Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Guest Preacher Bishop Charlene Kammerer - July 25th, 2021

SERMON - “ FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS”

Scripture: Esther 4: 9-17 July 25, 2021

(Celebrating the 65th Anniversary of Full Clergy Rights for UM Clergywomen)
Foundry UMC, Washington, DC

There are times when the words in a letter are burned into our memories. Such a letter to me got lost between the move of my first and second pastoral appointments. I had recently been ordained an Elder in Full Connection in the Florida Conference. I suppose I reasoned at the time that it didn’t matter anymore if I kept the letter. But it did matter because I can still quote it today - 47 yrs ago! - from the Chair of the Board of Ordained Ministry in 1974 - “Dear Charlene, You seem to be qualified for ministry, but because you are a woman, there might be issues in the future........ if you think you have a call to ministry, you could try to exercise it in another annual conference.” At the time I received the letter, it still didn’t sink in that I had been turned down royally, and the kind suggestion by the Registrar was to tell me to look elsewhere if I insisted on pursuing my calling. I began to hear all the negative voices in my head. Was I really called? Did I have the capacity to be a pastor? Can I finish seminary? I’m a

failure. The endless loop continued in my head. But more importantly, what was God saying to me? After crying all the way home on my flight from central Fla to the Chicago airport, and then getting to Evanston where I was a student at GETS, I was pretty much paralyzed, and not able to discern God’s voice or presence.

My soul was wounded and my spirit was crushed. But right away, I began to hear other voices speaking to me: from seminary students and faculty, from church friends, from my pastor, from my husband, and especially other women on the path to ordination.

“Don’t give up. Try again even if they said NO to you. Come to my Ann. Conf - we will take you. And most poignant from a professor - don’t let the church rob you of your calling. DON’T LET THE CHURCH ROB YOU OF YOUR CALLING! It’s a long story with several chapters, but suffice it to say that in another year, I applied again to my home conference and was accepted for Deacon’s orders and my first appointment as an Associate pastor. All because a Path was opened up to me by prayer, advocacy, a visit on our seminary campus by a Fla. Leader, a plea from me for another chance, a DS and a Sr. Pastor willing to give me a try and support me, offering me a place to serve. As it turned out, I would be the first female pastor in the Fla. Conference to be appointed to a local church, the first female Elder, the first female DS, and later, much later, the first female bishop in the SEJ.

When a discernment and support team accompanied me for a year as I was being called to the episcopacy, our theme for my candidacy was FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS. The SEJ had yet to elect a female bishop after 4 quadrenniums of effort to elect gifted women candidates. In a book titled “Women Bishops of The United Methodist Church” Bishop Sharon Rader and Professor Margaret Ann Crain interviewed all the living women bishops of our denomination in 2019. In some way or many ways, all the women bishops have carried the unique and heavy burden of being the first woman - to serve in an appointment, to serve on a Cabinet, to birth a baby in an appointment, to lead on a Conference staff, to lead a delegation to Gen. Conference, and to be elected as bishops. Bishop Judy Craig, who is now in the Communion of Saints, said “When our dust is dust, they’ll remember us as those who did the first thing.” Bishop Susan Morrison stated, “To be claimed for a time such as this in the role I was in and the ability to touch lives is unbelievable. I’m awestruck.” Being firsts also meant being under constant scrutiny of what they said, how they looked, how they led, whether they could preach, how they presided and on and on. The reality is we were all under the stress of charting a new course as clergywomen while experiencing the tyranny of an anti-woman mindset and gender bias, ( pg. 174 in “Women Bishops”......) Even today, some women bishops continue to receive threats on their lives, and need to be accompanied by armed security in major public events. Even today

65 years after Clergywomen received full ordination rights, the resistance to women’s leadership in the church continues to take many forms.

Was it any surprise that my discernment team looked to the story of Esther as empowerment for the journey ahead? Something about this book makes us examine ourselves and wonder what God is up to. Something about this book makes us laugh and cry and reach out to God all at the same time. (Interpretation, “Esther”, Carol M. Bechtel, pg. 1) Oh, Esther, how often have we clergywomen recalled your story, and the memory of your being Called by God FOR SUCH A TIME AS THIS. We can see God’s hand so clearly at work in your life, your actions, your wisdom, your servant leadership, your desire to bring good to your people.

