Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Mark Schaefer - Resurrection and Insurrection

Rev. Mark Schaefer

Rev. Schaefer was an active member of Foundry and Foundry’s choir for 5 years while he attended George Washington Law School and practiced law in Washington, DC. He founded Foundry’s Democracy Project Mission Team which was a DC voting rights mission group that focused on moral issues. After attending Wesley Seminary he was ordained an elder of the United Methodist church and serves as United Methodist chaplain to American University where he also teaches in the department of philosophy and religion and at Wesley Seminary. He is fluent in English, Russian, and proficient in German, Hebrew, and Koine Greek.

Sermon: Resurrection and Insurrection

Scripture: Psalm 47:8-9 & Mark 12:13-17

God’s Will and Evil

Rev. Dean Snyder

Matthew 6:9-13

The Lord’s Prayer gives us insights into Jesus’ theology … not theology about Jesus, which is what much Christian theology … but the theology of Jesus. What Jesus believed about God and the world and humanity.

As a way of exercising our faith core, I am encouraging us to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day for the month of May between now and June 2^nd.  I am encouraging parents to teach their children the Lord’s Prayer.

We have a number of different translations and paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer on our website.

As you pray the Lord’s Prayer also allows the Lord’s Prayer to speak to you. Let a word or phrase dwell with you. Think about it.

And if you want to explore the Lord’s Prayer more deeply you will find a few book titles I’ve suggested on the Current Sermon Series page of our website. 

Jesus begins his prayer by calling God Father. In Matthew the prayer begins Father of us. In Luke it simply begins with the one word Father.

Jesus begins with the assumption that the creator and Lord of the universes has the heart of a parent.

We all know what a parent is supposed to be like. A parent’s job is to be a protector, a provider, a teacher, a role-model. As a species we are wired to love and care for our children. The wiring doesn’t always work right so sometimes children experience abuse or neglect or rejection but we all know what the heart of a parent is supposed to be like.

Jesus begins his prayer with the assumption and belief that God loves us and cares for us like a good parent. Jesus teaches us to pray with this assumption and belief.

But Jesus is not naïve. Jesus is no Pollyanna.  Jesus is a realist.

He also teaches us to pray the words: “Deliver us from evil.”

Jesus knew that there is great evil in the world.

One of the great theological questions, especially of western religions, is how evil got into the world. The technical term for it is theodicy. If God is good, and God is creator and Lord of all that is, how can evil exist? Why do bad things happen to good people?

N.T. Wright says that there are three common but unhelpful responses to the problem of evil in the world.

One is denial. To pretend that evil does not really exist or, if it does it does, it is not that significant or strong and it will all work out in the end. I had a parishioner once who was married to an avid Christian Scientist. She said that when she was in pain or ill, he would lecture her about pain and illness being an illusion merely in her head. She said every time he lectures her, she had an almost irresistible impulse to kick him in his shins as hard as she could.

NT Wright says denying or trivializing evil is like being in a burning house and saying, yes, it is getting a little warm but if we just take off another layer of clothing and have some iced tea things will just be fine.

A second way of responding to evil is the polar opposite of denial. It is to wallow in it and see it all over the place. Once you realize there is evil in the world and that it is real and powerful, you can begin to see evil in everything and everyone, especially those who are different from you. Every politician we disagree with is a Hitler. Every social plan is a step toward totalitarianism. Every business is concerned only with profits and doesn’t care about the welfare of the planet or humanity.

Interesting enough, Wright says the result of this is that when we start to think this way evil begins to dominate our lives.

A third unhelpful response to evil is to bifurcate it. To say, yes, there is evil out there but we are the righteous ones, we are good and so we need to fight evil. N.T. Wright calls it self-righteousness.  “Lord, I think you that I am not like other people.” It is the popular justification for every war.  There is an axis of evil out there. We are good. Therefore, we need to fight evil.

But what, NT Wright asks, if self-righteousness is just another manifestation of evil?

Jesus does not deny evil. He does not suggest that evil isn’t really real. He does not wallow in evil, seeing evil in everyone everywhere.  Those whom others considered evil –Roman soldiers and co-conspirators like tax collectors—he treated like friends. He does not divide the world into us and them. He recognizes in his prayer that we are all susceptible to participation in evil.

In fact, who among us in pure? Who among us does not support poverty by our lifestyles? Who among us does not support war with our votes and taxes? Who of us does not participate in global warming every time we turn on our air conditioning and open our refrigerators? Who among us does not participate, at least by our passivity, in homelessness and the horrors of incarceration and state executions and sex slavery and human trafficking and racism and sexism and homophobia?

