Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Nothing Can Separate You From the Love of God - Summer Guest Series: Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey July 26th, 2020

Live Life as if...

Nothing Can Separate You From the Love of God

Foundry UMC DC July 26, 2020

 

I am so thankful to be with you today.  What a privilege!  I have been looking forward to being with you in person but well you know what they say about the best laid plans....

 

We are all getting used to this virtual platform and while it is likely to be with us for a while, I miss being in community, singing hymns – we are built to be in community.

 

I give thanks every day for this less than perfect option of connecting with people.

 

I have worshiped in more churches than ever before, attended more meetings and even have enjoyed a meal with family and joined with friends each week for a virtual Happy Hour.  

 

So, here we are together in this unique and what now seems normal way.  

 

Like many of you, I keep looking for something normal, something familiar.  One way I have done that is to return to familiar scripture.  Scripture that has spoken to me in the past.  Scripture like Isaiah 43 – Don’t fear for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name – you are mine.

 

Or Psalm 139.... you are marvelously and wonderfully made – I actually like this better in Spanish – the passion in some words just doesn’t translate – maravillosas son tus obras – I love the word maravillosa!

So, can you imagine my surprise when I realized that today’s lectionary text was Romans 8:26-39?  

 

The Spirit comes to help our weakness.

 

When we don’t know what to pray, the Spirit intercedes for us.

 

We know that God works all things together

for good

 

If God is for us who could possibly be against us?

 

Who will separate us from Christ’s love?  Hardship? NO

Distress? NO

Persecution? NO

Famine? NO

Nakedness, peril, sword? NO

 

Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth no anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Friends, NOTHING.  NOT A THING can separate us from the love of Christ.  No pandemic, no injustice, no economic uncertainty, no church separation.

 

NOTHING can separate us from Christ’s love.

 

Now this doesn’t mean you live a haphazard life – it does mean that you live in the confidence of God’s unfailing, unfaltering, never changing love.  

 

I call that grace!  

 

There is the assurance, the freedom in living as if nothing can separate you from God’s love.

 

If you follow me long enough you will quickly learn that it is not a Cynthia Harvey sermon without at least one reference to Frederick Buechner.

 

Here what he says...

 

We are above all things loved – that is the good news of the gospel – and loved not just the way we turn up on Sundays in our best clothes and on our best behavior and with our best feet forward, but loved as we alone know ourselves to be, the weakest and shabbiest of what we are along with the strongest and gladdest.  

 

To come together as people who believe that just maybe this gospel is actually true // should  we come together like people who have just won the Irish Sweepstakes.  

 

It should have us throwing our arms around each other like people who have just discovered that every single man and woman in those pews is not just another familiar or unfamiliar face but is our long-lost brother and our long-lost sister because despite the fact that we have all walked in different gardens and knelt at different graves, we have all, humanly speaking, come from the same place and heading out into the same blessed mystery that awaits us all.  

 

This is the joy that is so apt to be missing, and missing not just from church but from our own lives – the joy of not just managing to believe at least part of the time that it is true that life is holy, but of actually running into holiness head-on.  

Ya’ll this captures in my mind the joy that comes from loving and being loved.  We run into holiness head-on!

 

The world is turned upside down and those of you who live in the DC area feel that fragile state perhaps even more.  

 

Hardly anything in our every day life seems familiar.  There is the health pandemic, racial pandemic, economic pandemic, political pandemic – things most of us have never seen, heard or experienced.

 

In the midst of the upsidedowness, it is comforting to imagine the holiness of love – God’s love - in the midst of chaos.  

Holiness and love in the midst of injustice.  Holiness and love in the midst of uncertainty.

 

Joe is a wonderful man in our Conference.  He is passionate and very active in United Methodist Men.  You will not get past him ever – whether he knows you or not – without him asking you perhaps the most important question of the day, “ has anybody told you they love you today?”  Then he gives you a giant smile and hug and says, “I love you, God loves you.”  

 

There are days at Annual Conference that I look for Joe because I need to hear those words.  Sometimes we need people like Joe to remind us that God loves us.   

 

What if someone stumbled into this livestream. 

 

What would they hear, what would they experience?  I know it is a little harder these days but could they experience the love of God?  

Would they get a sense that this is a place where they can experience bumping into and falling into holiness? Would they know this is a place where they can be loved no matter what because nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. 

 

Loving might be next to breathing -- both being most natural and also most difficult both a requirement to be truly alive. 

 

Did the Beatles have it right...All You Need Is Love?   

 

The lyrics for this commissioned piece were intended to be simple since it had to be understood by everyone around the world.  