The Book of Esther is intended to be read in its entirety in the temple or the sanctuary. It is such a powerful unveiling of God’s plans unfolding in the unlikeliest of people and circumstances. It is a drama, a burlesque, a comedy, a short story. It so powerfully captures God’s Power and our roles in God’s plans that each time it is heard it renews the community of faith. Historian Deborah Lipstadt actually won a court victory over a Holocaust denier during her career. Soon after that court verdict, she went to temple and the scroll of Esther was read at her local synagogue’s celebration of Purim. She reports in the Jerusalem Post Magazine in June of 2000, “ I heard that! All of it, and it made me think: Who knows if not for this very

reason I got the education I got, I got the upbringing I got, my job — maybe we’re all meant to do one something really significant. And some of us do it on the public stage, and some do it by helping a child. Nobody knows of it, nobody sees it, but we’re all meant to do something. And maybe this is the something I was meant to do.”

We remember you, Esther. From becoming an orphan with no discernible future, your uncle Mordecai brought you into his family and treated you like his daughter. They were Jewish, descended from the tribe of Benjamin, living in the time of King Ahasueras who ruled from 486 to 465 b.c.e. Mordecai is a respected man, a civil servant in the Royal Court. Because he hears all the gossip from the comings and goings of people making their way to the King’s Court, he knew about a royal party in which the King indulged himself and his subjects in endless drinking and dining and carousing. All to display the King’s massive wealth. When the King calls upon his wife, Vashti, to come and be displayed as a trophy wife to all the guests at the height of the party, she refuses.. He who commanded such great wealth and a vast territory, was not obeyed by his wife. Embarrassed, drunk and raging, he orders the death of Vashti. Then he decreed that all the virgins of his empire were to be brought to the court, become his harem, so that the King can choose one of them as his new Queen. Here enters Esther, a young, beautiful and brilliant young woman, who is carried into court. She, like the other women, were treated like

royalty for a year - with long perfumed baths and soap bubbles, with facials and makeup and massages, with manners and posture training, with fancy meals, with brand new clothes, with skills and duties related to hostessing , and of course to be ready to go into the King’s bedchamber at his beck and call. What does Esther take with her when she is called to the King’s chambers? She always began “ If it please the King...”. She also takes great beauty, knowledge, humility, cleverness and wisdom.She is able to tell the King about an assassination attempt on his life and gives her Uncle credit for how she got the information. She exposes Haman, the arrogant and brutal supervisor over Mordecai at court. Haman has tricked the King into issuing a decree to kill all the Jews, destroy, and annihilate them. Why? All because one Jew, Mordecai, refused to bow down to him when commanded.

Uncle Mordecai had instructed Esther to keep her Jewish identity a secret when she was taken into the court and the harem. Then he coached Esther how to get the Kings’ favor and to have the killing decree removed and a new decree proclaimed. The extraordinary turn of events reveals that Esther is indeed able to save her people. She becomes their Queen and rules with equity , dignity, and compassion. The whole book of Esther is still read at Temple services in the festival of Purim, a celebration where God’s Power of freeing the Jews was made possible through Esther.

I dare to say that every clergywoman has perceived a call like Esther’s - surely not as dramatic, but a clarity that God has called her and equipped her to serve God’s people in the church and in the world. It has only been through hard work and preparation, the mentoring and coaching of others who went before, the discernment of leaders in the church, and the abundant grace of God that each of us has stepped into such a calling, tried it on, and found our own courage and voices along the way. Whether we are representative of the First Wave of Clergywomen, or daughters of clergywomen, representatives of racial ethnic groups, or brought in by long and circuitous routes, we have been emboldened. It is not about us, it is never about us as individuals, or any distinctions or honors that may come to us along the way. It is about how we will live for God and serve others. That will be regardless of who calls us what - in my case, pastorette, priestess, preacherette, lady preacher, or baby bishop.( these are only the names I can say in church).............. or where we are sent to serve, or who rejects us and denies us or threatens us with bodily harm, we are still called by God. And like Esther, we will be given opportunities to lead, to use our power for good, to help save and serve God’s people.

As a retired clergywoman who is still serving as a bishop, I am reminded of the vision and hope of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a leader of the Suffrage movement. I still have a vision of God’s Justice and Joy, bringing Heaven to earth. In my small part of God’s healing work, I can say with Elizabeth

that “I never forget that we are sowing winter wheat which the coming spring will see sprout and other hands than ours will reap and enjoy”. Thank you, Esther. Thank you to all clergywomen, those who were “firsts”, those who came before, those who will follow us. “I never forget that we are sowing winter wheat which the coming spring will see sprout and other hands than ours will reap and enjoy.” May it be so. AMEN.

https://foundryumc.org/

Guest Preacher Rev. Shalom Agtarap - July 18th, 2021

A Sermon for Foundry United Methodist Church by Rev. Shalom Agtarap

July 18th, 2021

Genesis 21:14

Focus Statement: When systems are not made for us, god gives us blessing, shows us  compassion, revives us with life-giving water — to go our own way! 

