Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

What’s It Gonna Be? - November 8th, 2020

What’s It Gonna Be?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October November 8, 2020, “Choose This Day” series.

Texts: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25  

The people of Israel have finally arrived in the land that was promised. Joshua, Moses’ successor, is the son of Joseph, the one sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, the one who rose to great power as an aide to an Egyptian Pharoah. Joseph’s presence and leadership during a famine was a catalyst for the Israelites landing in Egypt in the first place—where they grew too numerous in a way that threatened the new Pharoah who proceeded to enslave them. We know the story from there…Moses… Passover…Exodus…Wilderness…Conflict and Conquest… and now Joshua gathers the tribes for a covenant-making ritual in the Promised Land.

This moment is a significant point of transition for the nation, a decision point about what kind of nation Israel will be and how they will live together in a new context. They bring into that context a reality in which God and militarism and tribalism and religious commandments are all mixed up in a complicated soup. And the historical players, those whose names are etched into the narrative as on stone monuments—from Abraham to Joseph to Moses to Joshua—carry with them plenty of complicated baggage themselves. 

This is a moment when Israel is ostensibly trying to create a community that is grounded in the high ideals of the Mosaic law with love of God and neighbor at the center. But they seek to build that community on conquered land as a people who bear the scars of a history of slavery. Israel has gotten where they are now through violent, military conflict and plunder. And within their own nation there are rifts and rivalries between tribes. 

Just so we’re tracking, how does this story resonate with our own in this moment in the United States of America?

 

High ideals and lofty vision, check.

Been through some stuff, check.

Conquered land, check.

Scars of slavery, check.

Imperfect historical leaders who’ve been both brave and good and selfish and terrible, check.

Fueled and formed by instruments of war, check.

Rifts and rivalries between tribes…well? Check.

God’s name and character stirred—perhaps dubiously—into the mix, check. 

 

A central, grounding narrative of our faith is the story of the exodus from Egypt, the liberation of Israel from slavery and their long journey in the wilderness, trusting in the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey. The wilderness narrative is my go-to in seasons like the year 2020—or really any time of intense struggle, lack, or uncertainty. The promise that God receives the cries of the unlikely ones, the powerless and oppressed, acts as an advocate and guide to liberate them and to upend the unjust systems in ways that bring greater equity and lead to a promised land of new life and new community. I love this. It gives me a frame and a hope. And I believe that is appropriate—there’s truth in it. 

But I will say that I don’t like thinking about the part of the wilderness wandering that includes the more complicated, unsavory baggage. I don’t like thinking about how, in the scriptural record, God gets saddled with responsibility for the violence done as our ancestors marched toward what they believed was their entitled due. I don’t like thinking about how the high ideals for the new kind of community in the new land were compromised by the way the new land was acquired through conquest and displacement. I don’t like thinking about how there was conflict and power posturing among the people at every turn along the way. I don’t like thinking about how easy it is—even for an oft-conquered people—to tell this story from the perspective of the conqueror without even acknowledging the voices of the conquered.

Sometimes we need to tell the hard, complicated truth of our history to be able to truly step into God’s new thing. To tell the hard truth doesn’t mean that we erase anything. It doesn’t mean that we don’t acknowledge the beautiful and brave and honorable parts. Rather it simply asks that we are willing to look at the fullest picture and to name what we’ve ignored or gotten wrong, where harm has been done, the things and people we need to care for if we truly want to live the ideals, values, and faith we profess.

We are in a moment in which our nation’s history is catching up with us. I’m not learned enough in the various dynamics nor do I have time today to try to sum it all up in any comprehensive way. But I dare say choices that have been made from the very founding our nation—choices made by public officials and by private citizens and residents—have had consequences. And we are currently in a moment of reckoning with all those consequences—the good, bad, and ugly. The struggle to create community aligned with our highest ideals is at a point of boiling over. 

We know that poverty and systemic racism leave thousands upon thousands of our siblings vulnerable to indignities and violence of various kinds every day. That reality has only gotten worse in recent years. We know that the impoverished and people of color have been most cruelly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic that has, to date, killed more than 237,000 of our siblings in this country. If we’re honest about recent history, we know that lies and mismanagement allowed the pandemic to get so out of hand. And what we’re also experiencing right now, as one journalist has written, is the way that events of the past four years have “divided seemingly like-minded people of goodwill: friends, relatives, neighbors, professional colleagues — people of similar backgrounds and who theoretically should align politically, but don’t. And who have a hard time feeling anything but contempt for the other.” 

