Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons

Do you love me?

Do you love me?

John 21:15-17

Preached by Pastor Dawn M. Hand, Executive Pastor/Chief of Staff

Sunday, June 3, 2018

 

 

¹⁵ When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” ¹⁶ A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” ¹⁷ He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.

 

A couple of weeks ago on Pentecost Sunday when we celebrated our confirmation class, I mentioned what if we think about Holy Spirit as a precursor to love. As we center ourselves for these few moments, I’m asking us to think about love as a precursor to faith.

 

Let us pray…

 

A few years ago when I was a kid, somewhere around the fifth or sixth grade, I remember sitting in class and watching notes being passed around the room. One day, out of the blue, I got a note. It came to me folded up. I unfolded it to read these words – Do you love me? Underneath was two boxes with these words – check yes or no. This was a big decision that could possibly change my like forever. If I checked yes, it meant that I would likely get married and have kids. I checked yes, folded the note and sent it back to my new boyfriend. He opened the note, smiled and glanced back and gave me a thumbs up. And then… nothing. That was pretty much it.

 

The question, do you love me, has been around for a long time. Working up to our text today, the resurrected Jesus, had now appeared to his disciples three times. On this occasion, it was after the big fishing expedition where Jesus instructed his disciples to cast their net on the other side of the boat. They had hauled in a lot of fish. Jesus positioned near the shore, had prepared a little cook out for them. This is where we pick up the text read for us. After enjoying some fish biscuits, Jesus asked Peter, one of his disciples – do you love me? Jesus asks the question, not once, or twice, he asks three times. Peter must have recalled in his conscience, his denial of Jesus three times when Jesus was in the throes of being led to his crucifixion.

 

Perhaps Jesus’ question came as an unwanted inquiry for Peter. First, Peter was likely surprised that Jesus asked the question and second, that Jesus asked him repeatedly. Peter checked the ‘yes’ box three times. The last time being distressed and all in his feelings – ‘Lord, you know everything, you know I love you.”

 

Friends, I don’t think Jesus asked Peter ‘Do you love me,’ three times to try and trip him up or retaliate for Peter’s earlier denials. I think Jesus wanted Peter to reflect on his answer and to raise his consciousness around what this kind of love looks like, feels like, acts like. Because this love, brothers and sisters, is an encompassing love. It’s agape.

 

Jesus, the One who is called and is claimed in love, is now calling Peter to claim love. And not only Peter. Jesus is asking all of us – do you love me?

 

I have pondered this question afresh and anew. What if in our vocations, callings, family, community and church life – we image Jesus asking us every day – Do you love me? How might we respond? What box do we check? Is it yes today and maybe no tomorrow?

 

Is our love deep enough, wide enough, encompassing enough, strong enough to resist evil, injustice and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?

 

You have already learned that we had a rough few days at Annual Conference. Our beloved T.C. and another disciple had to experience again that their love is not good enough. Even beyond that, our denomination’s unjust laws tell T.C. and other folks in the LGBTQ community – even if you check the Yes box to God’s call on your life for ordained ministry, we will trump you with a no or not right now or wait. We know God has the final say. We continue to challenge our denominational empire with all due diligence and I hasten to add in respect and love. Friends, some of us have let our raw emotions get the best us. When this happens, sometimes we react badly and hatefully. I don’t agree with our Bishop’s decision either. I think she could have taken another course of action. God knows I believe she could have. At the same time, I don’t agree with the vitriolic responses regarding our Bishop, flying around in social media. We don’t have to attack her character to show our disappointment. This is not the way of God’s love. I’m not telling anyone how to feel, I know we don’t all agree or disagree the same way, yet might we model love in and through it all.

 

I give thanks to God that T.C.’s love for Jesus is bigger than her love of our beautiful broken denominational  empire. It’s her love for Jesus that keeps her faithful in showing up year after year after year. Love and faith require an action. Please understand I’m not suggesting that other folk are not faithful or don’t love Jesus if they choose another path. I’m talking about our beloved sister right here.

 

No church, mask, synagogue or any other religious or secular institutions discriminatory laws will ever triumph over God’s love for God’s beloved people.  I believe this is the love that Jesus presented to Peter. This is the love Jesus presents to us.

 

Jesus is asking Foundry - Do you love me?

 

Many years ago when I experienced my own call to ordained ministry – I experienced the power of God overwhelm me with signs and wonders. Friends, I got to tell you it frightened the hell out of me. I didn’t think I was enough to go the distance for that kind of love. Yet, we know God is love and God’s faithfulness endures forever.