Opening Prayer —  

I am the daughter of Filipino immigrants, hard-working, intelligent, spirit-filled people  who migrated to California. While I am a cradle United Methodist, my sisters and I were  often the only kids of color in a sea of white churches that my father was appointed to.  In ministry, I am a brown woman, ordained in an institution that never sought to ordain  women, much more Southeast Asian women. And my job is to reflect on scripture  compiled without a Hagar in mind. It’s as though I am a plant, whose roots are watered  in another garden. They had to be! If I were to be of any help to the Filipino immigrant  local church that sent me to seminary, I would have to divest from white ways of  knowing, storytelling and preaching. If I were to honor the elders who stuffed $20 bills in  my pocket as they pulled me in for a hug, blessing me in prayer and pocket money, I  would have to learn to bring the gospel to life in ways that honored indigenous ways of  being. The quickest way to dishonor them, would be to hide the parts of myself they  knew and loved and celebrated, in the pursuit of bringing the gospel fully alive. 

A garden opened up in my time at Wesley Seminary, just up the road from Foundry, I  soaked up the water that flowed from womanist, mujerista and other liberation  theologies. But I didn’t know how to hold the tension of being a second-gen Filipino  woman learning theology in a predominantly black and white context.  God-talk facilitated and imagined by people who have lived experience of  marginalization and resilience makes all the difference to our collective liberation but I  still needed to fill in the gaps. I found myself at crossroads many times. Socialized as an  Asian American, I’m taught to not rock the boat and fit in wherever I can. To always  excel, but to do so with great humility. What are you? Where are you from? Where are  you really from? Are questions I’ve been asked all my life and it has only accelerated  since I began serving as a pastor in predominantly white denomination. Instead of  seeing my identities as a curse, however, the gifts of womanist theologies remind me I  come from a place that I can be curious about. That I come from a people. That I come  from a culture. None of these can be erased and all of them are integral to how I  experience the world, to how I understand God at work. 

Womanist theology, I have learned, is a gift of intersections. And a central character who  helps inform this theology is the witness of Hagar in Genesis. 

As Delores Williams wrote in Sisters in the Wilderness, a seminal work in womanist  theology, “there are striking similarities between Hagar’s story and the story of African  American women. Hagar’s heritage was African, from Egypt, scripture says. Hagar was 

enslaved. Black American women had emerged from a slaved heritage and still lived in  its long shadow. Hagar was brutalized by her slave owner the woman named Sarah.  The narratives of enslaved women in the United States and even narratives of modern  day workers tell of brutal or cruel treatment from the wives of slave owners and from  contemporary white female employers.”1 

Hagar continues to speak to us today. Dr. Wil Gafney comments Hagar’s story has a  little something for everyone from enslavement on this continent and elsewhere — to all  the resistance and revolutionary spirit that has ever risen up against oppressive forces.  “Hagar is the mother of Harriet Tubman and the women who freed themselves..I see  God’s return of Hagar to her servitude as the tendency of some religious communities to  side with the abuser at the expense of abused women and their children. Ultimately  Hagar escapes her slaveholders and abusers and receives her inheritance from God,  and God fulfills all of God’s promises to her.” 

To the white folks at church today, who is Hagar for you? Who is Hagar for me? Though  I’ve been invited into Black church communities, though I am deeply accompanied by  African American friends, I cannot appropriate these historical and cultural stories as my  own. It is my responsibility, and all those who love and celebrate black women, to  extend Hagar’s story beyond the black and white paradigm that is so often the  framework for race and class in the United States. 

For me, to invoke the name of Hagar is to invoke the woman who exists at  intersections. And beyond those who identify as women; Hagar to me, is the patron  saint of those who dwell in multiple layers of identity. She receives the prayers of those  who are enslaved and yet hold great power. People who are frontline workers that in  this pandemic have quickly become disposable. Sex workers who are celebrated during  Pride events and yet are killed at high rates because of the color of their skin, and for  how they break gender norms, all in one body. 

What I know, as a clergywoman of color in a mainline denomination is what those who  have come before me have long experienced: that we are set within what bell hooks  calls interlocking systems of domination: white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy.  Our church is set within these interlocking systems, our schools, our homes, and even  our relationships.  

While historical record clearly states the 1956 General Conference voted to grant  women full rights just as any pastor in good standing, it was only in the last few years  

1 Delores Williams, Sisters in the Wilderness, pg 3

we’ve celebrated more black clergywomen’s election as bishops and our first openly  queer bishop in the west.  

We must read history clearly: that as we celebrated 65 years of full ordination rights to  women, that many women — immigrant women, women of color, and transgender  women — still lack access to all levels of leadership in our church. Beloveds, we have  so much further to go! 