Jesus assumes in his prayer that we are all implicated. So he teaches us to pray to be delivered form evil.

Jesus recognizes the reality and power of evil. His response is not to deny, not to obsess, not to pretend innocence, but to confront the reality and power of evil with the reality and the power of the kingdom of God.

Even before he teaches us to pray to be delivered from evil, he teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come.”

God’s kingdom, God’s realm, is coming into our world in which evil is real and present and overcoming evil. The force of evil in the world is ultimately not as powerful as the power of God.

So Jesus teaches us to pray, to long, to hope for God’s reign to come into our world. To long and hope for it even more than we long and hope for our daily bread.

Jesus teaches us to pray for God’s kingdom to come before we pray for enough food to teach to make it through the day.

I have only been really, really hungry a few times in my life and it was because I was voluntarily fasting. When you are on your third or fourth day of a water fast, you really, really start to want your daily bread.   

Jesus teaches us to want the kingdom of God, God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, even more than we want our daily bread.

Evil is real and powerful, but the kingdom of God is more real and more powerful, and it is coming into the world.

One of my personal core theological beliefs is that God is never coercive. We have total freedom. The universe has total freedom. This is why I believe evil exists. God has given us total freedom. Whatever you want to do God will not stop you.  God is never coercive.

But God never stops loving. Resurrection faith believes that God’s love ultimately wins. God’s love is ultimately persuasive.

So evil is real and powerful. God’s kingdom is more real and more powerful. And we pray above all else, we long above all else for God’s kingdom to come.

Here’s what I want to suggest as we are praying the Lord’s Prayer this month.

Let’s start by asking how the kingdom of God might come into our families. How would we treat each other’s in our families if God’s will were being done in our families as it is in heaven.

Then our work places or schools. How would we treat each other in our workplaces and schools if God’s will were being done ion earth as it is in heaven?

Then our church. What would Foundry be like if God’s will were being done here as it is in heaven?

I think this would be an excellent prayer for each of us to pray as I retire and Ginger comes. Your kingdom come to Foundry church. Your will be done here at Foundry as it is in heaven.

Let us treat each other here at Foundry as though we were already in heaven. 

I believe that eventually all of the evil in the world will be overcome by the kingdom of God. All of the pain and injustices of history will be purified and reconciled. I believe seeing and understanding our complicity in the suffering of others will be hell but there is a heaven on the other side of hell.

I believe we are invited into this process of ultimate reconciliation here and now.

Let Foundry be a taste of heaven in the midst of a world where evil seems so strong.

A Parent's Bread

Rev. Dean Snyder

Matthew 6:9-13

Well, I am now two months away from retiring and you are two months away from having a new senior pastor. I am eager for you to get to know Rev. Ginger Gaines-Cirelli. I am also eager for Ginger to get to know you.

So I want to remind you, if you have not done so already, to make sure your picture is in our church data base.  You can go directly to the Foundry website and click on Member Login and upload a picture, or you can email a picture to Foundry or you can drop one off at the office. When I came to Foundry 12 years ago, we had something called a pictorial directory and it was immensely helpful to me.  This is our 2014 version of a pictorial directory and I am sure it will be very helpful to Ginger.

We are going to spend the next month thinking and talking about the Lord’s Prayer and hopefully praying it. My challenge to you is to make it a practice between now and June 1^st to pray the Lord’s Prayer three times a day.

In our hymnals we have a Lord’s Prayer card with a number of different version and paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer. This sheet is available on the Foundry website if this is a helpful tool to you.

The Lord’s Prayer is a glimpse into the heart of Jesus and the community he left behind. It is a glimpse into the way they thought and what they most hoped for and longed for in their lives.

It is an expression of our core focus and longing as disciples of Jesus Christ and we want to ground ourselves in it for a month as a way of strengthening our core.

I want to start this morning by talking about the very first words of the Lord’s Prayer.

There are two versions of the Lord’s Prayer in the Bible, one in Matthew and one in Luke, and they are not totally identical and they are not the same as the version of the Lord’s Prayer many of us learned growing up.

Matthew’s version begins, literally in the Greek, “Father of us.”  Which we reasonably translate as “Our Father. “ Luke’s version begins with the single word, “Father.”

The Lord’s Prayer begins with the assumption and affirmation that God has the heart of a parent.