There was actually criticism that the lyrics and the general sentiment were naïve. 

 

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.

Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung

 

Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game.

 

All you need is love....love is all you need.

 

They really wanted to give the world a message that could not be misinterpreted.  It is a clear message saying that love is everything.

 

We know this to be true.  The scriptures are filled with references to love.  Not romantic love but the love of God.  

 

The Gospels are chocked full with messages of love that say to people like you and me that love is everything.  To love and be loved by another and most importantly by God is everything.

 

The great commandment, “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being and with all your mind.  You must love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  No other commandment is greater than these Jesus said.

 

Really?  No other commandment!

 

The Beatles and others might claim that love is easy – we know it is not. 

 

Yet there is no other commandment that is greater than to love as God loves.  Love no matter what. Love as if there is nothing can get in the way of it!

 

Our call is to personify love, to be love to a world that might not know love.

 

Love is a gift.  Love is a verb.  It is something that you do - something that you give.  Love that is inseparable.

 

When we love as God loves us we move into a thin place – a threshold place, an entrance, a place filled with possibility, a messy yet fulfilling kind of place, a place where we bump up against the holy.

 

We have all had those experiences when we find ourselves in those places where we are overtaken by an extraordinary sense of love – running into holiness head on.

 

The birth of a baby.

The death of a loved one.

A wedding,

Graduation,

Ordination.

 

You are a gift to the church.  At a time when our world and our church is in turmoil, you are here!  You keep turning up week after week because somewhere, somehow you know that nothing can separate you from God’s love.  You are running into the holiness we call love head-on.  There is a whole world out there that needs to know this kind of love.  

 

As the church we love faces possible schism, splintering, and brokenness over LGBTQ matters - you continue to show up and say not on my watch!  I love too much.  I love like God loves.

 

You know that everyone deserves to love and be loved.  You know that to God there is no distinction – slave or free, greek or jew, male or female – there are no distinctions for we are all made in the image of God.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you ever again that you are incompatible with Christian teaching.  How can that even be?  If you are a child of God, made in the image of God  HOW IN THE WORLD CAN ANYONE SAY THAT ANYONE IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH CHRISTIAN TEACHING????  That would be like saying that you are incompatible with God.

 

That very statement is antithetical to the gospel. Nothing separates us from the love of God.

 

But here we are in this unprecedented place.  The world, our communities and the United Methodist Church has not ever seen anything like this.  

 

Who knows what will happen?

Yet you are here!

 

The world has shifted,

the church has shifted!

 

Yet you are here!  

 

God is still calling people!

God is calling you! 

 

You know that fear and love cannot go together!  You know that love casts out all fear. 

 

You have been called by love – God’s love for you and your call to love neighbor. 

For our founder, John Wesley all that God is and God does is motivated by love.

Author Mildred Bangs Wynkoop, a Nazarene and holiness scholar said in “A Theology of Love” that to be Wesleyan is to be committed to a theology of love.   

 

Love was probably no easier for Wesley than it is for some of us.  

 

He was not easy to love and I am guessing it wasn’t easy for him TO love.

 

He was a quite a rebel.  He fought the establishment and challenged the status quo.

 

John Wesley was denied the opportunity to preach in his home church.  

 

So, Wesley went to the only plot of ground that actually belonged to him – his father’s grave and it was from there that he preached - just outside the church.  

I would guess that Wesley was not loved by the establishment.  He was criticized for his unorthodox ways.  He preached outside the church walls which was considered evil to the Anglicans.  

 

As Methodists we are part of a legacy of reluctance and resistance.

 

Strangely comforting isn’t it?  

 

Remember your baptismal covenant to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.  

 

Resistance is baked into each of us!

 

Our Wesleyan legacy is one of love and an assurance that in all things, God is with us – nothing separates us from the love of God.

 

There is someone out there waiting for someone just like you to share the unmatchable, unfathomable love of God that can overcome COVID, racial injustice, human sexuality. They are waiting for you!  

 

Right, left, Republican, Democrat, traditionalist, progressive, gay, straight and everything in between – they are waiting for you to show them what living life as if nothing can separate you from the love of God looks like.

 

They are waiting for you to love them, to help them order their life by love. If you show them love – they will love you.  You will teach them and they you that, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

 

Because to disciple is to love and to love is to disciple.

 

Love is the bedrock of the Gospel.  It is the bedrock of who we are and who we are called to be.  We are made in the image of God to carry out a life of love.  

 

A love that punches holes in the darkness.  

 

A love that sees the hunger for acceptance in a person’s life.  

 

A love that speaks truth into the world.  

 

This is courageous love.  

