Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

“A New Way…” - September 19th, 2021

“A New Way…”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, September 19, 2021, the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost. “New Day, New Way!” series.

  Texts: Psalm 150, James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

The Gaines-Cirelli household continues our long trek through the zombie apocalypse that is The Walking Dead. Now in season 7 of the T.V. show, we’ve come to understand that somewhere along the way, the primary adversaries and threat shifted from being the zombie hordes to other humans. As the crisis drags on and on, food, medicine, and other resources grow thin. Hope in any positive future and trust in any stranger are also in short supply. And people are all trying to survive. “Kill or be killed,” “survival of the fittest,” and “everyone’s out for themselves” are ongoing themes. Increasingly, the narrative is exploring questions about what a person is willing to do to survive, whether simply staying alive is worth losing your sense of “self” or basic humanity. 

This came to mind as I pondered our text from James for today: “where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind.” James goes on to point out how we pit ourselves against others and how, when we want something and can’t obtain it, we get into disputes and conflicts and are even willing to kill to get our way or what we want.

Perhaps I’m making James’ teaching bigger than what it’s meant to convey. After all, none of us are living in a zombie apocalypse. But we are living in a moment of profound upheaval and suffering. Right now grief is pervasive, trust is small, and fear is big. Violence and vulnerability are ever present. Supply lines are a mess and medicine, well… Everyone is trying to survive. These realities don’t necessarily bring out the best in people. Conflicts and disputes abound. 

A couple of days ago, I had an interesting conversation with a couple of folk I know who work at our local pub. They said that behavior in the restaurant has been really challenging as people have “come back.” The manager said she’d been cursed at and called names more in the last two months than she has in the past 5 years. People are upset that some things aren’t available (hello supply line issues!) or that they simply can’t get whatever it is they want. I can’t imagine this is an isolated incident. Our collective patience and emotional resources are worn pretty thin.

And we don’t even need all the extra stuff that is stressing and straining us right now to get caught in what James is talking about. Our whole culture encourages self-help and self-serve and selfies and self-promotion and…self obsession. Of course, there’s a healthy way to practice self care. But the food dished out daily for our consumption is selfishness with a side of envy. 

Cultural religion, popular “wisdom” with its materialism, ruthlessness in pursuit of power, and the drive win at all costs is pervasive and we have to be very careful to not worship at its altar. The idols of cultural religion promise happiness and abundance, but in deep ways, rob us of both. We can so easily get turned in on ourselves, on our own needs, on the things others have that we want—whether those things are possessions, relationships, jobs, positions, or whatever. And then if we’re not careful, if we’re not wise, we can make choices, act, and speak in ways that are hurtful both toward others and ourselves.

James contrasts this “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” wisdom with the “wisdom from above” that “is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.” (James 3:17) The community for whom this was written appears to be a congregation of Jesus followers in the first century CE. And the point at its most basic is that selfishness and envy lead to conflict in community while “works done with gentleness born of wisdom” bear good fruits that “make for peace.” James is clear about what Jesus followers should strive for.

In our present moment, it is difficult to live up to the call as followers of Jesus, to consistently act with gentleness born of wisdom. Though, as a collective, we are not only seeing selfishness. There are also extraordinary stories of human selflessness, generosity, and peacemaking in the current context of pandemics. We do have choices.

All of this conjured for me a nature vs. nurture question: do humans come into the world prone to selfishness or does it depend upon our upbringing? I found an interesting short essay responding to this very question. Here’s the set up:

“There has long been a general assumption that human beings are essentially selfish. We’re apparently ruthless, with strong impulses to compete against each other for resources and to accumulate power and possessions. If we are kind to one another, it’s usually because we have ulterior motives. If we are good, it’s only because we have managed to control and transcend our innate selfishness and brutality.

This bleak view of human nature is closely associated with the science writer Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene became popular because it fitted so well with (and helped to justify) the competitive and individualistic ethos of late 20th-century societies. Like many others, Dawkins justifies his views with reference to the field of evolutionary psychology. Evolutionary psychology theorises that present-day human traits developed in prehistoric times…a period of intense competition, when life was a kind of Roman gladiatorial battle in which only the traits that gave people a survival advantage were selected and all others fell by the wayside. And because people’s survival depended on access to resources – think rivers, forests and animals – there was bound to be competition and conflict between rival groups, which led to the development of traits like racism and warfare.

This seems logical. But in fact the assumption it’s based on — that prehistoric life was a desperate struggle for survival — is false.”

The author, a professor of psychology, goes on to highlight that the relatively small population of humans, the abundance of environmental resources, and hunter/gatherer cultures prevalent in the prehistoric period give no evidence or reason for competition or conflict. Both ancient and modern evidence of hunter/gatherer cultures reveals a tendency toward egalitarianism, cooperation, altruism, and peacefulness. The suggestion is that much of the selfishness we experience today—those cultural religion idols that tend toward unhealthy competition and violence—have grown out of shifts in our “natural habitat” as human beings. And the final assessment of this particular psychologist is that human “goodness” is more deeply rooted than human “evil.”