Which brings us back to Sister Hagar. She’s got a ways to go before she gets free...she  is Othered because of her ethnic background. She is treated like property when Sarah  seizes her for her productivity to produce an heir. She is a problem to be solved, not a  human being with dignity. Yes, we’re talking about Hagar but can we just talk about  Sarah for a minute? She’s got some issues! What prevents a sisterhood from forming,  what blocks solidarity from building is that Sarah is consumed by the patriarchy and  believes she is entitled to more access and privilege than any other woman in that  camp. 

The event that ultimately expels Hagar from the community, leaving her and her child  vulnerable, is that Sarah heard something. She heard kids at play. In Chapter 21:9 The  Common English says she heard laughter. 

This woman who holds power, heard joy, mirth, lightheartedness and it triggered in her  frustration, resentment, anger.  

We need not stretch our imaginations very far to come up with modern day examples of  when women in power were threatened by others enjoying life. Whether it’s Amy  Cooper calling out a birdwatcher in Central Park, or BBQ Becky at the local picnic or  countless white women who called the police on black people over trivial or nonexistent  offenses. We have a problem that predates our current struggle with white supremacy—  I submit to you that when Sarah heard laughter, she heard life! And the life of Ishmael,  was a perceived threat to the life of her son, Isaac — another vestige of patriarchy and  who is the rightful heir. Sarah is reminded, with each breath that Ishmael draws, that her  own security is at risk and she must protect it at all costs. Why else do so many feel the  need to police joy? 

To white women, and those who experience the benefits of whiteness, who feel threatened, who  feel like their security, or reputation, or way of life is at risk because of the full-throated, belly filling laughter of others — may I offer a word. The God who sees Hagar also sees you. God sees  your effort. God sees the ways you’ve been shut down and left behind. God has heard your silent  cries. And God will not leave you barren — without joy, without hope. 

To beloved ones who exist at intersections, the helpless and harassed who are, in audre  Lorde’s words “triple oppression” , the hear the good news: just as Sarah and Abraham  were promised provision, so too are Hagar and Ishmael. “Don’t be afraid. God has  heard the boy’s cries over there. Get up, pick up the boy, and take him by the hand  because I will make of him a great nation.”  

Would Hagar have lived in the 20th century, I’m certain she would have picked up some  audre lorde.  

"A Litany for Survival": audre lorde 

when we speak we are afraid  

our words will not be heard  

or welcomed  

but when we are silent  

we are still afraid.  

So it is better to speak  

remembering  

we were never meant to survive. 

I invoke the life and witness of audre lorde in sharing her poem, a litany for survival, as  we think about the witness of Hagar. Audre lorde was speaking to other black lesbians  like herself but the message resonates through the lens of Hagar. There were forces in  

life that never meant for Hagar and Ishmael’s survival and yet, Hagar has a relationship  with the divine. She is the only one to name God in all of scripture. In Chapter 16, Hagar  says to the Holy One “You are El Ro’i, the God who sees.” This relationship allows  Hagar to be seen and heard in return. In the midst of exhaustion and desperation,  having been kicked out, sent away, expelled, deported, Hagar cries out to God and  weeps. The water spent in salty tears returns to sustain her. 

After an encounter with the Divine, water is given to Hagar and Ishmael. I do not believe  the messenger of God intended for them to build up the energy to make it back to  Abraham and Sarah’s camp! Life giving water is given so they continue moving in  parched places. There is someone listening today who’s been saved from, given  distance, broken out of, walked away from a place where love no longer lives. The best  way to honor that gift of water is to not return to the place of death. To break free of the  status quo and the ways that white supremacy and capitalism tell us to make do with  the scraps we’re given. The good news is that when we follow a different path, away  from hierarchies that demean, toward round tables where more varieties of God’s  creation can gather — God will go with us and sustain our very breath.

The beauty of reading this story in modern times is that we know the rest of the story!  We know God fulfills ALL of God’s promises to Hagar, Ishmael and all of his  descendants.  

If I may offer a word of encouragement to you today, in the off chance, you are  discerning next steps, whether it’s a job, ending a relationship, the grueling task of  healing from trauma, or beginning or even harder, continuing the work of anti-racism, —  the God who sees, is present to us now in the form of Christ who offers life-sustaining  water. And this liberating presence will accompany you in parched places — Christ will  not do the work for you, but with the help of the Holy Spirit, will give you compassion  and confidence as you make your own way.  

Pray: You are the God who sees…

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The God at the End of .Com - Rev. Will Ed Green - July 11th, 2021

“The God at the End of .Com”

2nd Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19 — preached at Foundry United Methodist Church July 11th, 2021

I am always amazed at the richness and depth of Scripture. You can return to a passage over and over again and, invariably, each reading raises more questions than it answers. Fresh examination of our most beloved passages brings new insight and deeper dialogue with every encounter.