 

WE need to be that person to those who are living on life’s ragged edge and yes, even those who seem to have it all together but don’t. 

 

We all need to know that we are not only loved but BE-LOVED.  That we are a child of God  - chosen by God!  

  We are God’s beloved sons and daughters - chosen to help mend broken people, broken communities, broken homes.  We are God’s beloved chosen to love as God loves.  

 

Our call to love can change the trajectory of the world.  Our call to love can change people, situations, and circumstances.  

 

Our call to love can change this church.  It can change the United Methodist Church.

 

Our call to love can change YOU!

 

Does It Have to Be This Way? - July 19th, 2020

Does It Have to Be This Way?

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli for Foundry UMC July 19, 2020, seventh Sunday after Pentecost. “Living As If…” series. 

Text:  Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

 

Invasives. They threaten to devour my yard. They are what my landscape architect friend informs me is destroying so many of our habitats. They may look pretty at first but then proceed to cover over and strangle everything else. Invasives seem to have an uncanny ability to multiply at an alarming rate, to flourish in places they don’t belong. 

 

The Kin-dom, Jesus says in our parable today, is like a cultivated field that has been invaded and planted with seeds that don’t belong. And when this becomes apparent as the plants grow, the farmer counsels letting everything grow together—out of care and concern for the survival of the intended crop—with a sorting out of everything at the appropriate time.

 

This is a risky proposition, this “growing together,” because invasives are so aggressive, and can do so much damage. But evidently, the planter has confidence that the wheat will be strong enough to thrive and produce its life-giving food even in the midst of struggle and assault. 

 

This metaphor would have made sense to the original audience of Matthew’s Gospel, a community of Jewish Christians who not only had the usual conflicts of religious community within its own ranks, but were also actively engaged in conflict with leaders of the Pharisee-led Judaism that predominated in 80-90 CE. Trying to grow in healthy ways in the midst of attack and surrounded by  philosophies, theologies, and practices that don’t fit into the vision of the Kin-dom Jesus taught was difficult. This parable offers a rich image through which to consider how to respond to this reality.

 

And, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that the writer of Matthew took this rich parable and sucked every drop of nuance right out of it in the allegorical “explanation” that follows. When we are in conflict—polarized, defensive, and fearful—it seems common to want to categorize things, to lump people together, to assign absolute values—“good” or “bad”—and to take comfort in our self-appointed “goodness” and the promise that the “bad” people will get what’s coming to them. There is something very emotionally satisfying about imagining our enemies weeping and gnashing their teeth.

 

But does it have to be this way?

 

My first reaction when I started praying with our text for today was to notice that in the parable, the enemy appears and plants troubling seeds “while everybody was asleep.” I thought, “If people stayed awake this wouldn’t happen!” See? It doesn’t have to be this way! Perhaps this is true to some degree—constant vigilance could protect the field from destructive invasives. But then I realized that can’t be the core message. Because the truth is we are all planted in a field, born into a world, that has “pre-existing conditions.” No amount of vigilance can undo what’s been already done. Ways of thinking and reacting and treating others are all around. Like seeds of invasive plants that get eaten by birds and then migrate with them, being excreted in all the places they alight, concepts, ideas, philosophies, prejudices, are consumed and carried and shared. For example, Ibram X. Kendi’s book Stamped From the Beginning illustrates the way the idea of racism moves and morphs and takes root over centuries. 

 

Whether we like it or not, this is the way it is. We are in a proverbial field in which things are all mixed up. There are planted seeds of love and life and there are seeds of harm and death. And seeds want to grow. And they do grow together. In a world of pre-existing conditions we are surrounded not only by creative, gentle, playful, inspiring, soul enhancing energies, but also by aggression, malicious intent, pain, greed, and other potentially soul-damaging stuff. We’re not only surrounded by these things—as though we can remain separate or distant from them—but we soak up and ingest them to varying degrees. Our make-up is affected by the field in which we’re planted—like a wine that tastes a certain way because of where the grapes were cultivated or milk that tastes a certain way because of what the cows ate or the flavor of honey tinged with the flower the bees loved most that season. Within each one of us are the capacities for care and for harm, for love and for hate, for violence and for peace.

 

With the way things are, we have to choose what way we will respond. How do we navigate this complicated world, this human life, so beautiful and broken? One of the things I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is just how tempting it is to do the thing we hear in the allegory today—to assign everyone a label and to tidy things up with hard and fast absolutes. You go into the “children of the kin-dom” camp and you go to the “children of the evil one” camp. The impulse will always be to rip out or cut off or otherwise lay hands on whomever we deem “the evil ones.” 

