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Foundry is an historic, progressive United Methodist Church that welcomes all, worships passionately, challenges the status quo, & seeks to transform the world.
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Sunday Oct 13, 2019
Sunday Oct 13, 2019
Reception Perception
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC October 13, 2019, the 18th Sunday after Pentecost. “Fearless Generosity: Deepening Faith” series.
Text: Luke 17:11-19
I have been what I call “under water” for several weeks. What began about a year ago as a carefully curated calendar that included exciting things here at Foundry as well as a couple of outside gigs I was really looking forward to got blown up by the necessity of meetings and responsibilities related to the issues facing the United Methodist Church. It may go without saying, but being under water is not a comfortable place to be—unless you’re equipped with scuba gear! I didn’t have the oxygen mask. Being under water doesn’t inspire or allow me to be “my best self.” And this last little while is just a more intense version of what life tends to be like these days on the regular—not just for me but for many of us. We have schedules that are full of important things, meaningful things, necessary things—with other things we really want to do crammed in where we can manage them. And in the midst of it all, we can struggle to give the people around us—family, friends, even co-workers—the time or attention that they deserve or need. If we’re not careful, we can end up taking people for granted; and as is often the case, those closest to us can be taken for granted most easily because we figure they’ll always be there and they know what we’re going through after all...
I once asked the folks in a church gathering what words or phrases they most longed to hear. Of course “I love you” was up at the top. Coming in a close second was “thank you.” “Thank you.” Such small words that hold such power… While doing some reading for today, I was struck by one commentator’s reflections on the ways that saying “thank you” can make a profound difference. Here is what he shares:
“In the film The Remains of the Day, Anthony Hopkins plays a butler to a super-rich family. While researching this role, Mr. Hopkins interviewed a real-life butler. This butler told Hopkins that his goal in life is complete and total obsequiousness—a skilled ability to blend into the woodwork of any room like a mere fixture, on a par with table lamps and andirons. In fact, Anthony Hopkins said one sentence he will never forget is when this man said that you can sum up an excellent butler this way: “The room seems emptier when he's in it.” The room seems emptier when he’s in it. The goal is to do your work, fill your wine glasses, clear the plates and silverware without being noticed, much less thanked. But that's just the problem with routine ingratitude: it makes people disappear. You are the center of your own universe and others don’t warrant entree into that inner sanctum of yourself. But a simple word of thanks makes people visible again, it humanizes them.”[i]
To say “thank you” is to acknowledge gratitude for what someone does or who someone is. But at an even more basic level, to say “thank you” is to see someone, to perceive their presence, it is to acknowledge them as a fellow human being, as a human being who is part of your life. When we get too wrapped up in our own stuff and take others for granted, the ones we take for granted can begin to feel invisible. And, I contend, even those who aren’t keen on being in the spotlight still need to feel seen, acknowledged, appreciated by those closest to them. Children who are starved for attention will act out in order to get what they need. And, quite frankly, so will adults. When we say “thank you” to another person, the other person becomes visible, they become more real, more human—and I would argue that when we offer thanks we, ourselves become a little more truly human as well. An example: when I get so busy and wrapped up in my work or my own projects that I fail to say thank you to Anthony for the ways that he supports and cares for me and for our shared life, then it is easy for me to forget all the ways that he supports and cares for me and our shared life. I can begin to feel “on my own” and put out and weary… I can grow self-righteous and resentful—ways of being that do not expand my humanity, but rather wear me down to a nub. Gratitude is life-giving for all involved; saying “thank you” is no small thing.
There is a lot more than an example of saying “thank you” going on in our Gospel passage today—issues of purity codes, insiders and outsiders, divine healing, and more are all wrapped up in this little story. Lepers were “unclean” according to the law and therefore were forced to live outside the boundaries of human community. They suffered what theologian Simone Weil calls “affliction”—a complete suffering that includes the physical, social, political, emotional and spiritual dimensions of their lives. There was little comfort for lepers, little hope that anything would ever change for the better. When they cry out to Jesus for mercy—even while keeping their distance as they had been taught to do—Jesus responds by telling them to go and show themselves to the priests. It amazes me that they did as they were told—considering that as they set off to present themselves for the purity inspection they were still leprous. What an act of faith—or desperation—to head off in the direction of hope before they saw any change in their condition! But, as they went on their way, they were made clean—that is, they were healed of their leprosy. Then, in a surprising turn of events, the one among the group who was especially afflicted—the Samaritan (despised by and ostracized from the orthodox Jewish establishment) doesn’t just keep going on his healed, merry way to present himself to the Samaritan priest. Something in him wells up and needs to be expressed. Perhaps this Samaritan’s different choice from the others is precisely because he was likely looked down upon even within the little community of outcasts. Someone who has known such deep rejection will be much less likely to take it for granted when healing and justice comes. For whatever reason, what the Samaritan does first is change his schedule—he changes course and turns back; he praises God, then he bows before Jesus and thanks him. Jesus notices that it is the foreigner, the outsider, who is bowed before him in gratitude and then he says a curious thing, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” Wasn’t the Samaritan already healed? Evidently to be made well as Jesus means it is more than to be cured of a physical ailment. The Greek word translated “made well”, from the root sozo, can be translated to be made whole, to be restored, to be cured, to be saved. I mentioned before that the lepers suffered total affliction—cut-off from hope in every possible aspect of their lives. To be healed of the physical ailment of leprosy would allow them entry back into human community and many aspects of their lives would be restored. However, there is something else that is going on between the Samaritan and Jesus in this story: “Your faith has made you well” seems to point to a deeper restoration, a broader connection, a more holistic healing.