Contrary to popular belief, Scripture is not a roadmap which always lays out clear boundaries and mile markers for a to-scale spiritual journey. Nor is its prophecy a predictive panacea, or cure, that explains away our uncertainty about the future .

It is rather, I think, a divine invitation. In its words, we meet God at the intersections of our collective past, the present, and the future to receive God’s word for us right now. In it we recognize and remember that God shows up, over and over again at the intersections of our faith and doubt, our hope and fear, our joy and our sorrow. And when we accept the invitation to meet God at those intersections // new joy and abundant life often await us around every corner. As we meet God today where our story intersects with that of David, Michal and the people of Israel, let us pray:

Come Holy Spirit, Living Light of Love, and illuminate our lives anew. Grant us fresh grace, so that as we ponder the possibilities of your leading through THESE words, we might receive and welcome their comfort and challenge. Take the humble offering of this preacher and make of it what it needs to be so that—whether through me or in spite of me—you might be glorified, your people edified, and together we might draw a little closer to Your Kin-dom come. Amen.

It was a new day in Israel! The people were turning the corner of a past rife with internal division, political anarchy, and war with the Philistines. These changes culminated in the return of the Ark of the Covenant—the physical representation of God’s power, presence, and preference for the people of Israel—to the center of their social awareness as it is escorted out of obscurity in backwater Balle- Judah and into their new capital city of Jerusalem.

What unfolds, on the one hand, is prime political theater. David represented a radical change in leadership from his predecessor, King Saul. A popular military hero with a keen sense of how to rule, he threatened familiar institutions and power structures, along with those who benefited from them. By intertwining his kingship with the unifying religious symbol of the Ark, David appeals to the peoples’ religious devotion and offers proof in his procession, into HIS capital city, that his reign and leadership are blessed by God.

But, while there are certainly political motivations for David’s decision, the ark of the covenant is no mere political symbol. Sincere and raucous joy accompany its arrival in the city. The Ark, after all was proof that God was with them even as they turned the corner toward a new way of being Israel together. Proof that God was able to take moments of unprecedented change // and leadership from surprising and unexpected places // and new rituals and ways of gathering together and make of them opportunities for healing, hope, and wholeness.

David is one of the Bible’s more complicated figures. A egomaniac with a seemingly insatiable bloodlust and a penchant for pursuing his own best interests most of the time. But here takes advantage of a strategic opportunity to usher people into the healing presence of God following decades of communal trauma. And his reckless joy, his willingness to literally dance like a fool in front of his people, abandons assumptions about how a king should behave and invites people to consider new ways of recognizing and responding to God’s presence.

Whatever David’s political motivations, the Spirit of God moves in them and maybe in spite of them, creating much needed space for people to remember, recognize, and embrace the hope of God’s abiding presence, the true source of their strength and joy.

In his dancing David becomes, a conduit and conductor of hope, his ecstatic joy an invitation for everyone watching to recognize the presence of God in their midst, and to celebrate, even when it means risking what is familiar and comfortable as we do.

Like so many of you, I’m anxious for the day that this sanctuary again swells with the sounds of “To God be the Glory” and cries of newborns freshly washed in baptismal waters. For chance to be with one another and return to the sacred space we share on the corner of 16th and P. Yet, even as we prepare to re-enter in person worship on Wednesday of this week, my mind can’t help but regularly return to the earliest days of the pandemic.

I remember the fear and anxiety we faced, unsure of how we would remain connected to God and one another, let alone our sanity. Questions and confusion were common; about the science, about our safety. Questions about what online platforms we should use and what happens when they aren’t failproof? We all wondered how, and I’m guessing at multiple points doubted we could, stay socially and spiritually connected using technology designed for workplace? Would our neighbors file a noise complaint by the time we start singing the fifth verse of ‘O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing” at our dining room table. Could we find God in the isolation? Could we find God at the end of .com?

Like the Ark’s arrival on the streets of Jerusalem all those years ago, this season has opened to new paradigms for being the people of God together. We have been led by choir members who recorded audio tracks and then lip synced videos, all while trying to listen to themselves and a recorded piece of music for our virtual choir pieces. We have been encouraged by teachers and preachers and new members who, because of this virtual format, have joined our us in worship and learning from hundreds of miles away.

We were nourished and nurtured by folks like Rosa, who packed communion cups and wafers in Ziploc bags and small group leaders who showed up faithfully, even when they were Zoom-weary, to create space for support and prayer. We were challenged by our Confirmands, who refused to join The United Methodist Church without challenging its complicity in harm and injustice, and comforted by voices who reminded us over and over again that it was ok not to be ok—and then gave us the space for that to be true.