 

Now some will argue that the text is clear that it’s not up to us to make these assignments or to try to get rid of the “children of the evil one.” But let’s be honest, that’s what people do. And texts like this one have provided handy religious legitimation for doing it. And let’s be honest about how it’s not just those other people who do this, but we do it too. Let’s be honest about how easy it is to fall into this way of thinking even when we try not to (“I hate people who hate people!”). And perhaps we can also be honest about how some of us turn this thinking on ourselves and believe that we are “bad seeds,” deserving of punishment, undeserving of care or love. What we imbibe from the soil in which we grow can be deeply internalized such that it is difficult to extract ourselves or others from these labels.

 

Lumping people together based on anything—race, accent, education, appearance, political affiliation, orientation, personal style, identity, vocation, whatever!—erases a person’s humanity and identity. You put a person in a category or under a label and all of a sudden they are no longer a person with a story and a family and a body and dreams. They become a thing. They might be a thing you consider good—“wheat”—or a thing you consider bad—“weed”—but they become an object, not a subject. The wheat isn’t expected to have weediness in it and the weed isn’t expected to have any wheatness in it. They can no longer be truly human.

 

A recent example that is resonant with our current challenge and work: writer Michael Harriot, whose work I’ve come to know on Twitter through The Root wrote, “That ‘anti-white’ sentiment people keep talking about is just the erosion of what I call the ‘privilege of individuality.’ White people aren’t accustomed to being lumped together and being defined by the actions of others. Welcome to the club.” Being lumped together under any label is literally dehumanizing. And it is what our labels, stereotypes, racism and all the isms do. When we have successfully dehumanized people, it is much easier to blame, use, abuse, and kill them. 

 

My guess is that there will be some listening to my words and thinking something like, “But some people are awful! Are we not supposed to get in the way of injustice? Are we not supposed to call out those who harm the vulnerable? Are we not called to get into ‘good trouble’ for the sake of the Kin-dom?” The answer to all of those questions is simply “yes.” That is absolutely part of our work as we engage sacred resistance. I don’t think our parable today is asking us to do nothing or to ignore evil, injustice, and oppression. 

 

I do think it is about being honest about the reality in our world and in our own lives, a reality that is much more complex than the easy dualisms and absolutes so prevalent in our current context. Remember, Jesus calls Peter “Satan” in a moment of hyperbole and then entrusts him with the keys to the Kin-dom; he sees through the small life of despised “tax collector” Zacchaeus to perceive the big things he will do with his generosity; Jesus loves Mary Magdalene and draws her into the inner circle when others exclude her due to her “demons.” In Matthew 5:43-44 Jesus teaches us to love our enemies and in 18:14 says that it’s God’s will that none will be lost. Our parable today uses scary images to highlight that there are consequences for our choices—it is damaging and painful to body and soul to be hateful, cruel, and selfish. But the whole of the Gospel affirms that God’s way of dealing with a broken world and with broken lives is not to abandon or destroy, but to draw ever nearer in love, mercy, and grace—even stepping directly into the mess of the world with us. Jesus shows us what it looks like to be truly human, perfectly reflecting the image of God’s love. Jesus never dehumanizes or allows a label or a mistake or a flaw to define a person.

 

And thanks be to God for that. Right? We are all human. Not one of us is “weed-free.” We are all trying to find our way. None of us are perfected in love, we all do harm, we all experience pain, we all have tangled up roots from all sorts of seeds, taken on the “flavor” of the soil in which we’ve been planted, we are all complex, unique creations and children of God. As followers of Jesus, our call is to be human with other humans, to be “humanizers” in a world where the seeds of inhumanity and dehumanization want to grow. We are called to be planters and cultivators of love, mercy, and grace and to let those Kin-dom values fuel our resistance, to let those divine gifts live and grow in us and make us and the world more truly human. 

 

It’s never easy to be human. The world, our lives, are beautiful and broken. And God knows, right now everything is hard. 

 

Perhaps it didn’t have to be this way, but this is the way it is right now. What are you going to do about it? How are you going to be in it? 

 

What might happen were we to live as if God’s amazing grace is at work in every single moment, in every single tangle, in every struggle, on every bridge, in every triumph, on every street, in front of every courthouse, along every line, in every weakness and strength, in every mistake, in every life, including our own—determined to strengthen, to mend, to liberate, to save? What if we were to live as if all we are made—planted—cultivated—to do is love?

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There Is A Reason To Hope - Summer Guest Series: Rev Junius Dotson - July 12th, 2020

There is a Reason to Hope

Foundry United Methodist Church's Summer Guest Series continues with a sermon from the Reverend Junius Dotson. July 12th, 2020

Lamentations 2:11; 3:46-50

These are trying days. For the past several months we have been dealing with a pandemic called COVID-19, trying to navigate the Coronavirus in which we seem to have no control of.