The Samaritan acts upon an impulse—an impulse of praise and gratitude to God. In essence, in this story, the Samaritan is the only one who we can be sure didn’t take God’s love and mercy for granted. By his praise and thanksgiving, the Samaritan shows that he knows his physical healing was an unexpected gift of grace from God. His vision and concern is larger than just his own immediate, personal relief. He doesn’t just get what he wanted and then move on as though it had been his persistence or his own strength that had brought about the radical change in his circumstances. [I noted at the beginning that I was under water without what I needed…but the truth is that if I hadn’t had what I needed, I wouldn’t be standing here right now… “morning by morning, new mercies I see…!] This one’s expression of gratitude puts his life and his relationship with God in proper perspective. The Samaritan is the beloved child, dependent, humbled, held and ultimately healed by the loving Lord of all life. He perceives the One in whom he has found life. His perception and turning to God in gratitude brings about healing and wellness beyond the merely physical—he becomes more whole in his body, mind, and spirit—he becomes more human—that is, he becomes more closely who God has created him to be. The Samaritan—the outsider and the afflicted—by his perceiving, his turning, his praising, his thanksgiving, becomes for us a sign of the coming Kin-dom of God—a sign of what is possible: restoration and wholeness, lives transformed by encounter with the Holy One.
Perhaps today—in addition to committing to perceive and say “thank you” to the people in our lives—we might also consider the ways that we acknowledge God as the source of our lives, as the sustainer of our lives, as the source of grace and strength, as the One who holds us and helps us to stand in times of trial and challenge. Perhaps we might also consider the role Foundry plays in helping us stay connected to God, providing ways for us to participate in God’s work in the world, and to practice love and forgiveness and grace and justice in community. When and how do you say “thank you?” In the midst of good, full, busy lives, it’s important to be intentional about these things. One of the ways we can return our thanks is through our generosity. Last week we reflected on how the spiritual practice of giving is a primary way for us to practice the leap of faith. This week, I want to suggest that giving is a powerful way to express gratitude. What if you made a commitment that, every time you write a check or see the recurring gift to Foundry show up on your statement or put money into the offering plate, you consciously say “thank you”—thank you God, thank you Foundry. This practice can help us not take God’s love and grace for granted. It can help us not take Foundry for granted. It can help us perceive all that we receive. Our invitation is to travel the way of gratitude…for it is on this way that we become more human, more connected to God and to those we are given to love in this life.
At the end of the story, Jesus tells him to “go on his way”—and I like to think that this extraordinary event in the Samaritan’s life might mean that his “way” will now forever be the way of gratitude. The temptation, of course, is that somewhere along the way, the healed Samaritan gets overly comfortable with God and his life once again becomes filled with a restored social calendar and various other human concerns; the schedule gets changed less and less to include an intentional turning to God in praise and gratitude; and God begins to fade out of the picture. Do you suppose this could happen?
[i] Scott Hoezee, This Week at the Center for Excellence in Preaching, http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/thisWeek/index.php
Sunday Sep 15, 2019
Sunday Sep 15, 2019
A Good Curse
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC September 15th, 2019, the fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost. “Do Justice!” sermon series.
Texts: Psalm 19; Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
“It’s poor religion that can’t provide a sufficient curse when needed…” If these words of poet, prophet, and farmer Wendell Berry are correct, then our religion can’t be called “poor.” There are some pretty good curses in the Bible—and today prophet Jeremiah relays these un-minced words: “my people are foolish, they do not know me; they are stupid children, they have no understanding. They are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good.” (4:22) And so a hot wind—hot and fierce as God’s anger—is promised.
The curses of both Berry and Jeremiah are inspired by the destruction of creation and human culpability. Jeremiah says, “the whole land shall be a desolation.” (4:27) In the same poem that speaks of “a sufficient curse,” Berry relays a litany of curses against those things that wound the creation—against “bank accounts, inflated / by the spent breath of all the earth, / of species forever changed to money.” He curses “legal falsehoods, corpses / incorporated that cannot see / or feel, think or care, that eat / the world and [excrete] money…the alien slop and fume / that spoil the air, the water, and all / the living world, sold, soiled, or burned…”[i] //
A sixteen year-old Swedish prophet in our midst right now, Greta Thunberg, also knows how to speak a sufficiently strong word. The young climate crisis activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee has spurred a youth movement around the world and has been in the news as she’s spoken in protest here in D.C. ahead of next week’s U.N. Climate Action Summit in New York City. In December, 2018, she (then only 15) addressed leaders of the United Nations saying this: “You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. But I don't care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the Living Planet. Our civilization is being sacrificed for …a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few.