 

What a journey we’ve shared these past seven years. Through my own faults and failures, through our faults and failures together, God has loved us through them to experience a glimmer of light in the darkness of infant deaths and deaths of folk whom we hold dear along the spectrum of their spiritual journey here in this community and in our families. God has loved us to embrace fun and fellowship through retreats, mission trips and parades. God’s love has captured us to renovate this space to be shared in this community. God’s love has covered us in the streets as we witnessed, marched, protested and rallied for the cause of justice. God’s love has sustained us as we traverse through yet another transition.

 

This is the kind of love that is home made by God from heaven to earth. It’s a good thing that we aren’t God. Because even with our best intentions, sometimes what we call love hurts, it disappoints, it rejects and often times, it’s very much based on conditions. This falls woefully short of God’s love.

 

Jesus is asking Foundry - Do you love me? Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. When we have checked the yes box, our response has been to feed lambs through our justice and mercy ministries, tend our children and youth, feed our neighbors who need some help with getting life back together.   

 

The work of love is not easy. We know Jesus’ love is not wrapped up nice and neat. Jesus’ love is not always pretty. In fact, I believe Jesus’ love challenges, convicts and inspires us for the living of these days.

 

It’s a frightening love – because we will continue to encounter someone or something, or some situation that we may not quite be ready for…

 

And while Jesus’ love takes us there, it’s beyond that…

 

It’s a fringed love – because out there on the periphery are people who are broken and bruise and grapping and grieving and may not have the where withal to find their way back…

 

And while Jesus’ love takes us there, it’s beyond that…

 

It’s a fathomable love – because a family member, a friend and yes even the church continues to harm and inflict pain and the heart gets covered in scales and calluses…

 

And while Jesus’ love takes us there, it’s beyond that…

 

It’s a fatigued love – because just when we think we don’t have any more energy or strength to fight for what we believe is justice, Jesus reaches in and resuscitates our weary souls…

 

O still Jesus’ love is beyond that…

 

It’s a faithful love – because through it all, there is Jesus carrying us…

 

O still the love is beyond that…

 

It’s a love that existed even before the concept of love was conceived. 

 

God so loved the world, that God gave us Jesus that you and me and all of us might have a taste of ever-lasting life.

 

I believe this is the love Jesus presented to Peter when he said – Do you love me?

 

It matters how we respond. It matters how we feed Jesus’ sheep. It matters how we tend Jesus’ lamb. We are not disciples until ourselves, we belong to God.

 

Well, Foundry and other friends, I’m wrapping up my time here and headed to go feed and to tend and to be fed and tended and graze among the sheep and lambs in Western Pennsylvania. I thank God that I go forth in the strength of your prayers and love - believing Jesus asking one more question – Oh Dawn do you love Foundry?

 

I check yes!

 

Notes

• This written script is a primary basis of the preached word. Extemporaneous preaching accompanies the written script. This farewell sermon is certainly the case.

 

• Seven years ago, I had the privilege of saying ‘yes’ (well, after some prodding by the Rev. Dr. Dean Snyder, some of you know the story) to come and serve alongside him, the staff and you. Three years later, I said yes again when the Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli upon her ‘her-storic’ appointment Foundry, asked me to stay and continue serving alongside her, the staff and among you. I am grateful to all the bishops who made it possible for me to be appointed at Foundry. I am grateful to all the staff past and present and to you the congregation. I love you. Thank you for your prayers, grace and love.

 

 

Pour Out

“Pour Out”

Acts 2:1-21

Dawn M. Hand, Executive Pastor/Chief of Staff – Foundry UMC – Washington, DC

Preached sermon on 20 May ’18 at Foundry UMC – Washington, D.C.

 

Today we celebrate Pentecost, which many in Christendom acknowledge as the birth of our church. Pentecost is a festival, 50 days after Easter or the seventh Sunday after Easter. It’s a festival that celebrates the gift of the Holy Spirit descending on the Apostles and followers of Jesus Christ. Jesus had ascended to heaven and the disciples were left wondering…

We also celebrate our Confirmation Class. Nine young people have been on a several months journey – exploring, navigating, learning and living into their faith journey. We have been praying for them these last few months and are thankful to God for their journey.

It’s been a bit of a tradition here for the Confirmation to pick a word or two for the preacher to incorporate in his or her sermon. The youth have picked their words and I have covertly embedded them in this meditation… Can’t tell you the words, yet you are invited to stay as alert as possible to pick them out.

Let us pray…

I had the strangest dream one night that I was at a birthday party. The time can for dessert - strawberry shortcake. I got the can of whip cream and sprayed it all around my strawberry shortcake. Oh, I was so excited. Got my spoon, shoved a big serving in my mouth. The next think I now I’m shaking my head and hand and causing a scene. Turns out it was a spray can of shaving cream. Didn’t taste nearly as good.