You can agree or disagree with that. The essay is not an exhaustive study, for sure. But within it is a picture of humankind as created to live in a certain kind of way. That way tends toward mutuality and peace through selflessness, sharing, and working together. And that way of living can be—and has been—disrupted by radical shifts across centuries in how we live together with one another and the planet. The disruptions give rise to suffering, conflict, injustice, greed, and violence. That seems in line with the biblical story of God’s relationship with us and all creation. You know how the story starts: God makes a good creation and there’s a garden that provides for all human needs, for abundance and for peace. There’s but one boundary. One thing that the human creature is denied. And the human creature wants that thing, wants what isn’t theirs, wants more than they need, and chooses to disrupt things to get it. Hiding, shame, and lies follow and then disappointment, betrayal, and disconnection. Not long after, brother kills brother. The rest of the whole book is in one way or another the story of God’s love calling us and waiting for us, like the prodigal child, to come to ourselves and return home. 

When I first contemplated the message for today, I thought it would be about how the Jesus way of life together is a “new way.” But what I’d forgotten is that James simply calls us back to the original way—the really old way—that we are all created to be. It’s our original “operating system,” the one made in the image of God and imprinted on every single one of us. We are created to share in God’s way of life together that is marked not by selfishness and envy but by thoughtful self-giving love, compassion, gentleness, and mutual support. That original operating system has gotten all sorts of bugs and hacks and viruses over the years but it is still viable. As we turn this corner, we can choose how to be together. Will selfish concerns and bitter envy get carried into the new season ahead? Why not do a scrub of the system, push the reset button, start fresh? What is one thing you can admit, shift, release, confess, forgive, or take on that will allow you to buck the trend and be patient, kind, and merciful? By God’s grace, we can choose to make the old way new again, and maybe we’ll remember that God created us not just to “survive” at any cost, but to live with and for God and others. Praise and thanks be to God!

https://foundryumc.org/archive/new-day-new-way

“Make Some (Joyful) Noise” -September 12th, 2021

“Make Some (Joyful) Noise”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, September 12, 2021, the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. “New Day, New Way!” series.

Texts: Psalm 100, James 3:5b-12

Water is absolutely necessary for life. Up to 60% of the human body is water. The whole creation depends on water in all its forms for life. Water can also be dangerous and destructive—storms, floods, undercurrents, and crashing waves can do so much damage. Anyone who’s been responsible for maintaining any kind of building—home, office, church—has likely learned that water can be one of the most persistent and challenging issues to manage. In both my home and here at Foundry, I’m constantly reminded that water not carefully contained or directed will flow any and everywhere. A water spot in my bedroom ceiling doesn’t necessarily identify where the water is breaching the roof, since water runs along any unbounded channel and finds a low place to seep into things. Over time, water causes rot and mold, rust and erosion. 

Words are like that. Today we are given our every three years reminder from the epistle of James that our words can do serious damage. Words and language are, of course, beautiful gifts and provide ways for us to communicate and connect with others, and to describe our deepest thoughts, feelings, and truths. I imagine most of us could tell of a time when someone’s words encouraged, comforted, affirmed, or inspired us. I remember once when I was feeling discouraged about things at a former congregation, a lay leader sent me a message with a list of all the things he saw that I’d helped to accomplish. Words of poetry, prayers, and scripture feed my spirit daily. My father was a man of few words and I have kept every little scrap of paper with any message he ever wrote to me. Words can be profoundly life-giving and sustaining. 

But words can also do great damage. Like water, words that flow into places where there aren’t good boundaries will just keep flowing, affecting everything and everyone they touch. And hurtful words do damage. Thoughtless slander or careless conjecture or cruel teasing or hateful speech hurt feelings, wound relationships, and erode a person’s confidence, trust, peace, and joy. I imagine all of us can think of words spoken to us or about us that have left deep scars on our hearts and spirits. The hurtful words are so difficult to shake.

I’ve found over the years that, along with small towns like the one I grew up in, workplaces and churches are super skilled at being “set ablaze by a small fire.” The “small fire” of gossip might be what someone thinks is a benign snippet of hearsay or might be a story shared for the purpose of venting or expressing disdain or judgment. But fire, like water, will spread and flow unless it is properly managed and contained. And a juicy little tidbit is fun to receive and to share and so, often, is not contained. Better to put that tidbit in a sealed doggy bag and let it sit in the fridge until you’ve forgotten it’s there and then, eventually, throw it out because you realize it isn’t something that’s nourishing or necessary. In other words, contain it. Zip it. These days, most of us know something about triangulation—that dynamic where two persons are in conflict and one or both of them try to draw a third person in to try to gain personal validation or support for their cause. That creates fertile ground for talking smack about the “other” person. If you’ve gathered around a fire and choose to chime in or pile on, you are—to work with the metaphor—throwing fuel on the fire and making it bigger and more damaging—not just to the person but to the whole community. Fires destroy things and hurt people. I find that anyone involved in leadership for human community needs skills in this kind of firefighting. 