We are in a place where we cannot imagine how others can actually support who or what they support—and vice versa. We cannot even agree on what the issues are, much less have a meaningful conversation about them that might leverage our different approaches to possible solutions. And today we know that a large number of our siblings in this nation are feeling grief, fear, confusion, and rage. And a large percentage of us are feeling relief, hope, and utter joy even as we know that there is so much work ahead of us. And there are many who will be having a challenging mix of emotions and thoughts as we try to process the most extreme, hateful reactivity in these days. Some among us will want revenge for damage done. Some will not trust anything that is being said by anyone. 

Today we find ourselves in a moment in which we, like the tribes of Israel, have some choices to make. Those choices have at their core the central question: What God will we serve? Because the kind of God we serve makes a difference for better or for worse. Our faith—the God whom we serve—forms our sense of purpose, our priorities, our values, our understanding of what it means to be human and how to be in community. The God whom we serve will help us know how to respond in the days and months ahead of us as citizens of the Kin-dom of God who are part of this nation. 

And the God whom we are called to serve is radically free, unbound to any human political system, party, or politician, yet always working deep among us for the sake of what is right. The God whom we serve is the God who gives us freedom and power to resist evil and injustice in any form they present themselves. To stand against anything that does harm to our neighbors, that denies dignity, that steals children and separates families, that harms the planet, that intentionally stirs the reptilian energies of our nature instead of the better angels. Our God is the God who helps us have the courage to be honest about our history, to be peacemakers, to love and listen when it would be easier to hate and dismiss. Our God sends Spirit to encourage and inspire people to tirelessly work over years, in ways most people will never know, to do the things that move the needle, that bend the moral arc toward justice, that further the cause of the Kin-dom. Our God doesn’t abandon us in our stubbornness and foolishness but instead continues to draw near to try to help us perceive how to get to the Promised Land without destroying everything and everyone in our path.

Regardless of the election outcome, our choice today would have been the same. Will we seek to serve a God who calls us to sacred resistance which is—from start to finish— “about love, love that looks upon each person with a desire for their wellbeing, love that looks upon human community with a desire for healing and peace with justice, love that looks into all creation with a desire for mending and reverence, love that is compassionate and merciful, love that is stubborn and sacrificial.” Patient and kind…not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. Not insisting on its own way…not irritable or resentful…not rejoicing in wrongdoing, but rejoicing in the truth. This is how God loves the world. This is how God loves you. This is the love God created us to choose and to live.  

I’ve heard it said recently that a focus on love is weak, is for wimps, you know, that whole tough guy thing. I’ll just quote the Bible, love is stronger than death. Hate is easy. Love is the challenge.

At a certain point, like the Israelites of old, we simply have to make a decision about whether we’re serious about loving God and loving neighbor, whether we’re serious about living the promise or just want to keep talking about it. 

So what’s it gonna be?

I pray that we will continue to be and become a community of sacred resistance, a community willing to be bold and humble, to risk getting things wrong as we try to get it right for the sake of love and justice, to be a people who can honestly say, trusting in God’s help, “as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”

https://foundryumc.org/

Blessed Choices - November 1st, 2020

Blessed Choices

A homily preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October November 1, 2020, All Saints Sunday, “Choose This Day” series.

  Texts: Revelation 7:9-17, Matthew 5:1-12  

“Choose this day whom you will serve…” These words were spoken by Joshua to the Israelites at a key moment in their history. What God will you serve? The question is always before us and our answer has implications for every aspect of our lives. This choice affects all our other choices. And every moment of life, from the most significant to the mundane, involves choices at some level.  

As a nation, we are on the brink of a big choice. Like every choice, the outcome will have consequences. Each one of us is responsible for our own discernment and action. After the election, we will still have choices. Every single day. Regardless of the outcome, there will be important work to do, decisions to make, priorities to discern. 

And as followers of Jesus we’re not left without guidance. In the wilderness place, Jesus was tempted to serve a god who twisted scripture to try to draw him away from a life of self-giving service, away from the God of love, peace, humility, vulnerability, and justice. Jesus made a choice—and, in case you don’t know the story, Jesus didn’t choose to only feed his own belly, to take the money and power, or show off to get praise and fame. (Mt. 4)

And today we receive the opening lines to Jesus’s most famous sermon, the “sermon on the mount.” Honestly, every time I am given this text to preach I feel compelled to counter the ways I’ve heard it interpreted as the “BE attitudes,” that mourning or being denied righteousness (justice) are our ticket to getting blessed. That feels like a ridiculously slippery slope. 