Now I want to acknowledge that not everyone who is a parent manages to be a perfect parent. And some of us have perhaps experienced dreadful parents who were and are abusive or rejecting or violent or emotionally distant.

But we all know what a parent is supposed to be like. A parent’s job is to be a protector, a provider, a teacher, a role-model. We are wired to love and care for our children. Sometimes the writing doesn’t work right, but it is the most natural thing in the world for a parent to love and want to protect their child and to provide for them and to want them to be safe and happy. 

Jesus begins his prayer with the assumption and conviction that God has a parent’s heart. That god wants to protect us and to provide for us and to teach us and to be a role model for us. Jesus begins with the assumption and belief and encourages us to believe that God loves us and cares about us like a parent.

I want to be careful this morning because I am going to use an idea that can be a negative stereotype so I want to try to get this next part right.

I have been a pastor since I served my first church in 1968 … a little church with maybe 50 people in the pews on an average Sunday. I experienced being the pastor of someone who was dying at that little church for the first time. I did my first funeral. At the first church I served after seminary I average a funeral every two weeks. Over the years I sat with many, many people who were dying. I was sometimes sitting and praying with them at the moment they stopped breathing.

I thought I had become somewhat experienced at living with death.

Then when I was in my late 40s my mother died. I tried to deal with it emotionally and spiritually the way I had learned to deal with the deaths of parishioners I loved.  It didn’t work.

Jane and I were driving to meet with my family to prepare the service and I said to her, “You know, I feel really awful inside.”

In her kind and sensitive way, she said: “Of course you do. Your mother just died. What do you expect to feel?”

As she said it, this idea popped into my head. I thought to myself, “I’m an orphan.” I could not shake the idea and feeling. “I am an orphan.”

In some ways it was silly. I was 47 years old. I had a loving family. I had children of my own. But for a time after my mother died, I was consumed by an orphan spirit.

This is where I want to be careful. Not everyone who is biologically an orphan is an orphan. Being a parent and child is about much more than biology.

And there are those of us who have biological parents who can still feel like orphans.

We can feel as if no one is there to protect us, provide for us, and teach us. We feel as if we are ultimately on our own.

I knew someone once who was a foster parent to a child whose life had been unbelievable chaotic until he got placed in his foster home. His foster father told me that every time they sat down to a meal, as soon as he thought no one was looking; the boy would fill his pockets with food.

Every meal, his foster father would say to him, “Son, you see the food in front of you on this table?
There is going to be food like this on this table three times tomorrow and the day after that and the day after that. There will always be food here.

 Then he would take the boy out to the refrigerator and open it, and say, “There will always be food inside this refrigerator. Any time you want something to eat; you can come and help yourself. There will always be food here.”     

It took months for the boy to stop trying to hide and hoard food. He was consumed by an orphan spirit.

During World War 2 in Europe, thousands of children were orphaned and became homeless and without food. Some were rescued and placed in orphanages where they received food and good care. It was a common experience that these children could not sleep at night. They tossed and turned and cried.  Finally someone came up with the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold during the night so that they would know that if they got hungry they would have something to eat.  Finally the children could sleep through the night.

The universe staggers me. I am spending more time out in the country these days where you can sometimes see the night sky full of stars in way you can’t in the city. You can turn all the lights off, and sit on the back patio and see universes and galaxies. Psalm 8 often comes to mind: “When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established;  what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?”

And nature can be frightening: tornados, hurricanes, and floods.

Yet Jesus begins his prayer with the assumption and belief that the Creator and Lord of all this has the heart of a parent. That the Creator and Lord of the universes and galaxies, the Creator and Lord of all nature, loves us like a mother or father should. 

We often read John 14 at memorial services here. You know it: “In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

There is a line in this teaching that Jesus does for his disciples that I only really noticed recently:  In verse 14, Jesus says to his disciples: “I will not leave you orphaned.”

There are no orphans in the Kingdom of God.

When we start feeling as if we are on our own … when we start feelings as if there is no one to protect us or provide for us or teach us … when the universe begins to feel cold and harsh …. what is it that we need to hold onto, like orphans with a slice of bread?

We can hold onto this prayer Jesus taught us … that we can trust the heart of our Father/Mother God.

Robtel Pailey - Train a Child in the Way

Robtel Pailey

"Train a Child in the Way"

Proverbs 22:6

Ms. Pailey served as special assistant for communications to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and is currently a Mo Ibrahim Foundation scholar and PhD candidate at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. Her children’s book Gbagba was published to acclaim in 2013 when she was also named one of “99 under 33 influential foreign policy leaders” by the Diplomatic Courier. Growing up she was active in Foundry Church, its youth choir, its youth groups and mission activities.