There are appropriate ways and places to share concerns and to work through conflict. In any human community, there will be conflicts and disagreements. We will hurt one another sometimes. It’s not that we are supposed to pretend tensions don’t exist or to ignore hurtful behavior. But where do we take our concern and what kind of words do we use in processing and sharing it? The call and challenge is to be more like Jesus in the midst of conflict. That means at its most base level that you’re not out to get people, that you don’t seek to hurt someone, or to turn people against others, or to trample on the dignity or heart of someone. It means the goal is not to “win” but to seek mending and reconciliation. Sometimes reconciliation is not possible or safe and setting boundaries becomes particularly important. But regardless of the larger context or outcome, we can always choose whether, how, and to whom we speak about it. //

I don’t think the message from James is just about being “nice.” It is about what we create or destroy with our words. Those who study linguistics help us understand that words are both descriptive and formative. In our own scriptures, we have the ancient story of God speaking creation into being. Words created realities. Words create realities. Certain words evoke certain kinds of responses—both of thought and feeling. The sound vibration or energy of words affect things for good or ill. If a child is surrounded by bruising, belittling speech, it’s not just the meaning of the words, but the energy in the words, that will affect the formation of that child’s thinking and language and life. And the opposite is true as well.

James doesn’t mess around in describing how dangerous human speech can be. The human tongue is, “a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.” (James 3:8-9)

In our society—and in churches that gather on Sunday to bless the Lord!—all sorts of derogatory, dehumanizing words get applied to people—sometimes certain persons, often whole groups. And when it becomes normalized over time to use and allow such language to land upon the bodies and lives of human beings, it becomes much easier to allow injustice or violence to land upon those same bodies. If a person is repeatedly spoken of not as a person but as an enemy, an animal, a criminal, a disease, a sin, eventually, for those who don’t know better, that person becomes what they are called. So why not act toward them with contempt, rejection, or violence?

We bless or curse, we honor or exclude, we build up or tear down, we create or destroy, with the words we speak.

This is why we labor at Foundry to take care with our language. It’s not about being “politically correct” or proving that we’re “woke” or virtue signaling. It’s about trying to be humble before God and loving toward neighbor. We try to use a mix of images and genders for God so as not to put God in a box or presume any one thing can describe the beauty and transcendent being of our Creator. We seek to dismantle certain patriarchal words like “Kingdom” so that the word—“Kin-dom”—might invoke a love-infused, dynamic, communal vision for creation instead of any negative baggage from historical experience of earthly kings and kingdoms. Our staff clearly identify our pronouns as a way both to share ourselves in relationship and to practice radical hospitality by acknowledging and honoring the diversities of gender identities among us. In worship we invite “rising” instead of “standing” and we “receive” instead of “hear” what Spirit is saying—to honor the physical abilities of all persons. There is much I could say about all these pieces, but for today, I simply want to emphasize that we try to use language that blesses, builds up, and honors all the members of the family. 

As we seek to practice radical hospitality and create beloved community, our care with language is so important. Our Foundry family is comprised of persons from a beautiful diversity of cultures, ethnicities, races, gender identities, and sexual orientations. This creates opportunities to expand our awareness and understanding of human experience. It also creates opportunities to step in it and do harm. There have been times when I have stumbled over a colleague’s preferred pronouns. There have been times when I have said something and, even as it was coming out of my mouth, I realized how the words literally dripped with race or class privilege in a really unhelpful and uncomfortable way. This stuff happens as we are learning and growing in community. 

The point is not that we are expected to understand and master new ways of speaking and engaging immediately or without practice. The point is that we are invited to practice, to be thoughtful, respectful, curious, and humble in the presence of those whose lives reflect back to us new ways of perceiving and experiencing life. You may have thoughts, feelings, and opinions about things. But what if you brought those things into conversations with true, open-hearted curiosity, instead of with pronouncements that—whether you mean to or not—belittle or disrespect a sibling’s lived reality?

Our world is full of harmful words, careless words, bullying words, disrespectful and dehumanizing words—splashed across every kind of media and infiltrating all the places we are. I pray that Foundry will be a community in which we seek a different way—that when we engage in relationship with one another, we will practice with one another a different economy of speech. 

What if we intentionally tried to let our words be measured, fair, and shared in appropriate ways and places; to take a breath and take thought before speaking—especially before speaking about someone; what if we intentionally tried to engage in direct conversation with a person with whom we may have an issue, seeing that person as worthy of such respect. What if we listen more and speak less in spaces where others challenge what is familiar or comfortable for us—and enter into the conversation with humility and curiosity? And when we speak words that hurt, as we inevitably will, what if we were willing to ask for forgiveness; and when words have hurt us, to be willing to extend grace?