The year 2078 I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. You say you love your children above all else and yet you’re stealing their future in front of their very eyes. Until you start focusing on what needs to be done rather than what is politically possible there is no hope.”[ii] That is a “sufficient curse.” And a good curse in our faith context is meant to shake people into awareness and action.
Sadly—and it frankly boggles my mind—there are people in the world who still deny that climate change is real. There are people who believe that all the data, scientific reports, and predictions of loss of life and habitat and balance on this planet are nothing more than a politically-motivated conspiracy dreamed up by stubborn, leftist tree-huggers. And even those who recognize that there really are scary consequences for the pollution and mindless destruction that humans have inflicted on creation seem to so often disconnect this painful reality from their lives of faith.
The fact is that our Judeo-Christian faith specifically calls us to a deep and intentional connection with all of creation. Not only are we called to be caretakers of the world, its earth, air, water, and creatures, but we are also reminded that we are, ourselves, part of the creation. In Genesis 1 we see humankind take our place in the lineup of those made by God…we are creatures, the human animal, made in the image of God.
The words from Jeremiah echo those of Genesis 1, but are the antithesis of the creation story. Jeremiah prophesies not just random destruction, but rather a very specific “de-creation” or “uncreation” of creation. In Genesis, the wind moved over the deep waters and brought order and creation out of chaos and nothingness. In Jeremiah, the wind of God isn’t a nurturing, creative force, but blows hot as a judgment and curse. And we find in Jeremiah 4:23 the phrase “waste and void”—in Hebrew, tohu vabohu. This occurs only one other place in all of scripture, in Genesis 1:2, where NRSV translates it “formless void.” Jeremiah’s prophecy parallels Genesis 1 in reverse… there is no light, the earth—once separated from the waters to provide a firm place to stand—now shakes, there are no birds of the air, there is “no one at all,” the fruitful land is laid bare, and communities and cities are rubble.
Our faith story is clear that in the beginning, the human creatures were given the sacred responsibility to tend and care for God’s good creation. And what we have done instead is to participate in the de-creation of creation, we are agents of tohu wabohu…waste and void.
And why? Why do we participate in our own destruction? I don’t believe that most people want to destroy the earth. I believe we’ve been sold a bill of goods to make our lives “easier”—everything from poison-chemical-filled cleaning products to gas-fueled cars to machines made with a short half-life intended to increase re-purchase, to hormone and chemically “enhanced” food and so on. We are entrenched in habits that seem harmless and we even change some behaviors to try to do better. But at this point, things have reached a crisis moment. “Our house is on fire,” as Greta Thunberg says.
Wendell Berry is clear—as is Thunberg and prophets through the ages—that much of what drives the de-creation of creation is greed. Greed—money!—is why in the U.S. more than 80 environmental rules and regulations over the past several years have been rolled back (as reported in The New York Times last week).[iii] Many endangered species are once again, literally, “fair game.” Chemicals can be dumped in waterways again or used in close proximity to creeks and rivers, many emissions controls are gone, and more of all of this is happening in the name of easing the burden on industry, big business, and economic development. Who needs plants and animals and air and water and good earth if the bottom line is healthy? I believe Jeremiah could get behind Berry’s curse against “bank accounts, inflated / by… species forever changed to money.”
Many social and cultural factors have conditioned us these days to miss the breadth and depth of our responsibility to and interconnectedness with one another and all of creation. We have been taught to really believe our lives, our stuff, our planet, our time, the very air we breathe is our own. It’s MINE, we think… and we begin thinking that way at an early age—just check out this list of 10 “toddler property laws”:
- If I like it, it’s mine.
- If it’s in my hand, it’s mine.
- If I can take it from you, it’s mine.
- If I had it a little while ago, it’s mine.
- If it’s mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
- If I’m doing or building something, all the pieces are mine.
- If it looks just like mine, it’s mine.
- If I think it’s mine, it’s mine.
- If it’s yours and I steal it, it’s mine.
- If I saw it first, or last, makes no difference, it’s still mine.
While this tends to be the way that not only toddlers, but human beings generally, think—it is up to people of conscience—people of faith—to counter this tendency with wisdom, care and justice. “Our” stuff, “our” land, all of it—belongs to God. We didn’t do anything to deserve the beauty of the earth or the flesh and blood of our lives. They are gifts to us from Creator God.
