and again by very strong willed and frustrated people.  He complained to God and was bitter at times.  His sister died.  His brother died.  An entire generation passed as he led the people on a journey that felt more like a maze.  But finally the end was near.  They could see the Promised Land.  Yet for Moses, it would remain slightly out of reach. 

            God told him as he stood on the mountain top, “I will give it to your descendants; I have let you see it with your eyes, but you shall not cross over there.”  This was not the first time God has told Moses that he would not reach the Promised Land.  God had warned him and even gave him a reason. Yet the reason was murky…so murky that people have been debating it ever since. It was a small thing, perhaps an act of disobedience or even a brief moment where he lacked faith. 

It is strange that one small act would outweigh all of the wonderful things that Moses had done; the sacrifices he made, the close relationship that he had with God.  It has been a mystery for centuries why God would lead him to this place, show him this dream, but not even give him a moment in that land that he had been searching for—for over 40 years. 

“Life is a continual story of shattered dreams.”  There have been many people, great people---Godly people who have accomplished amazing things but died before they could see the fruits of their labor:  Abraham Lincoln, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, John Kennedy,  Martin Luther King, Gandhi…just to name a few.  Their deaths are tragic and heart breaking.  But their lives are inspiring stories.  What makes these stories inspiring is that while their lives were cut short, their vision lived on. Those dreams that seemed shattered were resurrected by people who followed them…perhaps not completely resurrected, but new life was breathed into them.

Most of us might struggle to identify with these great saints.  Our dreams might be on a smaller scale.  Yet each person here has seen a dream that was shattered in some way.  And we could let those shattered hopes and dreams break us, leaving us battered and beaten.  Or we could take these pieces… pieces of our shattered dreams or even those dreams of people who came before and we can build something new. 

When Martin Luther King spoke of shattered dreams, he was talking about King David and his own experience as well.  While today’s reading is not the story of King David, Moses did pave the way for King David.  He brought the people to the Promised Land, the land that King David would one day rule.  Without his sacrifice and his obedience to God’s word, there would never have even been a dream of a temple.  It would not have even been in the realm of possibility.  One person’s shattered dream provided the pieces for another person’s temple…for God’s temple. 

During the celebration of communion, there is a point where the priest holds up the host and says, “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.”  Then the priest breaks the host.  That breaking of the host is meant to remind us of Christ broken on the cross.   It also reminds us of the way that we are broken.   After these words the priest breaks up the host even further so it is 24 pieces, pieces that are then distributed to you, the body of Christ.  We share in the brokenness of Christ and in some ways that makes Christ whole again because we have all shared in that as the body of Christ.  In those same ways, we can share the broken pieces of our lives with one another and with God.  That is one of the ways that we can find wholeness.

Moses might have never reached the Promised Land.  He did not feel the land under his feet, but he saw it with his own eyes, with God right beside him.  Not only that, but he knew that the people who he had led would experience that Promised Land.  Sometimes that is what faith is about.  It is about working with broken pieces---either our broken pieces or ones that other people have given up on.  It is about placing our hopes in things that we may never see.  But the important thing is that we never stop trying. Moses was told that he would never reach the Promised Land, but he never stopped walking and frankly, I don’t think he ever stopped hoping.   

When he died, God buried him.  The English just says that he was buried, but there was only one person (one being) with him on the mountain. God.  While it might seem as though God punished him, the truth is that he was with him to the very end…even at death.  Just try to picture that in your head, the Almighty God digging in the dirt and then with great care placing the body of Moses in the ground.   That is how God cares for each of us.  In turn he asks us to never give up…to take those broken pieces and build them into something new, something beautiful. 

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[1] http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/kingpapers/article/unfulfilled_dreams/