It helps me to remember that both Jesus and the writer of Matthew were speaking to particular communities, both of whom were vulnerable and suffering persecution, exclusion, and subjugation. Again and again, they were faced with choices about how they would respond and where they would put their loyalty and trust. What God would they serve? In the midst, these communities followed Jesus—or at least tried to. And they, like us, are drawn to Jesus and look to the wisdom and way revealed through him for guidance and encouragement.

What if the opening words of Jesus’s sermon are an acknowledgement of the realities and varieties of human feelings and experiences in the crowd? Imagine Jesus simply offering a blessing, a promise of God’s grace and presence in whatever circumstance folk are experiencing—a promise that things won’t always be this way. 

Are you humbled or feel like the wind has gotten knocked out of you? Blessing upon you. Are you swallowed up in grief? Blessing upon you. Do you feel powerless or taken advantage of because of your gentleness, kindness, and mercy? Blessing upon you. Are you starved for a crumb of justice in your life? Blessing upon you. Are you seeking to act with purity of heart, with good intentions, seeking righteousness and peace even when it is difficult to stay the course? Blessing upon you. Are you pouring yourself out for the sake of others, for the sake of justice and, as a result, being slandered and persecuted? Blessing be upon you.

The God revealed in Jesus blesses us in our humanity, in our struggle and pain, and in our trying to live aligned with God’s wisdom and way. 

That way has at the center loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves. And as we reflected upon last week, it’s not always clear exactly what that will look like. This means we have to discern and then choose… 

The famous prayer of Thomas Merton comes to mind: 

My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 

I love this prayer for so many reasons. But perhaps chief among them is that Merton names our situation as those who choose to try to love God and neighbor. We desire to do God’s will but cannot always know if we’re getting it quite right. Even still, we try and trust that God knows we are trying. 

On this All Saints Sunday, we celebrate the Saints of our tradition and culture—known and honored by many—and the saints of our own lives who may have been known only in their small circle. But we give thanks for each one of them and for the ways that they tried. No human is without fault and yet there is a beauty and power in trying to love God and love neighbor as ourselves, to trust God’s love and mercy as we deal with the consequences of failure, and to keep on going regardless of the circumstances with as much grace and strength as possible. 

Today, I hear Jesus blessing us in all the circumstances of our lives right this moment—blessing us not with a promise of a winning lottery ticket, our desired outcome in the election, or quick resolution to the overwhelming challenges of our time, but with the promise of God’s love and presence and an inheritance that far outlasts this moment and our time in this world. I hear Jesus blessing the saints who have crossed over into the next life—“a great multitude…from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…they who have come out of the great ordeal.” (Rev.7:9, 14)

And I give thanks for the vision in Revelation that points toward a place and time beyond our confusion and our struggle to choose rightly, a place and a time in which the barriers between us have been broken down and God’s beloved children across the earth will no longer hunger for food or thirst for justice, where all will be willing to honor our common humanity, our shared life, where all will be nourished by love that bubbles up like a spring, and will humbly allow God, like a mother, to wipe every tear from our eyes. (Rev. 7:16-17)

Why not choose to try and live that vision now?…For it may be that in trying and trusting…we are blessed…

http://foundryumc.org/

The Urgent Demands of Love - October 25th, 2020

The Urgent Demands of Love

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 25, 2020, “Fearless Generosity: For Such A Time As This” series.

    Text:  Matthew 22:34-46

“Enough of this tip-toeing around the fire.” This word I received in prayer a couple of months back has been a struggle to understand. What is the fire? And why am I tip-toeing around it? Upon reflection, I’m pretty sure these words are Christ calling me out for my reluctance to step more fully into the fire of God’s all-consuming love that asks me to trust God more and stop wasting energy on pointless striving. After 50 years of living and trying so hard to love God and neighbor, it’s a bit of a drag to get tagged by Spirit as a tip-toer. But there it is. Love demands much and always more of us. Not more production or perfection, but more of our true, honest, vulnerable selves, more of our willingness to surrender to God’s passionate and tender love for us. God seeks to draw us into the divine fire, not for our own sakes alone—though certainly that’s part of it—but because as we live more fully in the love of God we live more intentionally and generously with and for others.

Some words of G.K. Chesterton come to mind as I name this—“Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.” 

There may be those who would push back on this statement. After all, the heart of Christianity is love. How is that so hard? Just love. 

Right… OK… Just love… Easy…Because love is always straightforward, the loving thing to do is always clear. Because loving ourselves in a healthy way comes so naturally we shouldn’t have any problem loving our neighbors that way… And our love never gets tangled up with old baggage or confused with illusions... And of course loving God in the moment of tragedy or abandonment is a breeze… and the whole loving our enemies thing? a snap. 