Our failure as a human race to remember this truth and honor it above the lust for ease and wealth has led to the devastation of habitats, the pollution of waters, the extinction of unique creatures, whole eco-systems being thrown into imbalance and chaos, and the poor of the earth bearing the brunt of the damage. When we lose our sense of being creatures within the created order, our sense of being in a mutual relationship, with the responsibility to care for the planet and its other creatures, we begin to think that it’s our “right” to take, to destroy, to dump, to do the convenient thing instead of the just and loving thing. It’s our “right” to buy products that pollute. It’s “our” land so we can do with it whatever we want. And when the animals who have lost their homes move into “our space” then it’s their fault for complicating or endangering “our” lives.
Prophets are called to wake us up and get us to perceive what’s going on. Four times Jeremiah says, “I looked…and lo”—“lo” meaning “behold.” Look. YOU look! The call is for us to perceive what the prophet is perceiving, to perceive what we don’t really want to perceive, to behold our own culpability for what is happening. As we know full well, it’s only possible to fix a problem if we truly admit that we have a problem. When Greta Thunberg demanded action on climate change by government officials in Sweden, they said, “It doesn’t matter what we do, just look at the U.S.!”[iv] And when I looked at the comments online responding to Thunberg’s U.S. visit, there was comment after comment about how we (the U.S.) really needed to look at China or India… Everyone wants to say it’s someone else’s fault, someone else’s problem. As I said in my sermon at Asbury UMC last week, we point fingers at or look for action from “them” without realizing that it’s all “us”—we are in this life together whether we like it or not and the Kin-dom coming on earth as in heaven requires something not from some nebulous “them” but from all of US. And in the meantime, while we rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic and blame other people, our earth mourns (4:28), the earth weeps. That’s what Jeremiah says…
It’s poor religion that can’t provide a sufficient curse when needed. That is true. It is also true that it’s poor religion that can’t provide a word of hope. That word for us today is that we can do something, we can vote and help register others to vote, we can make concrete changes and choices in our everyday lives to care for creation. We are making concrete changes here at Foundry and will be regularly offering tips, information, and guidance for ways that you can live your faith and do justice in the earth. By the grace of God and for the sake of all we hold dear in this life, I pray we will allow the prophetic “curse” to do some good and lead us to be done with de-creation. Re-creation and mending is our work. So let’s get to it.
[i] Wendell Berry, 2010:VI, This Day: Collected & New Sabbath Poems, Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2013, p. 349.
[ii] https://www.fridaysforfuture.org/greta-speeches#greta_speech_feb21_2019
[iii] “85 Environmental Rules Being Rolled Back Under Trump,” The New York Times, Nadja Popovich, Livia Albeck-Ripka and Kendra Pierre-Louis, September 12, 2019.
[iv] https://www.npr.org/2019/09/13/760538254/greta-thunberg-to-u-s-you-have-a-moral-responsibility-on-climate-change
Sunday Sep 01, 2019
Sunday Sep 01, 2019
“Living Water, Holy Fire”
A sermon offered by Will Ed Green at Foundry United Methodist Church—Sept. 1st, 2019
“Do Justice!” seems like an easy command when injustice is the status quo. Pastoral insights and prophetic pronouncements are not needed to understand the profound violence done at our borders and on our streets. In a city where the victims of every unsolved homicide this year are persons of color. In a nation where the debate about the worth of an enslaved person’s humanity has simply become about the valuation of refugees based upon their nation of origin. In a denomination which holds so primary the power of grace that has the gall to debate access to that grace because of a person’s sexuality or gender identity. We’re not hurting for opportunities to “do justice” these days.
But our new sermon series isn’t necessarily about the injustices of this present age, but how we—rooted in the promises of God and modeling ourselves in the way of Jesus Christ—are pursuing that justice. It’s about helping us ensure that—as disciples of Jesus who are compelled by our baptismal vows to “resist evil, injustice, and oppression in ALL forms they present themselves,”—we are doing so in a way that sustains not a moment in our collective history but participates in the movement of God through which all people experience liberation and abundant life.
Now may the words of my mouth, and the meditation of all our hearts, be pleasing to you for you, and you alone, are our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
To best understand the Book of Jeremiah, we need to take a step back in time to a moment when the people called Israel were in bondage in Egypt. When they escaped the oppression of Pharaoh and began their 40-year sojourn in the desert, they were a rag-tag bunch of enslaved persons whose only unifying characteristic was that they WEREN’T Egyptian. But through covenantal promises made with God on Mount Sinai, they became a PEOPLE with a common purpose: to live as a testimony to the unifying power of God’s grace and serve as a witness in the world to God’s liberating love. And their job was to pour out the waters of justice and love for all people.
In the intervening years, however, the tribes of Israel had only once—and for a brief 79 years—achieved any real semblance or recognition as a divinely chosen people. Following the reigns of King David and Solomon, the nation of Israel split into two kingdoms which were themselves at war with one another. The northern Kingdom of Israel fell—and was as an independent nation obliterated—in 721 by the Assyrian Empire while Judah, the southern Kingdom, became an Assyrian vassal-state.