• We experienced 70K new cases just yesterday and we mourn the deaths of 137, 000 Americans and over ½ million people around the globe who have died from this virus. 

 

And to make matters worse we are also navigating the virus of 1619 and it appears to be making a full-hearted comeback. Police brutality, White Supremacy, Health disparities and economic inequality have all converged in recent weeks to create the perfect storm. 

 

• Our spirit grieves the modern-day lynching of Arhmaud Arbery, as well as the killing of Breonna Taylor, Elijah McClain, Rayshard Brooks and the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police, handcuffed, lying face down with a knee in this neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. 

• Even as we have tried to shelter-in-place Black lives are still at risk of being infected by the virus of racism.  

 

In the words of that great theologian Marvin Gaye, “what’s Going On?” That’s the question he asked when he peened these words:

Mother, mother

There's too many of you crying

Brother, brother, brother

There's far too many of you dying

You know we've got to find a way

  To bring some lovin' here today – Ya

  Oh, what's going on

  What's going on

    Ya, what's going on

  Ah, what's going on

 In the midst of pain and suffering, we too are often left wondering what’s Going On? Why God would you allow such things to happen?

• We are also left wondering where is God during the trials and tribulations of life? 

• Where is God when life hurts? 
• God has promised to never leave us or forsake us, but yet sometimes God seems so far away when things are going bad in our lives. 
• Here’s the question that I’ve wrestled with this week: how do I hold on to belief in the God of salvation and liberation, in the face of the problems and the contradictions that the world produces for my faith?  
• We are confronted with the painful reality, that when we finally emerge out this quarantine, we will confront a world, that is not as we want it to be.
• Can I tell you friends that when tragedy is big enough, deep enough, close enough and real enough, there can no longer be business as usual? 

What are we supposed to do in the face of this reality we now confront as a nation?

• I like the way the psalmist posed the question, Psalm 11:3 “When the foundations are being destroyed what can the righteous do?”  
• When the foundations are being destroyed, when everything is up in the air, 
  • When the deaths of 100’s of thousands of people grows increasingly acceptable because of political and economic expediency.  
  • when we worry about whether it’s safe to allow our children to participate in a peaceful protest, 
  • when we worry about whether our child will survive a simple traffic stop,
  • when we are bombarded by words and images, and political rhetoric, that dehumanize and degrade the very existence of some of God’s children,
  • when it’s all in crisis and chaos, 
• What can the righteous do? 
• I SPEAK NOT SIMPLY as a pastor, nor as the General Secretary for Discipleship Ministries, but as a concerned father. A father of a 24 year old son. A son who has already outgrown me in physical height. He’s 6’3. His name is Wesley. Wesley recently graduated from KU and has already had two (almost life threatening) encounters with the police. I pray that every time he leaves the house that he will return home safely. 
• What can the righteous do? In the chaos…in the confusion, when we feel crushed, when we feel out of control.  
• How do you keep your eyes on Jesus…when they’re full of tears?  
• How do you find hope in the face of tragedy? 

Jeremiah helps us along this morning. He asked that question many years ago.  

• • Jeremiah went through one of the most horrendous periods in the history of Israel, when an enemy nation came in and ravaged his entire land.  
  • During Jeremiah’s lifetime he watched enormous atrocities – inhumanities done to his people, to his family, to those that he loved.  
  • Jeremiah wrote what he lived and he lived what he wrote. 
  • When the brokenness of humanity is on full display, lament is an appropriate response. 
  • In the middle of a national tragedy where he had just lost many of his fellow citizens he penned these words in the book of Lamentations 2:11.

 

• He said, “I have cried until the tears no longer come.  My heart is broken, my spirit poured out as I see what has happened to my people.”  
• Then he says, 3:47-48: “We have suffered terror and pitfalls, ruin and destruction.  Streams of tears flow from my eyes because of the destruction of my people.”  

 

Lamentations deepens our understanding of where to find hope in hardship.

There is a reason for hope, but 1st, 

WE MUST HEAR THE CRY FOR JUSTICE

 

• Lamentations invites us to hear the voice of sorrow as we live between the effects of our sin and God’s future restoration.

• The times in which we live are not only trying times, but they are also crying times.