A moment’s reflection reminds us that love is many things—power, passion, energy, the very source of life and meaning—it may even be simple! But easy it is not. The love we’re about in the context of our faith is not found in empty words or good intentions or paper hearts. Our aim is the kind of love embodied, enacted, lived by Jesus, it is an all-in kind of love: heart, soul, mind, and strength. 

But so often in church circles love gets watered down into such thin soup that the hungry remain hungry. I keep going back to some lines from Austin Channing Brown’s memoir I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness in which she names the ways that love as it is practiced in Christian circles is so often “inconsequential.” Particularly speaking of her experience as a Black woman in a culture that assumes “white is right,” Brown names how easy it is to make love dissolve “into a demand for grace, for niceness, for endless patience—to keep everyone feeling comfortable while hearts are being changed. In this way, so-called love dodges any responsibility for action and waits for the great catalytic moment that finally spurs accountability.” She writes, “I am not interested in love that is aloof. In a love that refuses hard work, instead demanding a bite-size education that doesn’t transform anything. In a love that qualifies the statement ‘Black lives matter,’ because it is unconvinced this is true. I am not interested in a love that refuses to see systems and structures of injustice, preferring to ask itself only about personal intentions. This aloof kind of love is useless to me.”

If our understanding of love is mostly about “keeping a peace” that has nothing to do with justice, or a love driven by nostalgia or tribal, national, or bloodline loyalties…or if our understanding is that love gets parceled out in little bits or is so careful that it makes no impact or gives up when things get difficult we’re missing the mark.

In the greatest commandment God doesn’t say love me when you feel like it. God doesn’t say, love me with your mind alone, thinking Goddish thoughts and debating the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. God doesn’t say only love me with your praisy warm feelings surrounded by nothing and no one that challenges you to stretch yourself. The commandment isn’t to love God by checking boxes and doing tasks that satisfy our own sense of accomplishment and self-righteousness—the call is to love with soul, with our deepest wholeness and essence and humanity, that which connects with every other soul…that which connects us to our neighbor.

And we’re not called to love only the neighbors with whom we share common history, language, or culture. The commandment doesn’t say love your neighbor when it’s convenient or when there is no risk involved to you or when it doesn’t ask anything of you. The love at the heart of our faith, the love that God IS and Jesus embodied, is a love that gives and gives, that risks and becomes as vulnerable as we are—that pursues us (sometimes quietly and other times, less so) until we fall into that divine, all-embracing, all-consuming love and so finally yearn and then learn to not be so self-centered and afraid.

The love we’re called to is consequential, it’s a love that changes the world because it counters the thin, quid pro quo, transactional ways of love so prevalent all around us. Jesus’ love was not aloof. It was incarnate, passionate, sacrificial, generous, intimate, patient, and gracious. Jesus’ love crossed boundaries and tore down walls—really tore them down, didn’t just rebrand or post a sign—as he created a new kind of human community where persons are invited to let their humanity touch others’ humanity. Jesus shows us the all-in love God lavishes upon us and beckons us to enter ever more fully into that divine fire and into the life and community that emerges. 

Beloved, as Foundry we’re just trying to learn how to love God and love each other like that. 

Right now, we are experiencing social, economic, cultural, political, environmental, spiritual, and relational upheaval the likes of which haven’t been seen in ages—and certainly not in our time. In this time of volatility and possibility, Foundry is being driven by the urgent demands of love. We will not withdraw from the difficult conversations and decisions around racial equity or back down from our commitment to building a fully inclusive church and society that honors the gifts of all including LGBTQ siblings. We continue to serve struggling neighbors in our community in both direct ways and through mission partnerships to provide IDs, food, safety, and shelter. We are going deeper in Bible study, not skimming the surface. We are building larger networks of relationship, not retreating into isolation and closed groups. We are reaching out to connect with our folx who struggle to connect in this current digital environment. We are using any and all resources available to proclaim a Gospel vision of hope and liberating love in ways that reach our local community and stretch into the far corners of the world through technology. We may take it for granted, but the truth is that there are so many people who do not know that “Beloved” is their true, family name! So many don’t know that their lives are precious and powerful and meaningful and cherished. So many are lost in lies, bound by perversions of what it means to love, swallowed up in a culture that tells them they are nothing unless they have money or a gun or a fancy title or car or home, are unlovable unless they fit into the so-called “norms” of society. 