Today, our Psalm calls us to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord!” And my guess is that it is not just our praise, gratitude, and love for God that is received as a “joyful noise” in the heavenly places. I imagine that God is aware of a whole lot of noise in the world—noise rising out of destruction and denial and the babble of hubris and thoughtlessness. We are invited today to make a noise that gives God joy, perhaps some loving, gracious, thoughtful words…

And knowing that we won’t always get it right, let’s joyfully “give thanks to God and bless God’s name” because we know God’s steadfast love and mercy endure forever! 

https://foundryumc.org/archive/new-day-new-way

Come Home to Love - September 5th, 2021

“Come Home to Love”

A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, September 5, 2021, the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost. “Homecoming!” series.

  Texts: Psalm 126, James 2:8, 14-17

Today is a significant day in the history of Foundry United Methodist Church. It is a day we enter a truly new season of life, joining in-person worship here at the corner of 16th and P Street NW in Washington, DC with a robust online congregation gathered from near and far. Amidst the ongoing pandemics of COVID, systemic racism, environmental degradation, poverty, and violence, we have persevered over 18 months, physically distant, but spiritually connected. Together, we’ve suffered job loss and insecurity, virtual school, family stresses, a steady stream of marches and vigils demanding justice following the murder of George Floyd; we’ve suffered isolation, waves of grief, depression, languishing, an assault on our home, this capitol city, denominational stalemate and churn, and political strife that seeps into everything at every level. 

There may have been moments when we doubted this day would ever come, this day when, together, we reconnect to this sacred space and to the sacrament of Holy Communion whether we’re here in person or experiencing the sanctuary and sacrament from a remote location. And, like the Psalmist sings: this restoration is like a “dream.” Our mouths are filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy! God has brought us through so much, has been life-giving water for us along the way, has set us down at this place of turning toward the new stretch of the journey ahead. Today we don’t rejoice because the work is done or because the journey will have no obstacles. We rejoice because we are restored to one another in the flesh and, I pray, restored to our shared task of being and becoming God’s dream for Foundry Church as we continue to lean in to the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century and our third century as a congregation. Today we come home. We come home to love.

The image at the heart of our “Homecoming” theme is from Psalm 126, that of the farmer who goes out, weeping, but with lifegiving seed to sow and then returns home with the harvest—the “sheaves”—of grain. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Psalm acknowledges Israel’s joy over God’s restoration in the past and then says:

And now, God, do it again—
    bring rains to our drought-stricken lives
So those who planted their crops in despair
    will shout “Yes!” at the harvest,
So those who went off with heavy hearts
    will come home laughing, with armloads of blessing.

That last phrase, “come home laughing, with armloads of blessing” struck me. I wonder what blessings we’re coming home with from our time out in the wilderness. Perhaps you learned new things about yourself—your own strength, fears, capacities, or priorities. Perhaps we’ve have gained deeper compassion or awareness of the systemic struggles and injustices in our society. Maybe you’ve met God in new ways or had an experience of God’s mercy that has expanded your capacity for faith, hope, and love. What blessing are you bringing as we “come home?” 

One of the things I’ve heard so often these many months is how much persons have yearned to be back in this space, to be re-engaged in the vital ministries we share. I have, over the years since becoming part of the Foundry family, tried to remind us not to take it for granted. Perhaps, we come home with a new appreciation for the power of our spiritual home at Foundry. //

The Psalm is clear that God’s grace is at work in the whole process of restoration and sustenance. But the people “bear the seed for sowing.” We have to do something—as our epistle makes quite clear: “If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?” God is always active, always providing what we need, but what do we do with what we’re given?

There’s a well-known story about this very thing: A preacher was driving down a country road when he came upon the most beautiful farm he’d ever seen. The house and buildings were well constructed and in perfect repair and paint. A garden around the house was filled with flowers and shrubs. Beautiful trees lined each side of the white gravel drive. The fields were carefully tilled, and a fine herd of fat dairy cattle grazed knee-deep in the pasture. The site was so arresting the preacher stopped to drink it all in. 

It was then he noticed the farmer, on a tractor, hard at work, approaching the place where the preacher stood beside his car. When the farmer got closer, the preacher hailed her. The farmer stopped the tractor, idled down the engine, and then shouted a friendly “hello!” The preacher said to her, “Hey there, friend! God has certainly blessed you with a magnificent farm.” And then, there was a pause as the farmer shifted in the tractor seat to take a look at her pride and joy. She then looked at the preacher and said, “Yes, God certainly has, and we’re grateful. But you should have seen this place when God was managing it alone!”