Easter - Life Essentials: Laugh

Rev. Dean Snyder

Genesis 21:1-8; Luke 6:17-23

In my family growing up, stories and jokes were an essential part of everyday life. We were all expected to contribute. I can remember the first joke I learned to tell. I was four or five, I suppose, and I told everyone who would listen this joke. Ready?

How do you turn a pumpkin into squash? You throw the pumpkin up in the air and it comes down … squash. 

But as is often the case with jokes, the next joke I remember learning, maybe when I was in first grade, was a little earthier.

There was a little girl from France who was visiting the neighborhood. The boy next door was playing with his little red wagon. He asked the little French girl if she’d like a ride in his wagon. She said: “Oui, oui.” The little boy immediately took off for home pulling his wagon behind him and shouted back to the little French girl: “Not in my wagon, you don’t!”

A few years ago Jane and I got a chance to go to Paris. It was amazing. We celebrated Ash Wednesday and got ashes at Notre Dame Cathedral. We had Valentine’s Day dinner at a restaurant that said on the cover of its menu: If you do not have at least two hours for a meal, we prefer you eat elsewhere. We visited the Louvre. We saw the place where Blaise Pascal is buried. Amazing.

And the whole time we were witnessing all these wonderful things in Paris, the words that kept running through my head were: Not in my wagon, you don’t.  

We’ve been talking all this Lent about aspects of our daily lives that are sacramental. Daily aspects of ordinary life that are signs and vehicles of God’s grace. Breathing, sleeping, washing, crying, eating, exercising, moving … these are all ways that God releases grace into our lives on a daily basis. They are like sacraments and they can be offered to God as acts of prayer.

Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord.” Shower in the morning as unto the Lord. Go to sleep at night as unto the Lord. Go to the gym as unto the Lord. Let your tears be an offering to God. Let your laughter be worship.    

Today, Easter Sunday, 2014, I want us to focus on laughing. Laughing can be a sign and vehicle of grace … a way that God releases grace into our lives. I hope you laugh every day.

Laughing is actually physically good for us.  Researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center have discovered that laughing causes the inner lining our blood vessels to dilate, increasing our blood flow. More blood flows through our bodies, thus more energy, thus more life, when we laugh. We are literally more alive when we laugh.

Laughing causes a reduction in stress hormones in our bodies. We can literally laugh our worries away.

Laughter also boosts the number of antibody-producing cells and enhances the effectiveness of T-cells, leading to a stronger immune system. Turns out, like the Book of Proverbs says, laughter may be the best medicine.  

But perhaps the greatest and most important quality of laughing is that it creates community. Robert Provine, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland, studied laughing for ten years to write his book Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.  Provine and his students observed 1,200 people laughing spontaneously in their natural environments, from shopping malls to city sidewalks.

After 10 years Professor Provine came to the conclusion that the primary purpose of laughter is to create and build and sustain community. Laughter, Provine says, is a form of "speaking in tongues" (his words) in which we're moved not by religious fervor but by an unconscious response to social cues that create community. (http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200011/the-science-laughter)

Provine and his students discovered that often what people said that caused others to laugh was not in and of itself all that objectively funny. Laughter, they discovered, is a natural response to being with others you like and whom you feel care about you and with whom you feel safe.

One evolutionary scientist believes that the evolutionary roots of laughing among humans are in the practice of grooming in the animal world. When apes groom they comb through each other’s hair looking for bugs and when they find one, they eat it. The ape whose bug has been removed feels better and the ape who has a bug to eat feels better.

So evolutionary scientist Robin Dunbar says that when we laugh with each other we are removing the emotional bugs from one another and eating them to help both of us feel better.   

Laughter creates and builds and sustains community, and nothing is more important to our health and well-being than community. I’ve quoted Harvard University’s Alameda County Study before. Harvard researchers tracked the lives of 7,000 people over nine years. They found that people who had health habits we consider not so good (like smoking, poor diets, obesity, or alcohol use) but who had strong social ties lived significantly longer than people who had great health habits but were isolated. In other words, as John Ortberg says, it is better to eat Twinkies with good friends than to eat broccoli alone.

Laughing releases grace into our lives. It is sacramental.