Like David so many of you have stepped into this season and risked being made a fool—as we figured out how to mute ourselves and watched our best laid virtual plans fall apart when our wifi signal just wasn't strong enough.

And somehow, often despite our expectations, we found the presence of God was with us. Not just in our sanctuaries or familiar rhythms and rituals, but with us in the silence and stillness of the stay-at-home orders so many at first feared. In the closets and quiet spaces where we lifted praise and lament and listened for the voice of God. In flowerbeds and lush, loamy vegetable gardens that would never have been tended if we weren’t working from home and bowls of water and boxes of supplies we used to adorn our home altars.

God was on the end of—I’m loathe to admit it—many a group text and long, lingering phone call. God was in the chat rooms where we celebrated sacred moments and grieved what was lost. God was in backyard baptisms and clear plastic baggies that became conduits of God’s living love at communion.

We have witnessed and remembered these last 15 months what is possible when we’re willing to risk doing the unfamiliar, uncomfortable, or unexpected for the sake of opening our hearts and lives to Spirit’s leading. That God’s presence is ever-available and dynamic, moving not only in familiar modalities, but also through new ad unfamiliar technologies and ways of being Church so joy, hope, healing, and—sometimes, maybe most of the time—just plain old survival was possible. We’ve learned, and re-learned, and been reminded that God is with us, always, even at the end of .com. And because of it lives have been changed. Communities have grown. People have fallen headfirst into God’s love. Deepened their capacity to love one another. Even as we’ve done all of this in an unfamiliar, often uncomfortable way, the world has been changed because we accepted the invitation and took the rest.

Sandwiched into this Scripture story of celebration is another story, single line about David's wife Michal. Michal was the daughter of King Saul and betrothed to David when he was first anointed by Samuel. Before he was king, she risked her life to save David’s when he earned the ire of her father, was forcibly married off to someone else to enrage David, and is then ripped from her home following the brutal death of her father and brother to be remarried to the newly anointed King David.

While today's reading only says that she saw David’s dancing and despised him in her heart, a few verses later we encounter a painful exchange between David and Michal about his dancing. She upbraids him for his unbecoming behavior, suggesting that it waas self-serving and un-kinglike. We have to be careful before we assign mal-intent or ill will to Michal’s behavior. Perhaps, after years of being passed between kings and pretenders to the throne, she realized David’s actions were risky and threatened her stability and security. It’s possible she’d simply seen the politics of power corrupt one too many people that she loved and had no more capacity to put up with David’s pomp and circumstance and BS.

The trauma and violence inflicted on her as the daughter of a dead despot and wife of an emerging demagogue was profound. It’s no wonder she wasn’t ready to join the party! She was grieving. She was, I imagine, braced for impact, not ready to embrace joy. David, who a few moments before had created space for people to encounter what God’s presence could do, missed the moment. He dismissed her. Demeaned her arguments. And abandoned her as he danced the merry band around the corner and into what came next. Michal’s place in scripture terminates here, and we’re told she died without children The implication is that she was abandoned by David as he moved into this new season of Israel’s history without her.

I wonder if this brief encounter, informed by but left out of today’s lectionary reading, offers us a cautionary tale of how we turn the corner of this pandemic season. David’s ecstatic dancing reminds us how important it is to seize every opportunity to open space for others to encounter the living, healing presence of God after 15 months of deferred trauma and grief—even when it risks what we’re familiar or comfortable with. Michal’s story asks us to explore our unexpressed grief and trauma and the ways the keep us from recognizing God’s presence in our lives—even in unexpected places and from unexpected sources. She invites to remain open to the possibility of healing and hope it offers, and challenges us to help others do what David did not for her. Together, they remind us that God shows up in both our ecstatic joy and overwhelming sorrow.

And that its easy to leave folks behind if we insist that it’s our way or the highway. In the end, they both seem miss the point and an opportunity for them turn this corner together: that God shows up.

And that’s really the point of this story, isn’t it? God shows up, whether in the Ark of the Covenant or the wild dancing of David or Michal’s profound pain and fear. God shows up in our anticipation and celebration, when we’re ready to move full steam ahead into the possibilities of what comes next and as when we’re mired in profound grief and sorrow . God shows up even as we cling to our pre- conceived notions and assumptions of what is and is not proper, or when our intentions or motives might not be the most pure, when we’re lost in grief and ensnared by fear.

Spirit—as the story of David, Michal, and Ark proves—is always revealing herself in new ways, moving in unexpected places, and opening up fresh opportunities for people to recognize and receive the promise of God’s abiding presence and love. It may not come in behavior we deem becoming or in packages we prefer, but nevertheless the presence of God enters into the midst of our moments and movements, interrupts our expectations, and invites us to be free. All we have to do is answer the invitation.