As we begin this new stretch of the journey, what will we—what will YOU—do to create the community and future that is God’s dream for us? Faithfulness, justice, bounty, harvest, health, joy, doesn’t just happen, it’s not guaranteed, it doesn’t appear because we talk about it or say a prayer and then continue scrolling through our phones or T.V. channels. We have to respond to God’s grace and not squander God’s provision. We have to show up however we can, with whatever blessings we’re bringing, and do something. And whatever we do will reap…something. What we reap depends upon what we sow, what kind of seeds we plant. When, as Psalm 126 says, we “sow in tears”—when things in and around our lives are so painful and complicated—it is easy to plant seeds of despair, cynicism, disappointment, anger, impatience, and division. We can (intentionally or not) be like the one in Jesus’ parable Jesus who sows weeds among the wheat. (Mt 13:25). 

But we are given grace by God to plant good seeds, even in hard times. Our epistle text reminds us what to plant: “You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” And in more recent years, there was a band of prophets called “Tears for Fears” who sang about Sowing the Seeds of Love… “I believe in love power…sowing the seeds of love, an end to need, and the politics of greed…with love.” 

Today we come home to once again receive the love of God. But we also come home to share the love of God with others. We come home to love…

What seeds are you planting? Go out even in these continuing times of challenge and change bearing seeds of love and God will bless the harvest and will bring us home again and again, to be restored to one another and to change the world by love’s power, our mouths filled with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy!

https://foundryumc.org/archive

Unwashed, Unmasked, Unbothered? - August 29th, 2021

“Unwashed, Unmasked, Unbothered?”

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, August 29, 2021, the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

    Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

“Is it bad to be really ticked off at people who won’t mask or get vaccinated?” I received this text several weeks ago from a member of the Foundry family. And, since then, I’ve received versions of the same question again and again. Headlines proliferate about the appalling behavior of citizens in school board and city council meetings and clashes between parents, teachers, and governors about the use of masks. And of course there are countless personal stories of church and family strife caused by the divides around vaccination, masking, and other public health protocols related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The accounts I’m reading, and receiving about what some folks are saying and doing really make it seem like we’re experiencing some kind of collective mental break—because either I’m losing my faculties of reason and proportion or a whole bunch of my siblings are.

Other common headlines these days highlight the stories of outspoken anti-vax, anti-mask advocates suffering and dying from the virus. And data points like: “About 99% of deaths today are people who did not get vaccinated. Patients dying in hospitals are telling loved ones they regret not getting the vaccine.” 

But of course any of these last points can and have been brushed off as inaccurate or hyperbole. One article I read chronicled the author’s effort to understand the reasoning of her brother who refuses to get vaccinated. What she receives seems reflective of much of what I’ve heard elsewhere. At the heart of it all, is lack of trust. Many people:

• Don’t trust the actual vaccine (side effects and breakthrough cases)
• Don’t trust the messengers (politicized–FDA a government organization could have been pressured to approve)
• Don’t trust the data (unvaccinated passing to children? Children COVID data vs. other risks… the continued mutations…CDC wrong on a lot?)

The lack of trust is understandable since blatant misinformation has been allowed to spread unchecked all over social media from the start. Also, at the beginning of the pandemic, the former president downplayed the severity of the virus, decided to make masks a symbol of “liberal” oppression instead of a time-tested deterrent against dangerous infectious disease, and treated public health scientists who have decades of faithful service under their belt as if they are the enemy. The reaction—perhaps “overreaction”—from the other side of the aisle to shut and keep most everything shut down, whether it was well-intentioned or not, did its own damage to lives and livelihoods. A headline from the Brookings Institution last September summed up a key point, namely that “Politics is wrecking America’s pandemic response.”

Alongside these concerns is the reality that, as one scholar puts it, “If you aren’t white, you know a history that may make you weary about what the medical sector may be telling you to do.” For those who may not know that history, “The medical establishment has a long history of mistreating Black Americans — from gruesome experiments on enslaved people to the forced sterilizations of Black women and the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study that withheld treatment from hundreds of Black men for decades to let doctors track the course of the disease…” More recent “studies have found Black Americans are consistently undertreated for pain relative to white patients; one revealed half of medical students and residents held one or more false beliefs about supposed biological differences between Black and white patients.” 

Vaccine hesitancy among people of color is understandable due to these factors, though both Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rev. Jesse Jackson have used their platforms to make sure the public knows a leading researcher and developer for the vaccine at the National Institutes of Health is immunologist and professor, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, an African American woman. 

My intention today is not to name all the dynamics of the debacle that is the American public’s response to COVID—as if that would be possible. But I do want to at least acknowledge some of the issues in the mix. And, as is most often the case, there’s much more than one narrative at play. 

What does our narrative from the Gospel according to Mark have to add to all this?