My dearest hope and vison is that, together, we might create community that is always becoming more like the truly human community Jesus would be proud of, a community where tenderness and beauty are cultivated, a community where we are willing to be honest about our lives, our struggles, our hopes, our ideas, our feelings—where we receive one another as people, not roles or job titles or those who are supposed to have it all together, but where we practice being human with other humans, all on a journey and trying to find our way and always seeking how we can love our neighbors in consequential ways. In this crucible moment, we have an opportunity to let go of things that get in the way such a vision and to take up new things that will feed it.

And there is no map for this moment. There is little precedent and a lot of uncertainty.

All this may seem ridiculously overwhelming. We’re already exhausted at every level. I feel that. And when I was feeling it most deeply, the word came, “No more tip-toeing around the fire…” 

And in our collective weariness and anxiety, a word has come with extraordinary clarity: “Foundry, you are called for such a time as this.” No more tip-toeing around the fire… Love demands much and always more of us. Because, as Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, it is through the redemptive power of love that “we will be able to make of this old world a new world.” By God’s amazing grace and perfect love, may we be set on fire with the kind of love that makes things truly new.

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Love demands that even when things are most difficult, we keep trying, that we do what we can and give what we can. On this consecration Sunday, I am inspired by the commitment and generosity of so many. And I know that the ONLY way we will meet our goal and continue to meet the urgent demands of love is if every person and household gives with fearless generosity. This is not a time to think that someone else is going to make it happen. I always want you to know that I do not ask you to do anything that I am not willing to do. I give more than 10% of my take home pay to Foundry with my goal being to get to 10% of my gross salary. This is a core spiritual discipline for me and is a way I make my love consequential. The late pastor and prophet, William Sloane Coffin once said, “What we need to realize is that to love effectively we must act collectively.” We love most effectively when we share the work. 

Over these last weeks you’ve been invited to Fearless Generosity, estimating your regular giving to Foundry in 2021 for such a time as this. Those gifts are vital for Foundry’s continuing ability to show up and provide a faithful, loving, and justice-seeking witness in the world. 2020 has brought challenges beyond our wildest dreams as the pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racism have broken not just human bodies but the body politic. Illness and injustice continue to take a devastating toll. Through it all, Foundry continues as an anchor, a lifeline, and a beacon in the storm. We have provided concrete support for vulnerable neighbors in DC and seamlessly pivoted our worship, music, discipleship, family, and care ministries to online experiences. Foundry’s impact has not lessened but grown in these months of quarantine. Our witness in the wake of the murder of George Floyd touched hearts and minds not only of our immediate neighbors, but people of faith and conscience across the country. 

By estimating your giving, you give us the tools we need to budget faithfully for the work that lays ahead. We want to say thank you to those of you who’ve already made your estimates.

I want to share with you now a graphic that shows where we are as of right now: We’ve received a total of $23,384,838,338.21. If you’ve not yet had a chance to make an estimate, there’s still time! Please remember that even if you are set up for a recurring gift, we still need you to submit an estimate for 2021 in order for your generosity to be added to our number. Every single gift is so important.

As you receive the gifts of Foundry’s virtual choir and see images of the way your gifts have been and are at work in our community, I invite your prayerful discernment about what you will contribute to help Foundry meet our goal for such a time as this. And then please visit our website and submit your estimate of giving there or you can use the link we’re going to drop into the comments section now.

To love effectively, we act collectively. Let’s do it. 😊

https://foundryumc.org/

Glory at God’s Back - October 18th, 2020

Glory at God’s Back

A reflection offered by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 18, 2020, “Fearless Generosity: For Such A Time As This” series.

    Text:  Exodus 33:12-23

I like to think of myself as a person who is able to take life as it comes, a “go with the flow” kinda human. And, to a large extent, I think that is true. But, truth be told, when it comes to some things, I’m as much a control freak as anyone—mostly when it comes to things that I believe will affect the life and health of my family, my congregation, or the larger community. And, while I labor to pay attention to the more subtle and unspoken shifts and movements of things, my default is to take things and people at “face value”—to desire and to trust a direct word. With people and with God. Please don’t make me have to guess what’s going on. Just tell me! Show me! 

Moses seems to be saying something like that in our story today: “Come on, God…lay your cards on the table. Show me what you’ve got for us. Show me your face. And no poker face, please. Otherwise, how will we know what to do? How will we perceive what it takes to be loving and just, to resist things that do harm? If you don’t tell us what you’re up to, if you’re not willing to show us, how will we know how to be your people?”