This is important background information, to understand Jeremiah and our readings during this series. Because Jeremiah’s ministry begins at time when—for the first time in recent memory—things seemed to be looking up for Judah.
Now, there were wars and rumors of war. But that was because the Assyrian empire was collapsing under pressure from the new imperial power on the block, Babylon. And this meant that for the first time in forever the people were free from Assyrian oversight and control. Under the reign of King Josiah, the nation’s borders were expanding and there was a renewed sense of national pride and superiority. The economy was booming! Taxes were low! And even the religious fervor of the people, long suppressed, was renewed under Josiah’s reform of the temple, signaling what should have been a renewed understanding and commitment to their covenantal role as God’s people.
The picture seemed rosy, and an altogether odd background for the prophetic word we’ve read today. The reluctant boy called to be a prophet to the nations is gone. Instead replaced with a fiery Jeremiah launching his public ministry with the damning condemnation we’ve heard today. For Jeremiah, the rosy picture is a sham, and no one gets off the hook for not seeing it. Not the ancestors, not the kings, not the prophets or the priests. They may have looked like God’s chosen people, sure. But their iwitness was self-centered, self-righteous, self-aggrandizing. A light to the nation that had turned its light inward, to build up and protect itself, rather than risk itself for the sake of the world they were called to save.
In other words, Judah was walking the walk and talking the talk, but when it came to fulfilling the call God gave them they were off-course, off-script, and off-putting. Even then, it’s not their failure to live up to the covenantal standards that’s sin. No! It’s that they have have rejected the living waters of God’s justice, mercy, and love which had set them free and sent them to serve. That they’d abandoned the divine dream of a people through which the world might be set free, and become a people whose self-focused ambition—even if well-intended—resulted in an empty witness which couldn’t hold, let alone pour out for others, the liberating love of God.
In other words, the holy fire which had first burned within them, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty the oppressed, to welcome the stranger and announce that they time had come when God would save all people, had burned out apart from a deep and abiding connection to God’s purpose and presence in their lives.
Our reading ends today without resolution, and if you’re feeling a little whiplash, it’s ok. But it also leaves us with a critical question: as we pursue the kin-dom goals of liberation, healing, restoration and renewal—as WE do justice—who’s dream are we dreaming? As we protest and pray and engage in sacred resistance, what vision of the world are we pursuing. Are we drawing from the spring of living water, the faithful love of God which from generation to generation has strengthened and nourished us, or are we building empty cisterns of self-congratulation and personal ambition?
Jeremiah makes the case, as many prophets throughout history, that rootedness in a shared sense of call and purpose allows us to fully enflesh God’s dream of liberation and abundant life for all. Not simply a desire to look good or feel good.
Make no mistake—these things matter. We didn’t make up the play book for social justice here at Foundry. We don’t talk about sacred resistance because Pastor Ginger wrote a book about it. We are doing it as people whose identity is deeply rooted in the story of God’s liberating love which seeks out the most vulnerable and marginalized, which rejects systems of power which disenfranchise, silence, and oppress, and which actively works to dismantle them in every single place we find them.
Apart from this identity, we have a disturbing tendency to pursue the dreams and desires of other gods. And these little gods—like wealth, power, status, and personal success—do not bring justice, at least not really. They deal in death and result in emptiness. Consider the work of well-intentioned White abolitionists who fought to end slavery only to adopt assimilationist attitudes that did and do colonize black and brown bodies with the notion that “they’d be better off if they looked like, acted like, or were educated like us.” That’s not justice. It’s racism parading as progress.
What about LGBTQ+ people of color, and our trans siblings, who along with the whole LGBTQ+ community labored for marriage equality. When white, middle-class, and mostly male people—like me—decided that liberation had come with the Supreme Court’s ruling and declared the struggle for queer liberation complete, their bodies were left continuing to bear the brunt of queer oppression. Friends, that is not justice. It is privileged ambivalence.
Consider folks—and we all know them—that say they’re seeking liberation or justice, so-called social justice warriors seeking equity and inclusion. Those who protest and pray and preach and show up and show out when harm is being done to their chosen constituency, but who refuse to build relationships or understanding with those they disagree with. Who leave behind people in their communities who may not yet be where they are. They may be convincing and compelling, but this is not liberation. It’s lip-service.
These things all have the appearance of justice: an end to slavery, equal rights for LGBTQ+ folk who want to get married, talking a good game about liberation. But when they’re done on behalf of these little gods they accomplish at best temporary returns. Leaving us, when the going gets tough and the work seems impossible, divorced from the living water which gives us life, burnt out, jaded, and unable to do the work to which Christ calls us.
So what about it, Foundry Church? From which well are we drawing as we seek sustenance for the justice journey? At who’s altar are we worshipping as we seek to build the anti-racist, anti-colonial beloved community to which we are called? Because if our answer is anything less than this thing we do at that table, creating an ever-widening community, grounded in the welcome of Christ, in which all people find place and space to know themselves as beloved children of God, we’ve got some self-examination to do.