 

• As believers in the body of Christ, we cannot be unmoved by the chorus of cries that reverberate through the streets of cities across our nation.
• We all understand that when basic human needs go unmet, cries will be heard.
• Some today are crying for food in the midst of a pandemic that has left many hungry. 
• Others are crying for community, camaraderie, and companionship; because although we live in an age that connects us by technology in ways like never before, this quarantine has many feeling more isolated than ever.
• We are haunted by the echoes of myriad cries for employment, health care and end to the senseless violence on our streets.
• And yet undergirding all of these cries is the cry for racial justice. 
• The killings in Minnesota, Atlanta, Denver follow a long string of deaths of black people at the hands of the police — in Staten Island; Cleveland; Baltimore; Ferguson, Mo.; and North Charleston, S.C., among others — that have stoked outrage around the country. 
• And so, then the cry for justice will be pertinent as ever. 

Isn’t that what most people want? Justice.

• • • An even playing field? 
    • A fair chance? 
    • An equal opportunity?
  • An opportunity to be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character?

 

• We must hear the cry for justice because as John Wesley said, “What one generation tolerates, the next generation will embrace.” 

 

• • The lack of introspection on the part of many white Americans about racism.

 

• The denial and dumbfoundedness or astonishment of a nation, being overcome by “fear of the other” and the obsession with naming the other as evil, does not see that it incubates and unleashes terror and Evil from within.

 

• Every normal, healthy-minded human with a strong sense of right and wrong will be outraged when justice is denied to any of God’s children.
• But there is Good News, that even as this cry grows louder, I am convinced that in the midst of the problems we face as nation, we still have the power of God’s promises. There is a reason to hope.
• I’m so glad that in the midst of his tears, God reminds Jeremiah of a promise.
• Lam 5:17&19 “We are sick at our very hearts and we can hardly see through our tears but You, O Lord, are King forever.  And You will rule to the end of time.”
• God is in control.
• God is still on the throne.  
• In spite of the tragedies.  
• So, I remember no matter what happens God is in control.  
• There is a reason to hope: for Is 40:4 declares, “every hill and mountain will be made low, every valley will be exalted, the crooked will be made straight and the rough places made smooth, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
• As the people of God, we have to hear the cry for justice.

WE MUST RECLAIM OUR PROPHETIC WITNESS

In the third chapter, v22 we read that “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end” (Lam. 3:22). Jeremiah proclaims the never-ending, morning-ready mercies of the Lord over a destroyed city. Jerusalem looked like a wasteland and a war-zone. But, while those questions lingered and the suffering continued, Jeremiah pronounces what he knows to be true about God despite what he sees. We too are called to rehearse the truth of God and to usher in a resurgence of hope.

 

• I’ve come this morning Foundry, to issue a prophetic challenge to the people called Methodists. 

 

• • I humbly submit to you that though we have a host of new struggles and fights for freedom in our midst, and the struggle for liberation IS NOT over, but there is a reason for hope.
  • Our mission field is not merely across the sea, its across the street – in D.C., Minnesota, Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, in Atlanta, in Little Rock, in Lincoln, in Baton Rouge, in Kansas City, in Houston, and in your community. 
  • I believe the capacity to address America’s issues relating to racial justice lies within the church, particularly the United Methodist Church.  
  • IF YOU WANT A BAG OF CEMENT to become concrete, you have to mix it with water. Likewise, you have to mix God’s Word with faith in order for it to become a concrete experience in your life. Faith Without Works Is Dead!
  • Faith demands an action, not just a feeling.

  • I have been particularly encouraged looking at how diverse the crowds of protesters have been – young and white and suburban and black and urban – and thinking that we have a unique opportunity as the church to not only support these efforts but to also begin authentic relationships with young people.
  • Discipleship begins with relationship. You cannot disciple people that you are not in a relationship with.  
  • This is a moment to intentionally engage millennials in meaningful conversation. 
  • They want to be in strategic conversation with the church. 
  • We were once a church that inspired social movements, headquartered and planned them, but now watch from irrelevance as others now carry the banner.
  • We CAN DO SOMETHING! 
    • We can intercede in prayer daily, 
    • we can invite young people into conversation, 
    • we can listen and learn how to address issues of race with our neighbors in open, honest and authentic dialogue, 
    • we can advocate for uniformed police standards and trainings for non-biased policing. 
    • We CAN DO SOMETHING!
  • I believe there are millions of young people who are waiting to see if the church will dare to be a relevant and prophetic voice for such a time as this. 

 

• Waiting to see if we will fully embrace the personal mission statement of Jesus, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

 

• • Are we not hearers of the same spirit?
  • I believe our communities need churches like you Foundry, for such a time as this. 
  • I believe as we hear the cry for racial justice and respond with a prophetic witness we will begin to reach a new generation of believers. 
  • This is our moment. There is a reason to hope. 