And here is what I hear God saying in response: “I tell you what I’ll do—I’ll set you up in a safe place and will pass by. Not gonna show you my face—because it is impossible for you to comprehend the full picture of what I’m up to in any given moment. And even if you could take it in, I wouldn’t show you. Because you have such a tendency to make idols of revelation—to make a static, dead thing—like an old photograph, a moment snapped in time that becomes what you believe life is or, in this case, who I am. 

If I showed you my face in any given moment, you might freeze-frame that moment, rather than remain open to the dynamic, always new thing that I’m doing. I am that I am…I will be what I will be…and while you may not understand it, my hiddenness is part of my mercy and grace. If I show you who I am today, you will think you’ve got me figured out, that you can control me or put me in a box or contain me in a book. If I am up front with you today then you may think that the current vision is set in stone and cannot be shifted based on changes in the world. And that would lead to stagnation, exclusion, alienation. If life isn’t changing, that means it is dead. If things aren’t changing, aren’t open to receive and to give life-giving love anew each moment, then death is assured. So I’m just going to pass on by—so near that you can feel my breath flowing through you, but you will only see my back. You will perceive the after-effects of my movement in your presence. You may then perceive the direction I am moving and can choose whether to follow… 

Oof… how easy it is to make idols of revelation, to put God in a box. And the whole idea of God’s hiddenness as a grace that keeps us open and alert? …Spirit hit me between the eyes with this new word for me from this old story. 

We at Foundry came into this year with momentum, with years of work and investment in ministry bearing fruit. It seemed we had glimpsed God’s direction for us that was leading to new life and vitality. 2020 was sure to be challenging, but we were as engaged as ever in the work toward full inclusion in the UMC and ready to be full participants in General Conference and the process of discerning and creating what comes next for our denomination. Years of study, prayer and preparation were finally taking concrete shape in what we now know as the Journey to Racial Justice. 5 years of investment in program ministries that strengthen connection with God and one another and help us study and serve together more regularly were bearing fruit—attracting new people, growing disciples, inspiring calls to ministry, and expanding our reach for service and justice. Investments in human resources and staff development were also paying off in ways that supported the vision and mission and that made for a healthy work environment for the team. The Board was moving into an even more intentional mode of visioning and strategic thinking. And all of this contributed to an overwhelmingly successful financial stewardship campaign in which we exceeded our goal for the 2020 budget. We. Were. On. A. Roll.

And then… COVID… and then… George Floyd…

So over these past months I have been praying that God would set me—and us—on solid rock, in a safe place and would draw near enough that we might feel the breath, the wind, the Spirit of God in real ways, in ways that might give us a sign or some direction for what to do next. I’ve been ruminating over these months on how God is at work deep within our lives and world, moving even when we can’t perceive it. Yet it took days of contemplation on our text today to begin to get shaken out of the give me more information and some semblance of certainty stupor.

At the beginning of the year when we were seeing the sprouting and growth of so many seeds planted over the years, it seems God may have decided we needed to add another row to hoe…or to engage what we’re up to a bit more slowly…or to perceive things that we’d been missing. And that feels frustrating (we were on a roll!), but it means the potential for more life, more nourishment, more growth, more health, more opportunities to cultivate and be good stewards of the vineyard we considered a couple of weeks back. It is so easy to make our plan or our vision into an idol—even if it is a Spirit-inspired plan! But in the midst of the painful pandemics of this year, the assurance is that God passes by in a way that can unveil our idolatries and lead us where we need to go.

I often get hung up on the word “glory”—which from the original Hebrew can mean abundance, honor, or glory. Moses asks God to reveal God’s “glory.” St. Irenaeus in the second century CE said that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. And, if that’s the case (as I’m persuaded it may be), then I am with Moses—“God, show us ourselves fully alive, show us communities, cities, nations, in which humans are truly human, fully alive in love and compassion and justice… Show us what that looks like and show us how to get there. God, hide yourself to keep us open and receptive and curious if that’s what it takes. Put us in the cleft of a rock alone for a while to ponder and discern what you have for us if that’s what it takes. Challenge us to expand our vision and our sense of call even when it means sacrifice if that’s what it takes.” // 

If we think we’ve seen it all, then we are no longer open to the new life that will surely come. If we are holding on to an old picture of ourselves, of our congregation, or of any human reality—as if that were the whole picture, then we’re prone to lose vitality, aliveness. You and I are always called by God to grow in holiness and in love, to become more fully human, more fully alive! 