Y’all look. I know we’re proud of the witness we offer to our denomination and world. But if we’re doing the work because the preacher told us to from the pulpit or because we’re looking for a pat on the back and praise for being “good progressive Christians,” if we’re showing up just because we want to make ourselves look the part of a “leader in our denomination” or cultivate the image of a social justice church, then chances are what we do in a moment won’t last beyond it.
But if we want sustain a movement toward justice, to be a light to the world and a witness to the power of God’s love, we must remain rooted in the things that matter—breaking bread and passing cup to remember our common identity at the table of Christ. Grounding ourselves in the common waters of baptism through which Christ calls us to proclaim “Good news!” to the poor and recovery of sight to the blind and liberation to the captive and restoration to the oppressed. Remembering that the justice we seek—God’s justice—values diversity over conformity and relationships over lines in the sand. Investing not because we want power or praise, or are convinced of our ability or necessity in the work, but because we want to faithful to the one who has called us. Then, friends, then I dare anyone to stop what God can do with us.
And hear this Good News! That even when we get it twisted. When we forget and fail and falter. That spring of living water does not dry up. God does not abandon us. Even as the people’s failure is condemned in Jeremiah’s prophecy, God STILL calls them “my People.” You—we—are God’s people, each of you perfectly gifted, absolutely called, unequivocally capable of doing and being and becoming the beloved community we’re called to be.
So then, beloved, as we do justice this week, this month, and throughout our lives do not forget who has called you. A God whose faithfulness breaks the power of Pharaoh’s grasp to liberate the captive and in the face of Disciplinary violence excites a revolution against injustice. Do not rush past, in your work toward justice, the simple acts of prayer at the beginning of a meeting or study of scripture or a chance to check in and remember that we don’t do this work alone. Fuel the holy fire for justice with the living water we are offered as the Body of Christ. And watch, just watch, what God can do.
Amen.
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
Sunday Aug 18, 2019
A Story of Perseverance
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, August 18, 2019, the tenth Sunday after Pentecost.
Text: Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Some of you will know that earlier this year I began a new workout regimen. It’s a pretty intense group “circuit training” workout and I try to go three times a week. Each workout is a little different, but they have a certain focus: endurance, strength, power, or “ESP”—a mix of all three. My very least favorite? Endurance! In junior high, I ran short relay races—quick bursts of energy with a handoff of the baton to the next runner—that’s my kind of race. I am not a fan of long-distance runs. Endurance day pushes me to maintain my pace on the treadmill for the long haul and to row, row, row on the rowing machine until my limbs go numb. Ugh. The monotony, the constancy, the exhaustion without recovery… ugh.
And this is the metaphor we are given in our scripture today—“run with perseverance the race that is set before us…” Ugh. The course we’ve been given to travel is long. It stretches all the way back to the beginning and stretches out far into an unknown future. We know that all along the way there have been beautiful vistas and tender moments and horrible outbreaks of human foolishness, violence, and destruction. The race course is an obstacle course. And an endurance course.
Our reading picks up shortly after where we left off last Sunday. As a reminder, the folks who originally received these words were weary of waiting for the fulfillment of the promised return of Jesus and God’s Kin-dom to come on earth as in heaven. They were suffering persecution and didn’t understand why relief was so long in coming. The message they receive in the letter to the Hebrews is a reminder not only of the faith embodied by Christ, but the faith, perseverance, and sacrifice of those who came before. Chapter 11 presents a long litany of the matriarchs and patriarchs from Abel to Noah to Sarah to Moses to Rahab. The author writes, “And what more should I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets”—and then that description of the great things accomplished by the faithful and also the great persecution and suffering many experienced—beatings, mocking, imprisonment, torture, and death. (11:32-39) The names and stories are lifted up to encourage and inspire the suffering and weary community—and also, perhaps, to put their experience in perspective. //
On this day when we celebrate the contributions of women composers, I want to add to the scriptural litany of our forebears in the faith and share a bit about one of the most well known hymn-writers in American Christianity. Fanny Crosby, a life-long Methodist, lived from 1820-1915 and during her lifetime she wrote more than 8,000 hymns. “She wrote so many that she was forced to use pen names lest the hymnals be filled with her name above all others.” Incidentally, Fanny Crosby was also blind.
She was born into a poor family near Brewster, New York. Within a few weeks, she came down with a bad cold and inflamed eyes that a quack physician treated with hot mustard poultices. The cold went away, but her eyes were blinded. A few months after that, her father died and her mother went to work as a maid, leaving Fanny and her siblings to be raised by her grandmother.//
Her love of poetry began early—her first verse, written at age 8, echoed her lifelong refusal to feel sorry for herself:
Oh, what a happy soul I am,
although I cannot see!
I am resolved that in this world
Contented I will be.
How many blessings I enjoy
That other people don't,
To weep and sigh because I’m blind
I cannot, and I won’t!