 

• That’s why I echo the words of John Wesley who said, “Unless God has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils. But if God be for you, who can be against you? Are all of them together stronger than God? O be not weary of well doing!”

 

• There is a reason to hope. For God declares: [If] My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14).
• When we seek God's will with humility, prayer, and obedience revival can come and revival will come for the people called Methodists. 

There is a reason to hope. Even when my heart is breaking because of the circumstances of life, it does not change the truth about God. 

• • Romans 8:38-39 “I am convinced that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God.  Not life, not death, not angels, not demons, not our fears for today or our worries about tomorrow.  Not even the powers of hell can separate us from the love of God.”

https://foundryumc.org/archive/living-as-if

A Good Fit - July 5th, 2020

A Good Fit

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli for Foundry UMC July 5, 2020, fifth Sunday after Pentecost. “Living As If…” series. 

Text:  Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

It has become very clear over the past couple of weeks that many of us are feeling a deep weight and weariness in the wake of all that has happened and is happening in our world. And today we hear Jesus say, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” I want to swim into this invitation like cool water on a hot summer day. But notice: as soon as Jesus says, “Let me help you lighten your load,” he invites us to pick up something else: “Take my yoke upon you…” What’s up with that?

Well, let’s get clear about what a “yoke” is. A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened over the necks of two animals and attached to the plow or cart that they are to pull. Yokes were carved carefully to fit the animal who would be using the device; a carefully made yoke would rest well on the shoulders and wouldn’t bind or blister. The Greek word for “easy” (chréstos) can also mean “well-fitting.” The well-fitting yoke was used to make carrying a burden or pulling a load easier. And the yoke allowed two animals to share a load, thus lightening the load for both. The Judeo-Christian tradition uses the metaphor of the yoke to describe the way of God revealed through the law and the prophets.  It is also a word used to describe the teachings and way of life of Jewish Rabbis—that is, the way a rabbi interpreted and practiced Torah, the law, was that rabbi’s “yoke.” A disciple of a given Rabbi would take on the “yoke” of that teacher.  

In both the literal and figurative sense, a “yoke” is something you put on, that you wear. And think for a moment about things you wear that don’t fit well…they’re unflattering at best and really uncomfortable at worst. Ill-fitting or inappropriate shoes can cause blisters and over time can affect your whole body alignment causing strain and pain. In the same way, ill-formed, ill-fitting yokes do damage. If I put on a yoke that was made for a body with much broader shoulders than mine, think about what that will do to my body. If I take on an interpretation of biblical law that is ill-formed—say lacking careful study or grace—just think about how that will affect the shape and health of my whole life. If I am yoked with someone who is pulling in an opposite direction from me or if I’m unwilling to move when the person with whom I’m yoked is trying to move, we’re both going to get hurt. If the yoke is well fitted for me but ill fitted for the person with whom I’m yoked, even if we’re traveling the same path, my way will be easier than that of my partner on the journey, though we will both struggle more than is necessary. The bottom line is that yokes—both literal and the law—can either do damage to those who “wear” them or can provide help and freedom from carrying burdens too hard to bear alone.

Jesus invites us to put on his “yoke,” the way of life he taught and embodied, a way of life guided from start to finish by the great commandment to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourself. This, Jesus says, is the yoke that’s “easy,” that’s a good fit for our most human shape. Jesus’ embodiment of love that preaches good news to the poor, healing for the wounded ones, freedom for the captives, mercy, compassion, and peace for a bruised world, gentleness, humility, and justice in our relationships with one another, is the yoke we are all made to put on. I have heard folk describe the yoke Jesus offers as an exclusively “me and Jesus” or “God and me” situation—that is, the yoke is about Christ helping us carry our load. I don’t disagree that’s part of the promise. But here’s the thing: Jesus’ yoke—Jesus’ way of life—binds us to one another, commits us to one another, connects us, yokes us. It’s never going to just be “me and Jesus” because whenever we invite Jesus into our life, he brings all his friends with him.

I have been ruminating on the juxtaposition of Jesus’ invitation to take on his yoke and this weekend when our country observes Independence Day. On the one hand, you could say that Jesus’ way of life, his yoke, is about liberation, about freedom so it’s a happy coincidence to get this text in the lectionary on this day—plus the bonus of Jesus giving us permission to rest, to chill. But a couple of things give me pause. The story we have traditionally told is that Independence Day is a celebration of our freedom from tyranny, our commitment to “liberty and justice for all.” And the words penned at our founding are beautiful and the goal lofty. They would seem to align with the vision of care and right relationship that Jesus taught. But the truth is that the liberty, the freedom, the justice, was for some, not for all. The yoke of Christ was severed from the beginning. 