And Foundry is called right now to expand our vision not only of what we do, but of who we are and how we do what we do. It’s time for us to release the fear that we will lose something if we embrace some new technology. It’s time for us to be open to the notion that we are more diverse than we might imagine and that full inclusion means grappling with messy intersections. It’s time for us to consider how God is asking us to risk discomfort for the sake of justice. It’s time for us to ponder making visual and structural and policy changes to more concretely reflect our commitments. And I’m only giving voice to a few things that have seemed to bubble up in my own prayer and discernment…it is not the whole picture and is always unfolding. 

God is always out ahead of us—leading us into a future that we cannot fully perceive, but that is full of possibility and promise and freedom. God is always ahead of us, but not so far ahead that we are alone or lost. We perceive God’s “back”—or what trails behind in the wake of God’s activity and presence. And because God’s love is new every morning and because God works all day long for good, what trails behind in the wake of God is glory. It’s difficult to perceive God every day—especially when things are difficult. But every week, when our staff meets together, we begin by naming where we see God showing up. And there is always a robust list where we are seeing the activity of Spirit moving for good—showing us new things, giving inspiration, and leading us into the future. 

Maya Angelou once wrote, “I believe that each of us comes from the creator trailing wisps of glory.” Imagine that… our lives—yours and mine—born and renewed in the wake of God’s passing by… And imagine the new life for Foundry—sparkling and alive through God’s unresting, unhasting, always loving presence. Imagine it… and then be surprised when it is different and better…beyond your wildest dreams.

https://foundryumc.org/

The Person For The Job - October 11th, 2020

The Person for the Job

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli with Foundry UMC, October 11, 2020, “Fearless Generosity: For Such A Time As This” series.

    Text:  Exodus 32:1-14

Ever experienced a moment when it felt like no one was at the wheel? Like you’re either stuck in neutral or careening toward a cliff with no one who seems to be there to do anything about it? Well, the Israelites are there. God is up the mountain and Moses went up there, too. And there’s not been a peep from them for forty days and forty nights. The Israelites’ response to this reflects a common human tendency when feeling powerless and miserable and faced with waiting and uncertainty and silence: they get impatient and fickle and make some seriously questionable decisions.

The Israelites—aided and abetted by Moses’s brother Aaron—decide they’ve had enough of not having things in their own hands, of not controlling the timeline and the journey’s itinerary. And so, driven by some perverse nostalgia and an even more irrational trust in the values represented by a golden bull—an image made of riches gleaned from the Egyptian empire—the people throw God over for a sacred cow. 

Now just to be clear, the people have already received the 10 commandments (Ex 20); they have also pledged, on multiple occasions, with great gusto, that they will live according to the words God has given Moses. And, OK, it’s been a while they’ve been waiting—but likely not seven months of COVID isolation!—(I digress) Anyway, here they are in some ancient version of “burning man” out in the desert… perhaps thinking that their own wealth and creativity and ideas and the god they make for themselves will lead them into a future that is better than what that other God had promised. I can imagine this kind of conversation at the foot of the mountain: “That God is hard to understand. And this Moses—he seems to have done all he’s capable of. Whatever. And why did we think that God was so great again? Where is that God right now? And what has that God done for us lately? We’re the ones who’ve been doing all the heavy lifting. So our strength and vision and experience are enough. The gods made from our stuff, the gods that are familiar, the gods that can be held with a leash of our own imagination, are so much more predictable and manageable than the God who is free. Let’s make some golden gods and party!”

None of this is really that shocking. In fact, it’s all rather painfully familiar. How many of us have been tempted to worship at the altar of sacred cows—the old, familiar ways? How many of us get impatient with God and are tempted to throw God over? How many of us catch ourselves paying homage to the bull market and worshiping at the altar of the almighty dollar? How many of us or those around us pine with nostalgia for some illusory past in which we try to convince ourselves that things were better and easier? This is all very human and familiar—whether it’s the 13th century BCE or this seemingly God-forsaken 2020. No surprises here.

What does seem shocking in the story we receive today is that God is so ready to do the people in. But if anyone’s paying attention, this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God whose name is I am that I am and I will be who I will be, the God who chose to be in a love relationship with a people who were from the other side of the tracks—this God is passionate and perfectly free to feel all the feels… and often does! God’s first reaction is to disown his people (v. 7) and then proceeds to propose raining fire on the people, their party, and their gold statue and to be done with it. This God gets hurt and angry and disappointed and all the rest. 

Good thing Moses was there. And Moses was there with God because, evidently, God knew who was needed as a partner in the relationship and in the work with this people. Way back at Horeb when God first spoke to Moses from the bush that burned but not consumed, God was clear that Moses was the person for the job. Perhaps it was because Moses proved he could hang in there with a God who hot as a firecracker, who had the capacity to consume things with fire, but refrained from doing so… Who knows?