Crosby went on to study and then teach at the New York Institute for the Blind. While we know her as a hymn writer, in her day she earned great fame and appreciation as a public speaker, for her mission work, her advocacy for the needs of the blind, and for her charitable work in inner cities, especially when she nursed the sick during New York’s terrible cholera epidemic in the late 1840s. Thousands fled the city, but Fanny stayed behind, contracting the disease herself but later recovering. She probably holds the record for having met more US presidents than any other American, living or dead — an astounding 21. She met every single one (in some cases after they served in the White House) from John Quincy Adams to Woodrow Wilson. She was also the very first woman to address the US Congress.[i] // Fanny Crosby belongs in the long litany of our forebears who serve as powerful examples of a life of faith, a life of perseverance.
And while I haven’t seen any accounts of Methodist circuit riders being “sawn in two” as recounted of some martyrs, we know that other matriarchs and patriarchs of our Methodist family tree also belong in the litany. Many did marvelous, brave things and were persecuted, rejected, mocked, looked down upon, excluded, and silenced. From John Wesley to Francis Asbury to Harry Hosier to Jarena Lee to Frances Willard, even up until our own time—Beth Stroud and Frank Schaefer and David Meredith and Karen Oliveto and Anna Blaedel—these and all our Methodist forebears have preached and lived the gospel in love and service even as they endured hardships and persecution.
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.” The next line reads, “Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart.”
On endurance day it is tempting to lose heart and to grow weary—and some of us may feel like every day is endurance day. I don’t know what you’re facing as you run your race that makes it difficult to endure, to persevere. It might be an illness in your body or the body of a loved one; it might be a relationship that is strained or broken; it might be trauma that is held deep in the cells and synapses of your being; it might be fear, oppression, poverty, loneliness, or simply a sense of meaninglessness in your life. We all have real challenges that make it difficult to persevere, things that can lead us to look for security and help in unhelpful places, throw us off course so that we get lost or isolated, or cut others off along the way as we push forward.
What is it that keeps us going? Why persevere when things are difficult and painful? It seems to me we persevere because at some level we believe it matters—whatever “it” is. Think of those in your life who have persevered through difficulties…what was it that kept them going? Why did they do it?
The great cloud of witnesses in scripture and in our spiritual tradition persevere out of faith that they participate in something bigger than themselves, that their lives are meaningful, that they are precious to God and are part of what God is doing in the world. Jesus, who experienced everything we experience—the sufferings and temptations—all the way to the point of death, persevered out of love. He had faith in God’s love for him and gave himself fully to the world out of love.
As we wake up day by day, facing whatever we face, we are encouraged to have faith—faith that we are loved, that we matter, that our care, love, mercy, and justice are part of God’s mending of the world, faith that God will help us. We are encouraged to remember that Jesus, who has pioneered and cleared the path for us, knows firsthand the challenges we face and so is merciful and compassionate with us even as we struggle—and maybe complain—to go on.
I wish the journey was a short relay race—push as hard as you can and then hand off the baton and bask in your short burst of brilliance. That would be awesome. But we are given an endurance course, a perseverance course. It is a trail blazed by many who have gone before and, thanks be to God, you and I are never left to travel it alone.
[i] https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/poets/fanny-crosby.html
http://mentalfloss.com/article/77751/retrobituaries-fanny-crosby-americas-greatest-hymn-writer
https://fee.org/articles/blind-but-not-disabled/
https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-blessed-assurance
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
Sunday Aug 11, 2019
A Story of Fear and Promise
A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC August 11, 2019, the 8th Sunday after Pentecost.
A few Sundays ago, Pastor Ben prayed a prayer that seemed a direct line both to the human heart and to God. It was a prayer of lament and a call for God to come down with holy fire to consume all that consumes us. It echoed the Psalmist’s cries, how long, O Lord, do we have to live in fear, to wait for the promises of peace and freedom and justice and life abundant? It echoed the prophets who critiqued human reliance upon anyone but God for security and answers. This crying out to God for help—sometimes in anguish, sometimes in exhaustion, sometimes in impatience or anger or grief—has always been part of the biblical story, our faith story.
Somewhere between the years 60 and 95 of the Common Era, a group of “second generation Christians” were crying out. They had experienced years of persecution (Heb 10:32-34). They were weary and disappointed that the promise—the fullness of God’s Kin-dom—had not yet appeared. Some, we are told, were dropping out of participation in the community as a result of the experience of suffering, confusion, uncertainty and perceived lack of divine response (10:25). What they received in response to their cries is the letter to the Hebrews, with its encouragement to have faith and live with hope, love and patience in the midst of persecution. They are reminded of the faith of those who came before them.