These days, when there is an encounter between Jesus and the Pharisees in the text, I often turn to my Rabbi—friend and colleague Steve Weisman of Temple Solel in Bowie, MD—to receive insight. What he confirmed for me is that much of the purity ritual referred to in the Torah has to do with the “order” of things in creation and with boundaries that allow for clarity of identity and relationship. Rabbi Steve says that the purity stuff in the Bible is about “teaching the ability to self-limit, so as not to risk getting ‘out of our lane’ in our relationship to and with God, and respecting the sanctity of Creation and Creator. Your offerings had to be pure, you yourself had to be ritually pure to bring them; in caring for the rest of creation, if we killed something to eat, we had a responsibility not to waste any of it…” This was a good reminder for me. The original idea for washing things was to acknowledge our need to present our best to God and to honor and care for one another and all creation. Embedded in the “law” was a call for self-discipline and reverence. You might even say that purification rituals began as a way to practice loving God and neighbor as ourselves. 

In our story today, Jesus is asked by some Pharisees and scribes why some of his disciples were eating without observing the religious tradition of washing their hands. Jesus takes the opportunity to teach, drawing on a common prophetic refrain and specifically using words from Isaiah 29:13—“This people honors me with their lips (“you’re talking the talk”), but their hearts are far from me (but not “walking the walk”).” The NRSV translation of the passage in Isaiah continues, “and their worship of me is a human commandment learned by rote.” The issue seems to be that a spiritual practice of washing (not a bad thing in itself), a practice meant to draw people closer to God—can easily become a repetitive “going through the motions” that doesn’t touch the heart. 

Jesus highlights the way that you can be “clean” on the outside but filled with things in your heart that are “defiling.” Oh, and check this out: the word for “defiling” is κοινόω, koinoó, which literally means “to make common,” and more nuanced, “to treat what is sacred as common or ordinary.” So the “stock list” of “defiling things” in verses 21-22 are simply things that don’t honor the sacred worth of God, self, others, and the creation. What defiles is that which does harm.

So what does any of this have to say to our current moment? 

Well, our text speaks to how a good thing can get twisted and used in a harmful way. Just as a spiritual discipline meant to inspire reverence and care can become a tool of judgment and exclusion, so can a cherished civic value like “liberty” become used as cover for the worst kind of exclusion and dishonoring the sacred worth of others. Liberty—or freedom—is a beautiful God-given gift. It’s also a God-given responsibility. We have choices about how we use our freedom. Scripture says “for freedom Christ has set us free.” (Gal 5:1a) But Christ doesn’t set us free to do anything we want. You’re not set free so you can be a jerk. And that goes for whoever you are, whatever your politics, whatever your position on anything. 

Of course, right now people are using their freedom to be jerks in all kinds of ways. Jerkiness is equal-opportunity and non-partisan! AND there are those who claim their freedom is being assaulted by things like mask mandates for their children or vaccine requirements at their workplaces or physical distancing in public spaces. And I suppose that, technically, these folks’ freedom to do whatever they want, including putting others in harm’s way, is challenged by such mandates and requirements. These same (mostly white) people want to control all sorts of other things that curtail the freedom of others. So what does that tell us about their intentions? 

What is the freedom we are given in Jesus Christ? Freedom from sin—from that which defiles, from that which does harm to others and to creation. We are set free to live fully in God’s grace and to participate in God’s way of love and justice. Notice in verse 8 of our text today, Jesus says, “You abandon the commandment of God…” That’s the danger. We know the great commandment: to love God with heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. 

The freedom we receive in Jesus Christ does not mean that “anything goes.” There are concrete practices that help form us in ways of self-discipline and reverence of God. There are boundaries that help us “stay in our lane” of right relationship with God and others. These are called “Christian ethics”—the way that love gets worked out in community. Love in community looks like justice, it looks like solidarity, it looks like communal support, sacrifice for the common good, compromise, collaboration, compassion, humility, mutuality, care, and personal and communal responsibility.

The late pastor and prophet William Sloane Coffin said, “let others say, ‘Anything goes.’ The Christian asks, ‘What does love require?’ In short, we have come up with love as an answer to legalism on the one hand and lawlessness on the other. Love hallows individuality. Love consecrates and never desecrates personality. Love demands that all our actions reflect a movement toward and not away from nor against each other. And love insists that all people assume their responsibility for all their relations.” 

If any would claim to be followers of Jesus, then do what love requires.

Right now there are people dying of treatable ailments because they couldn’t get admitted to the hospitals overrun with mostly unvaccinated COVID patients. Our own Pastor Will’s vaccinated, 84 year old confirmation mentor died recently in Arkansas in just such a scenario. The closest available hospital bed was evidently in Plano, TX. 

There are pastors being treated like public enemy #1 and run out of their churches because they have been consistent and insistent about safety protocols. There are increasing numbers of children contracting the virus. There are expired vaccines being thrown out because not enough people are receiving them. There is a threat of continued transmission or mutations of the virus that become increasingly contagious and difficult to treat. And consistently, public health experts affirm that vaccination, masking, distancing, and getting tested at the first sign of any symptoms are the best ways to contain the virus and get the pandemic under control. These practices allow us to be out and about without doing harm. 