We are invited together, as Foundry Church, as the body of Christ to be for others conduits and conductors through which they can experience the profound joy and abundant life God desires for all of us. To risk hope and receiving joy even as we feel lost in fear and awash in grief. To be open to peoples pain and fear as we re-enter life together—even when we aren’t— and to remain present as a source of comfort until they’re ready to embrace joy. To challenge our preconceived notions and assumptions about what proper, right or acceptable in such encounters, and to risk being made a fool for the sake of others’ opportunity to know and experience the liberating love of God.

Today’s reading reminds us that we have a profound opportunity as we turn this corner, together, to continue creating space where people can encounter God’s liberating love. Our role isn’t to be gatekeepers carefully deciding and defining for others the “right” way to find that or the appropriate methods by which they will . Nor is it to shame others into joy. Our job is to show up, together, again and again and remain open to how God might meet us when we do—so that no one, as we enter into this new season—gets left as we go.

As we stand at the intersection of where we've been and what comes next we are faced with a crucial question: Will we embrace and celebrate the new ways and means we have known God’s love, grown in faith, healed from old wounds and discovered new dimensions of discipleship? Will we risk discomfort, distaste, and even foolishness for the sake of extending to others the life giving presence of God?

Will we meet one another wherever we are—ready to dance or still braced for impact—and work, and witness, and wait with each other so that together we might be a conductor of joy, a conduit of hope, living love through whose light the whole world is set free.

The choice, my beloved, is ours. Let us choose well. Amen.

www.foundryumc.org

At the Public Square - Rev. Ben Roberts - July 4th, 2021

Mark 6: 1-13 July 4, 2021
At the Public Square. Rev. Ben Roberts for Foundry UMC

It could be the type of situation where someone goes home, and they just know you too well to take you seriously. The kind of place where any time you start talking about something serious, someone responds with a story like, “I remember when you were just a little feller running around bonking a giant yellow bowl on your head. You’d just run around saying “bonk, bonk, bonk.” Tapping the bowl on your head like a giant hat.” It can be hard to lead those who know you or know you best.

In Jesus’ case today, the problem was less an issue with lovingly nostalgic family members and more an issue of proper place. Dr. Emerson Powery in his commentary on this week’s text reminds us of the functions of honor and shame in Mark’s society. He Points out that the crowd in this sequence question and point to Jesus’ brothers, sisters, and mother. No mention of a father, which is the clue showing the crowd challenges his authority by shaming him based on his perceived illegitimate conception, affirming his low standing in the community. 

This “direct insult” is first and foremost an effort to end the conversation or teachings. Some, or at least enough of the crowd, center their feelings and objections to his teachings and use the insult to scandalize and discredit this otherwise powerful, wise teacher. The community as a function of structured life together has deemed this uncontrollable aspect of Jesus’ identity to be sufficient cause for him to have low standing or no authority.

Overly familiar neighbors or truly scandalous public assertiveness, the point is to stop hearing this prophetic teaching. So often in Mark, it is Jesus’ actions and teachings that are the real offense and scandal for anyone hearing or watching. This is especially true for those holding power and privileged positions of leadership such as the Priests (who twisted systems of purity and debt to their own advantage), Roman colonizers and collaborators (who benefited from the taking of land, labor, and goods, if say tributes/tax weren’t/couldn’t be paid), or even the Zealots (whose efforts were more geared to a militaristic takeover of the system for their own advantage). Jesus seems to have had a very annoying stance of nonalignment with any of those groups and strategies and very often criticized them if not outright undermined them. This is how Jesus brought his faith and message into the intersections of the public square, and I suppose it could have gone better.

Hearing a challenging message this age or any age, does not seem to produce such a different result. A queer voice in the United Methodist Church (if they’re out), a homeless voice for housing (if it means higher taxes), a black voice for police reform (if it’s too loud), latinx voice for citizenship (if they weren’t straight A students), a resident of public housing’s voice (really for anything anywhere), saying anything (if it’s sounds political); while not comprehensive or perfect as a metaphor we still see voices like these muted or not prioritized in the public square. The crowd of the public square is still adept at finding a reason not to act upon or even receive a message from or about the vulnerable, and I am often in the crowd. But the consequences of a lack of openness to prophetic messages for liberation, in any age, remain too deadly to hold our silence or maintain our refusal to receive a word of challenge.

“Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house” (Mk 6: 4). 

Again, Powery points out that operating within an honor/shame society, prophets were generally ones who would receive honor, but prophets are usually operating where they are less known. However, for that to be true in someone’s hometown, it likely, and for Jesus in this case, means taking a space or share of honor from someone else and above their appointed or birth share. Or so the norms and perceptions go. It remains that the point here was to keep Jesus’ message from taking root and Jesus himself, and anyone else, from moving up or potentially down the ladder.