Abraham and Sarah and the ones we hear about today. For those who may not know the story, Abraham was led by God to leave his familiar home without having any clue about where he was going—but he is assured the mystery place holds promise. Abraham wandered as a pilgrim for years, never putting down stable roots. And when he was 99 years old and his wife Sarah was 90, God promised the couple that they (who had been unable to conceive a child) would now have a son. They both found this particular promise hilarious; seriously had a good laugh over it. However, Abraham and Sarah did conceive and bear a son—Isaac—even though, as the writer of Hebrews so delicately puts it, they “were as good as dead.”
Abraham and Sarah are praised for their faith. And, for me, the question is: what is faith? Based on their story we see that faith isn’t the absence of doubt or laughter in the face of what seems an unbelievable promise. I also don’t think faith requires us to literally believe Abraham and Sarah conceived a child when they were pushing100 (in the way we think of time). Furthermore, I don’t think faith is something that frowns upon my own aggravation at being given story after story of miraculous births to preach about when no such miraculous occurrence happened for me or for many others. Faith doesn’t mean we don’t question things or that we ignore science; nor is it dependent upon bad theology that says “everything happens for a reason.” Faith doesn’t require us to check our brains, our hearts, or our emotions at the door.
The faith being lifted up is more like what Rev. Rachel Cornwell preached a couple of Sundays ago: it’s about remembering the context of God. That might be as specific as recounting biblical stories of God’s liberating love and mercy or practicing disciplines that keep you mindful of God’s grace. Or it might simply be grasping a stubborn thread of belief in the power of love or beauty or truth in this world—when everything seems hopeless. This latter seems to me to be much closer to the real faith deal—or is certainly where it is forged. //
Simone Weil was an extraordinary woman whose life and writings have influenced many, including myself. I haven’t time to recount even a brief biography today, but she comes to mind because of her experience of what she calls “affliction”—the experience of utter pain, despair, and suffering—and her reflections upon it. She writes:
Affliction makes God appear to be absent for a time, more absent than a dead man, more absent than light in the utter darkness of a cell…During this absence there is nothing to love. What is terrible is that if, in this darkness where there is nothing to love, the soul ceases to love, God’s absence becomes final. The soul has to go on loving in the emptiness, or at least wanting to love, though it may only be with an infinitesimal part of itself.[i]
In affliction, Weil says, persons are “nailed down to the spot, only free to choose which way we look.”[ii] She insists that even in the worst moments, to continue to direct our gaze at God, to continue to hope, to continue to want to love, in the midst of absolute despair and suffering—when “there is nothing to love”—is faith. “Faith is the conviction of things not seen,” the conviction of things not perceived, not understood, not experienced… (Heb. 11:1) Faith is to “see” no end in sight of affliction and yet, perhaps with only an “infinitesimal part” of yourself, to hold on to a small stubborn thread of hope.
The spirituals that wrap our worship in depth and grace today are woven from such threads. These words and melodies were composed and sung by enslaved Africans and their progeny whose lives were marked by constant and unyielding affliction. These songs of lament, of faith, of hope, have nothing but a promise to go on—that God will do something sooner or later, that God is a God who receives the cries of enslaved people and cares, a God who has led people out of bondage before and will do it again. For some, the promise may have been understood as freedom only realized in death—because all they had ever seen in this world was cruelty and enslavement. But the spirituals, composed in blood, sweat, and tears, are songs of faith.
The main character in Colson Whitehead’s novel, The Underground Railroad, is an enslaved woman named Cora who risks everything to find freedom. Cora has no use for God or religion, thinking that “waiting for God to rescue you when it was up to you” was foolish and that prayer “put ideas in people’s heads that got them killed, distracting them from the ruthless mechanism of the world.”[iii]
Cora had these thoughts, and yet she made choice after choice seemingly fueled by something larger than just herself. Her choices reveal her focus, where she was looking, her determination to overcome fear and to seek and find something that might be called freedom, something that might be called true life. And following another crushing blow, in a moment of apparent breakthrough, on a magic-realism railroad handcar deep underground, Cora tells a salvation story, a story of a community laboring to build hope, sacrificing, dying for the sake of others, a story that not only looks back but looks forward. And she sees herself in the story—even in that moment, continuing to make a way to freedom. Reflecting on the wonder of the underground railroad, she muses:
Who are you after you finish something this magnificent—in constructing it you have also journeyed through to the other side. On one end there was who you were before you went underground, and on the other end a new person steps out into the light.[iv]
In the darkest hour and a moment of untold suffering, when she was “as good as dead,” Cora saw the promise from a distance and greeted it. It was a promise of new life and liberation. Seems like a God thing to me; maybe even like faith.
Beloveds, in our suffering, in our waiting, in our fear, when there is nothing to love and you cannot see any way out or forward, by all means, cry out, question, rant, and lament. But also remember that even bound and gagged you can choose where to look…and to whom. Our story indicates that choice makes all the difference.
[i] Simone Weil, The Love of God and Affliction, in Waiting For God, 70.
[ii] Ibid., 73.
[iii] Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad, New York: Doubleday, 2016, p. 251.
[iv] Ibid., p. 304.