From the beginning, we at Foundry have said that we will prioritize health and safety, honor the science, and be guided by public health experts. We’ve also consistently stated that wearing masks, distancing, quarantining when necessary, and getting vaccinated as able are all concrete ways that we love our neighbor as ourselves. I understand there are some for whom family dynamics or deep fear continue to present obstacles. Please know that your pastors are here to listen, think things through and pray with you. I’m also aware that there are those whose reactions to our stance will be dismissive at best, violently angry at worst. Which brings to mind the punchline of a favorite story I was told many years ago:

When a “grandmotherly” type pastor was serving a small congregation and a gay couple wanted to join, some longtime members crashed the next Church Council meeting to protest. After the spokesperson had said his piece about blocking the couple from participation, the pastor who looked and acted like she could be everyone’s smart, sassy, not-having-any-of-your-foolishness grandmother simply responded, “Oh Roger, that’s not nice. Sit down and act like a Christian.”

It’s not a line I generally imagine I’ll ever get away with. But it does occur to me from time to time. It occurs to me a lot these days. And today, I’m saying it outloud for whomever may need to hear it: For the love of God, neighbor, self, and all that is holy: wash your hands, get the vaccine (if and when you can), mask up, and—no matter where you find yourself in the mix—act like a Christian. 

https://foundryumc.org/archive

Canceled - August 22nd, 2021

Canceled

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, August 22, 2021, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

  Text: John 6:56-69

Our Gospel passage is the conclusion of a story that began with Jesus feeding his congregation of more than 5000 people with one child’s lunch. (Jn 6:1-13) It’s a wonderful, crowd-pleasing story. But the next morning, Jesus preaches a sermon and things take a turn. Today we hear the last of many complaints that follow. The complaint making its way through the grapevine of Jesus’ grumbling congregation is, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” Jesus picks up on the grapevine grumbling and asks quite directly, “Does this offend you?” Evidently, the answer for most of the crowd was a resounding “yes.” Most of those in the crowd decided that they could NOT accept what Jesus was saying, that they could NOT accept what Jesus was offering, that they could NOT accept who Jesus WAS and they “turned back and no longer went about with him.”  // Y’all. Jesus got “canceled.” 

For some years now, there’s a thing called “cancel culture” that has been prevalent in public dynamics and has been a focus of concern and debate in the public square and in academia. “Cancel culture” at its most basic refers to the act of withdrawing support for someone or something in response to words or actions that are found to be offensive or inappropriate. There are certainly times when boycotting a business or critiquing an influential public figure’s words or actions are important ways to exert pressure for positive social change. And free speech is a critically important part of a democratic society. But the toxic environment of polarized, easily triggered, dehumanized and dehumanizing, either-or thinking and reactivity has been a perfect breeding ground for a version of “cancel culture” that is quite simply an exercise in public shaming and ostracism. It brands people with a proverbial scarlet letter such that they are no longer seen as worthy of any care, respect, or engagement whatsoever. “Cancel culture” is not unique to one “side” or perspective in our society. There are persons across the spectrum of so-called left to right of the political, religious, or academic spheres who “cancel” people due to perceived disloyalty to their brand of dogmatic purity, prejudice, or discomfort.

To be clear, the focus recently has often been on celebrities or powerful public figures who are not going to have their lives or livelihoods radically altered by the social outcry against them. Their egos and sometimes their jobs may get altered, but not their capacity to live or ultimately thrive. It’s important to recognize that there are some for whom getting publicly shamed—whether they did something egregious or not—really does threaten their lives. My point is simply that the public shaming at the heart of today’s “cancel culture” often leads to no good or more just outcome for anyone or for the larger society.

Today we are reminded that “cancel culture” is not really anything new. Most of those in the crowd—the followers or “disciples of Jesus”—“turned back and no longer went about with him.”  

What was so offensive that people would leave? What got Jesus “canceled” by so many?

Maybe it was the way Jesus talked or that his words were confusing. What does it mean to “abide in” Jesus? And what’s up with this idea that eating and drinking his flesh and blood has something to do with life “in” God? And is Jesus bread? And is it flesh or words that give life? 

And—oh, by the way—gross! Eating human flesh and drinking human blood? Perhaps they couldn’t stomach such talk. It is, by the way, a documented historical fact that there were those who persecuted early Christians due to the accusation that the Lord’s Supper was a cannibalistic rite. 

Maybe offense was taken at the fact that Jesus didn’t seem to be trying to “make nice,” but rather used provocative, earthy, unsentimental words to describe what he was talking about. Jesus isn’t talking about eating in polite company. The word he uses (tidily translated “eat” in verse 56) is the Greek word trogo which means “to chew on” or “to gnaw.” Jesus is saying that true life is found by hunkering down and gnawing on his flesh. Not the height of refinement or delicacy.