I’m struck at the notion of the message and ministry doing better outside one’s hometown. I’m left with the thought how different or perhaps impossible it would have been if James Baldwin wasn’t writing from Paris or how that the “Ripple of Hope” speech Robert Kennedy gave in South Africa wouldn’t have the same reception in South Boston. This was not a right time right place thing in Jesus’ case.

“He could do no deed of power” (Mk 6: 5)

He could do no deed of power, fine, but he was still making his way around and curing sick people it seems despite the crowd’s “unbelief.” These acts of healing are made to sound almost small in our narrative, but I assure they were community shifting in nature. 

Last week Pastor Kelly’s sermon included the story of the woman with a 12 year hemorrhage. But for anyone who was ill or unclean they became subject to purity laws and rituals. They were held out of communal participation. And as a matter of becoming hopefully clean again or to attempt to atone for transgressing the purity laws, would have render payment or sacrifice. For the woman with the hemorrhage and for someone like a farm worker coming in contact almost daily with blood or manure, they could be in a repetitious state of uncleanliness and relentlessly subject to requirements of payment and sacrifice or be excluded. I’ll oversimplify here, these medical bills could drive and keep already vulnerable people in a cycle of poverty and further sickness because their work or personhood simply exposed them more often and they couldn’t afford to get out.

There was a system meant to help in a hardship situation; a required debt system where some goods from everyone were put into a centralized place (synagogue/temple) which could be re-distributed to should the need arise. The goods could be sent out in times of famine, war, or community need. However, it was controlled by the same religious leaders as the purity systems, and either from apathy, corruption, or a perverse incentive to maintain their own financial flow; the debt system meant to help started to contribute further to people’s suffering. James Newton Poling in “Render unto God” notes that “Restoring purity was expensive. When Jesus healed such people, he was bypassing the purity system and objecting to the debt system that contributed to the poverty of the poor.” So let’s try this again.

Jesus goes into his home synagogue, a public square for all manner of activity; religious, political, economic. He begins teaching to anyone listening including those in charge. Those whose responsibility it is to see to the wellbeing of the community. Whose responsibility it is to care for the sick per the purity laws. To care for the poor per the law and through the reciprocity and debt systems. Those who often found themselves called upon to maintain order under threat or on behalf of the Romans. And everyone else including some likely harmed directly by the ways those systems had been twisted. He spoke with authority, he taught with wisdom. He talked about systems of oppression. He was insulted, and likely run out.

So he started messing with people’s money, healed a few sick people. He was astounded at their unbelief. But he couldn’t open them up, that’s my phrasing, he could do no deed of power.

Jesus’ faith is rooted in that baseline understanding, love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. In so doing we ensure that the good creation indeed has enough to meet every economic, physical, or spiritual need anyone might have. Jesus’ faith is one of liberation for those who suffer. That liberation doesn’t come from prayers to the Donkey, or Elephant, or to the bronze eagle of the Roman Empire, but in a powerful and vulnerable act of opening oneself to the possibility of God’s work in the world. Opening to the prophetic messages already and always out there. Opening ourselves up to the possibility that we might be part of the crowd and beneficiaries of twisted systems, recognizing there’s grace even for us. Opening ourselves up to the fact that God calls and can use us, no matter what anyone else may deem insufficient about your personhood or what names they want to call you.

God is interested in the discourses and systems at play at the public square. Jesus’ ministry is at once and always spiritual and political, in that it cares for how we have life and how we have life together. This encounter at the synagogue becomes the play book for the sending out of the disciples. 

Hometown ministry or anywhere else, the final verses Jesus instructs the disciples to pare themselves down in dress and resources, “no bag, no money.” Essentially, take no pretense, no high or low expectation, keep yourself open to what you will encounter. Be organized with partners go to places and build relationships. Listen and help name what is broken, what is unjust, and what needs healing…even to the powerful of the public square. And if the crowd refuses to be open, move on; to the next leader, the next house, the next day or opportunity to speak words of life in spaces where they’re desperately needed.

God is interested in the discourses and systems at play at the public square. God asks us to live our faith at this intersection. God knows twisted power’s effect intimately, living and experiencing it through Jesus’ life. God knows intimately how the crowd reacts, rejects, and finds excuses. But none of that can stop God’s power for healing and liberation. Be of good courage, because the God who knows and loves this whole creation, knows, and loves you, and goes ever before you.

https://foundryumc.org/

Reversing Otherhood - Rev. Kelly Grimes - June 27th, 2021

Reversing Otherhood

Text: Mark 5:21

Rev. Kelly Grimes

June 27, 2021

Foundry United Methodist Church, Washington DC