Over the years I have come to more deeply perceive the irony of a national celebration of “freedom” first celebrated in 1777 when one in five people in the colonies were African human beings who were enslaved by white people. Frederick Douglass in 1852—well before passage of the 13th Amendment that ended slavery—brilliantly denounced the national celebration of July 4th saying:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants brass fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanks-givings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Then a hundred years later Langston Hughes wrote a poem with the refrain “America never was America to me.” He wrote:

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Hughes, of course, was African American and in this poem he speaks not only for his community, but also for poor whites, indigenous people, immigrants, and all who hope in the dream of America yet find “only the same old stupid plan / Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.” And fifty years since Langston Hughes passed into the next life, we find ourselves in this moment. Some would argue there is much to honor from our past and also much that’s changed for the better. Both are true. But our present moment has blown the lid off the injustice, suffering, and rage so many of our neighbors continue to experience in their lives. Poverty, systemic racism, homophobia and transphobia are still rampant in our country, placing crushing burdens upon beloved children of God. Pernicious interpretations of religious texts, twisted applications of biblical law, and greedy, unjust civic laws and policies create a reality in which some are free, expecting and enjoying every opportunity life affords, and others can’t drink the water from their tap, can’t go for a run, can’t answer their front door without fearing for their lives. Some in our land suck up all the air leaving others with no air to breathe.

Our Gospel for today begins by Jesus highlighting the fact that some people are determined to judge and reject anything that might challenge them to perceive something new or to change. Both John the Baptist and Jesus were called names and rejected, even though their practices and message were very different. Different approaches didn’t reach those who were challenged by the message of the Gospel. If people don’t want to hear it, they won’t. And we sadly see this right now in many ways related to safety protocols for COVID-19, systemic racism, skewed narratives of American history and more. To be asked to acknowledge the suffering of the most vulnerable and oppressed, sacrifice some comfort to protect others, accept that part of our past and present as a nation is marred by racist violence and greed, is perceived by many as impinging upon their freedom. No matter how lovingly or authentically it is shared—whether in protest, movie, data and studies—if folk don’t want to hear it, they won’t.

But, Jesus says, “wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” And wisdom made her home in Jesus and guided Jesus’ teaching and actions. And Jesus offers his “yoke”—an offer that is heartily received in Jesus’ time and in our own by those weighed down with the burdens of injustice and systemic violence. Jesus comes alongside the downtrodden, the sick, the disinherited, the oppressed and says, “You matter. Let me share the load, carry your burden, journey with you. You are not alone.” 

And the offer of a well-fitting yoke is extended to everyone. Jesus wants all of us to put on a way of life that does no harm, a yoke that doesn’t do damage to others or to ourselves. That is our work—each and all of us in our own way. We are called to set down hurtful things that have creeped up around our shoulders and into our thoughts and hearts. That stuff is ill-fitting, heavy, and shreds our soul. We are invited instead to pick up and put on the yoke of Jesus who says, “Learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” 

Be gentle and humble with others in this time when there is so little grace margin in the world. Be gentle and humble with yourself. And trust that Christ will help you do the hard work needed for the living of these days. And it is hard work. The “yoke” Jesus offers is not an “easy” life without any burdens or challenges. Rather it is a yoke that is well-fitting, that doesn’t do harm when we put it on, that binds us to Christ AND to one another, so that the burdens we bear become lighter because they are shared. 

I believe the heart of the teaching today is that true freedom in human life is not found in independence but rather in interdependence. We are created for interdependence and the yoke Jesus offers is fitted with that in mind. It connects us to God and each other in love, in compassion, in mercy, in grace and helps us pull together toward the Kin-dom vision that’s our goal. And that means that your suffering is yoked to me and my suffering is yoked to you. As Paul taught, if one member of the body suffers all suffer together with it (1 Cor 12:26). God gives us grace to help one another carry the burden, to ease the weight, to lighten the load one for another. Your life is bound up with my life and my freedom is bound up with your freedom, your safety is bound up with my safety and my good is bound up with your good. No one is free until all are free. 

Many of us are weary today. Many are carrying heavy burdens. And the pain of the world can seem too much to bear. But the good news is we are yoked to one another and to Christ. And together we press on to freedom. Thanks be to God.

https://foundryumc.org/

You, Me, Us - Summer Guest Series: Rev. Dr. Kevin Smalls - June 28th, 2020

You, Me, Us

Foundry United Methodist Church's Summer Guest Series continues with a sermon from the Reverend Dr. Kevin Smalls. June 28th, 2020

https://foundryumc.org/archive/living-as-if