Confusing words, words that are easily misinterpreted, failing to use the “correct” words, ways of speaking that don’t placate but rather agitate…all of these things could have been what got Jesus canceled. They are certainly things get people canceled today.

Or maybe what got Jesus canceled was his challenge of cherished beliefs. He said that this “bread” they were supposed to chew on was more life-giving and sustaining than that connected with Moses (the manna in the wilderness). Challenging a comfortable, familiar faith and way of thinking? Yep, that’s always fertile ground for cancellation. 

Or, perhaps some in the congregation began to perceive what Jesus was saying. Perhaps they understood Jesus as calling them into the messiness of human life and relationship and community:  to have REAL flesh and blood encounters with people that might be really painful or challenging and that might require some self-sacrifice. Perhaps they began to realize that Jesus called them to follow in the way of life that Jesus modeled—and they just couldn’t go there because it made them uncomfortable or they didn’t want to be so challenged or bothered. Maybe they left because what Jesus was offering asked too much of them.

Regardless of which offense causes people to turn away from Jesus, the bottom line is that they do. Thousands in the story (then and now) just walk away, unable to perceive, unwilling to receive all that is offered. 

There is certainly much to lose if we walk away. But, let’s be honest, let’s not sugarcoat it: there is a lot to lose if we follow Jesus. We have to lose our self-righteousness and self-centeredness. We have to lose our demand for control of everything. We have to lose our polarized, either-or thinking. We have to lose our capitulation to a culture that values bland niceness more than justice, upward mobility more than solidarity, being “right” more than being kind, and money more than mercy. We have to lose our taste for shaming, bullying, or belittling others. 

To follow the Holy One of God, Jesus, means giving up “canceling” people. Dr. Cornel West puts it plainly, “Christians don’t believe in cancelling people, everybody can bounce back…everybody has the capacity to be changed and transformed.” That is at the heart of our United Methodist tradition, the belief that people can grow in holiness and love, that we are going on to perfection. And that’s an important piece here. What Jesus models is being present in the flesh and blood messiness of conflict and need and pain with clarity, patience, strength, and love. Jesus most certainly speaks words of critique, but always for the purpose of growth and transformation, not public shame. Not long after the story we heard today in John, a woman allegedly caught in adultery was publicly shamed and made to stand in front of Jesus and all who were gathered in the temple. When Jesus was asked whether he agreed with the law requiring the woman to be stoned, he said, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” When everyone left and the woman was there with Jesus, he did not condemn her but gave her—and her accusers—another chance. 

Much of current “cancel culture” offers no second chance, makes no room for grace, for change, for transformation. It ends conversation. It ends relationships. It ends possibilities. It makes a sibling into an object of scorn. And this happens not just on Twitter or Instagram, it happens in our personal lives and relationships at every level. Of course there are times when we need to separate ourselves from a harmful relationship or dynamic. There are times when it is appropriate to clearly denounce the injustice of a person or institution’s actions or policies. But what we’re talking about today are the ways we cut people off in our lives and refuse to engage in a difficult conversation for the sake of reconciliation. What we’re talking about today is how we write people off as nothing more than…whatever the thing might be: a cheat, a liar, a liberal, a Trumper, a coward, a racist, a homophobe… “Nothing more than” is not something Jesus would ever say about anyone. “Nothing more than” erases experience and context and humanity and potential. To follow Jesus we have to lose “nothing more than” and the juicy emotional satisfaction that comes with feeling morally superior or like we know everything about a person or situation (when we likely really don’t). To follow Jesus, there is most certainly a lot we have to lose. Some might find it too difficult a way to go.

But what do we lose if we turn back and no longer go about with Jesus? What do we lose if Jesus gets “canceled?”

Based on the text, the answer is “spirit and life.” If we cancel Jesus, we lose the life we are truly made for, a life enfolded in God’s life, life that is formed by and conformed to God’s wisdom and way of compassion and justice, life that shares in God’s work in the world, life that is filled and fueled by God’s steadfast love. That love is our sustenance, that love is our freedom, that love is shown to us and offered to us in the flesh-and-blood gift of Jesus.  Jesus’ “flesh and blood” is, literally, Jesus’ life. The embodied, incarnate Jesus—and all that Jesus said and did—this is what we are invited to feast upon, to receive, to be filled with. The wisdom of God revealed in Jesus. The justice of God revealed in Jesus. The humility and generosity of God revealed in Jesus. The perfect love of God revealed in Jesus. 

We are offered chance after chance, grace upon grace, life-giving bread from heaven, and a savior who never cancels us. 

So the question is, to whom will YOU go? To a life-diminishing culture or a life-giving Christ? The good news is that you and I get to choose…every minute, every day, graced by a God of second chances. And for that I say thanks be to God.https://foundryumc.org/archive