I think Jesus was funny. I think his humor too often gets lost in the translation

The Quaker writer Elton Trueblood who wrote the book The Humor of Jesus said it first occurred to him that some of the things Jesus said might have been funny when his 4-year-old son heard the Gospel story of seeing the speck of dust in your neighbor's eye and ignoring the log in your own and started laughing uproariously. Had we heard it in context, it is a very funny image.

Many things that Jesus said were funny. The idea that someone would have lit a lamp and put it under a basket is funny. The idea that a person would have actually built a house on sand is funny.

Some of the things Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees were cuttingly funny.  

And Jesus seemed to enjoy funny comebacks.

When Nathenial is introduced to Jesus of Nazareth, he says “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He makes a joke, like we make jokes about West Virginia or Alabama. Jesus responds by saying, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!" This is a good guy. I like him.

When a Syro-Phoenician Gentile woman bothers a tired Jesus and asks him to heal her daughter, Jesus says he has come to heal Israelites, not to throw food to the Gentile dogs. The woman replies, “But even the dogs get to lick up the crumbs under the table.” A humorous comeback. And Jesus likes it and says to her: Your daughter is healed.

Jesus’ nicknames for his disciples were funny. Giving Simon who was impulsive and flighty the nickname Peter, which means Rock, is funny, says the Jesuit priest James Martin whose written a book entitled Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life.

If you want to find laughter in the Bible, look at the story of Abraham and Sarah. In Old Testament times there was no greater disappointment for a woman than to not be able to have children. A woman who had no children was called barren. It was a term of pity and reproach.

Sarah was barren and, as the Bible discreetly puts it, “it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” (Gen. 18:11) Abraham was 100 years old. Sarah was 90. An angel told them Sarah would become pregnant and have a child who would be the father of many nations. Sarah laughed at the idea. Abraham laughed at the idea.

When Sarah heard the angel predict that she would have a child at 90 fathered by her 100 year old husband, Genesis Chapter 18, verse 12 says: “Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’” Remember they hadn’t invented those little pills yet.

But a baby is born to Sarah and Abraham and they name him Isaac, which means in Hebrew means “laughter.”

It was one of God’s first jokes … that three major religions of the world would be born to a supposedly barren 90-year-old woman and a 100 year-old-man.

One of God’s first jokes but not God’s last.

Easter is God’s greatest joke. We crucify God’s own child and then God makes our violence, our hatred, our selfishness the very way by which we are saved and made whole. We do our worst and God makes it the best.  

Jesus says:

Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you that weep now, for you will laugh. (Luke 6:20-21)

Listen, I know that there is a lot of pain and suffering in the world. We all know that. We just sat through Good Friday and watched the execution of an innocent person. Innocent people are crucified in our world every moment of every day.

Alan Zabel was here before 7 a.m. this morning to power wash our church steps because homeless persons sleep on those steps every night and they urinate on them and worse. When I started in ministry in 1968 there were not homeless people sleeping on church steps in America. I am very upset that I am about to retire and there are still homeless persons who have no place to sleep at night better than our cold cement steps.

Unless things change one out of three African-American boy babies born this Easter in America will spend time in prison during their lifetime. One out of six Hispanic boy babies born today will spend time in prison unless things change.

My friend whose 19-year-old daughter died three weeks ago from a drug overdose discovered that she had been trafficked to feed her addiction.

GLBTQ teenagers still commit suicide as a result sometimes of what they’ve been taught in church.

I am not saying that we should be flippant and giddy in the face of the evil that surrounds us.

I am saying that in the midst of it laughter is given us as a taste of the heaven that God is preparing for us.

I served a church once where sometimes, when the Spirit came, people would be moved to get up in the middle of the service and give their testimonies.

We had one member whose testimony was always the same. She would say: “Don’t let the devil steal your joy.”  

She had seen some hard times in her life. She had shed her share of tears and more. But her testimony was always: “Don’t let the devil steal your joy.”  

Easter is God’s punch line. All the suffering of the world will be swallowed up in victory. Those who weep will laugh.

Psalm 126 says: “When the LORD restored the fortunes of Zion, … then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy…"

Psalm 30 says:   “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

There is nothing the devil would like more than for the Church of Jesus Christ to be full of despair and defeat and anger.

Whenever we are tempted to despair … whenever we are tempted to sink into crankiness and negativity … whenever we are tempted to give way to a spirit of defeat and resignation, Jesus rises from his tomb and says to us: “Not in my wagon, you don’t.”

Don’t let the devil steal your joy. It is Easter. Laugh.