That’s certainly what he does in this instance. In the face of God’s burning hurt and rage, Moses acts as the people’s advocate and as God’s advisor. On the surface, Moses appeals to God’s political reputation: “Do you really want the Egyptians to think you were just kidding about your love and compassion for the people Israel? Do you want the Egyptians to think you are a hypocrite, that you are evil?” But Moses is connecting to something much deeper. Moses says, “remember.” Remember those you have loved through the ages, those to whom you promised your presence, your providence, your love. Remember. Remember who you are. 

A few weeks ago, I received my first ever topic request for a FaceBook Live “Ponderings from the Purple Parlor.” The question I was asked to address is basically “Why doesn’t God punish people who do harm?” or, as I boiled it down, “Why do good things happen to ‘bad’ people?” As I reflected on these questions, I was clear that it really comes down to what kind of God we have. What kind of God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Miriam, Esther, Ruth, and Jesus? As I’ve already shared, this God is passionate, sometimes burning with love and other times with wrath. And yet, the story we tell is that even when our God has been forgotten, ignored, betrayed, and defied, even when our God has to watch beloved ones do silly, selfish, cruel, destructive things, even in all that, our God doesn’t abandon or destroy us. And God doesn’t coerce or manipulate us. But really wants to be in a relationship—and for that to work, everyone has to be free to choose, free to give and to receive love and care. The God of our spiritual tradition may have moments of rage and disappointment and grief, but is—at the end of the day—compassionate and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. 

And that is lovely when it means that we receive compassion and mercy. It is not at all emotionally satisfying when we look around at those who are happily worshiping their golden bulls and making themselves gods and living the high life, all the while defrauding the poor and demonizing the marginalized and using people as commodities and poisoning the earth. 

And here is where I’m kinda stunned at Moses. Because notice that in the midst of the divine fit God says to Moses, “and of you I will make a great nation.” How tempting is that? After all, the people dancing around the bull in the valley have been blaming Moses for every little thing since they crossed over on dry land. And being the Patriarch of a great nation would mean enjoying the good things of life—privilege, wealth, and more. It could have been very emotionally satisfying at a certain level for Moses to see the people get punished by God for their lack of gratitude, for the ways they hurt him, for taking him for granted, for their fickleness and sin, for being so quick to forget. 

But Moses doesn’t forget who God is. Moses doesn’t forget that God spared his life on more than one occasion, that God called him—a stutterer—to speak in the halls of power, that God knew he was a murderer and still honored him with a mighty task to participate in the liberation of those in bondage, and with an intimacy with God that gave him strength. Moses doesn’t forget who God is—a God who receives the cries of the suffering, who is gracious and merciful, who provides manna in the desert and water from a rock, who refuses to stand by while beloved ones are oppressed, who lifts up the lowly, and makes a way when there seems to be no way. 

So instead of egging God on and cashing in on God’s pain-inspired offer to make Moses king of the castle, Moses—in a stunning act of humility and faithfulness—says to God, “Remember.” Remember who you are. 

God must have known that Moses—even with all his imperfections—was the one God needed on that stretch of the journey for such a time as that time on Mt. Sinai. In verse 14 we are told that after listening to Moses, God “changed God’s mind.” The word here, vai·yin·na·chem, has echoes of repentance, of feeling sorry for something. God remembers what is true, remembers God’s own heart of love and compassion and how much the people have already been through.

In such a time as this, a moment of crisis on so many levels in our land and in our world, it is important to remember what is real and what matters most of all. Remember what kind of God we serve. For it is the image of that God imprinted upon all flesh. And it is the love, justice, and compassion of that God we are made to enact in the world. Remember. Remember that the awful headlines do not represent the whole of the human family. Remember. Remember how God has been gracious and merciful to you when you didn’t deserve it. Remember. Remember when God has brought you through and helped you cross over. Remember. Remember when somehow you had enough to get by when you couldn’t believe it was possible. Remember. Remember that God has called you and empowered you to be yourself in the world, to offer your strength and vision and humor and talent and brilliance and creativity and kindness to the great work of mending and making a more gentle world. Remember. 

Remember that you are a part of God’s family and your family name is Beloved. Remember. Remember that you are the person God needs right now to step up, to serve, to give, to pray, to love, to advocate, for such a time as this. Remember. Remember that even when it seems that things are stuck or careening toward a cliff or mired in greed and conflict and violence and fear, God has promised to see us through to a place of new life and restored community. Remember. And then go ahead and throw a party, giving thanks for that God of ours who will never let us go.

https://foundryumc.org/