Pentecost must have been some kind of party – everyone gathered in the room and suddenly a loud sounding wind filled the place and all these folks talking in different languages. Scripture informs us they were astonished and bewildered. Some wondered had they had too much of another type of spirit. I’ve been to a few Foundry parties. I’ll just leave it at that.

Imagine just for a moment you being in the place with Jesus’ disciples. The sounds, the sights, the signs. The perplexities of all that is going on. What would you be thinking? Would you try to slide over, so Spirit would not land on you? Would you position yourself just enough to make sure you received a double dose of Spirit?

Yesterday morning like millions of people, I watched the royal wedding. It was spectacular. It’s a good thing I didn’t have a bad case of iridocyclitis - [ir″ĭ-do-si-kli´tis]. That would have made it more challenging for me. On the hills of the castle, the Royal wedding was in a sense – religious feeling of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious –the word means wonderful, good work.

 I imagine for some in attendance, the wedding was a bit astonishing and perhaps even bewildering. No, it wasn’t a wind ripping through the atmosphere. Folks in fascinators were not running up and down the aisle. Yet, in that place I imagine some were likely thinking – ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing and hearing and experiencing in this place. Well, we certainly know history was made on a number of fronts.

There in Windsor Castle St. George’s Chapel, the officiant invoked Holy Spirit pour out and bless Harry and Meghan. And, the bishop preached an impactful homily on ‘imagine when love is the way.” As I listened to Bishop Curry, I immediately thought – yes – how life would change when love is truly the way. Then he preached about the work of fire.

My friends, what if we truly think about Holy Spirit as a pre-cursor to love.  When God pours out Holy Spirit – it’s this agent that blows in the crevasses of our hearts.  When we receive it and allow Spirit to move us – we could truly live into what God has purposed for us.

 

When the disciples and other followers of Jesus were gathered, they were astonished and perplexed of the way of Spirit and ability of Spirit. It was Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples that reminded them of God’s declaration spoken through the prophet Jo-el (like Noe-el) – “that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams – slaves, men and women, I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.”

I don’t want us to miss the fact that people were speaking in their own native languages which suggests there was a full expression of diversity praising God and God’s spirit was poured out on all of them. Through this act, the church grew and multiplied.  

 

The Greek word for pour out is Ekcheo – ek-key-o – which means to bestow liberally.[i] What if in this context we think about Holy Spirit – acting and taking root to do good work.

 

As it was for Jesus’ disciples when they gathered in the holy city of Jerusalem, the same is true for us gathered as Jesus’ disciples right here at Foundry and where ever we gather. For every call we endeavor to join, participate or lead, we yield ourselves to the pouring out of Holy Spirit. Sisters and brothers, there is power in the work of Spirit. Why? Because this is the way of almighty God.

 

God’s pouring out – God’s bestowing liberally of God’s Spirit is an intentional act to shake, stir and propel God’s people along their spiritual journey –

 

            God’s Spirit is poured out for you to prophesy – have you ever spent time in deep prayer and God revealed something to you?   Finally, you had the courage to give voice to that revelation and it came to pass.

 

            God’s Spirit is poured out for you to see visions - what do you vision for your kids, your partner or spouse and family? What do you vision for your life? I know you have thought about it. Is                 Foundry’s vision to Love God. Love each other. Change the world.       -  having an impact in your life and in the lives of this community?

 

           God’s Spirit is poured out to dream dreams – my young friends what do you dream to be or do? What captivates your mind? Church what is your dream for our society? I know here at this church, we dream with other dreamers for a time where all of God’s children in the LGBTQ community will be welcomed valued in the full life of the church. We dream for solutions to chronic homelessness. We dream to have a robust children and youth ministry. We dream for adult discipleship to take deep root in the lives of our community. Does our dream extend enough to include radical racial justice? We are constantly bombarded with news reports what seems like on a weekly basis - some black or brown bodies being miscategorized or mistreated and abused. Let’s join in recalling the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said – “‘I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed –         we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.

 

The work of Holy Spirit is to move us. This is one reason we pray – “Come Holy Spirit.” God is always at work. We are the ones that must be ready to receive and to move forward.

 

Come Holy Spirit – that we might mend and fix broken relationships.

Come Holy Spirit – that we help lift children out of poverty.

Come Holy Spirit – that we work to change laws to protect our kids and youth in schools.

Come Holy Spirit – that we might feed the hungry with food to sustain.

Come Holy Spirit – that we might value the humanity of all beloved people.

Come Holy Spirit – and saturate this vast land and encompass earth.

Come Holy Spirit – and blow in the halls of Justice.

Come Holy Spirit – that our hearts might be inclined to stay in your grace.

 

Sisters and brothers, this is a simple prayer with a whole lot of power. For every action of our ecclesial life, we rely on Holy Spirit.

 

In just a few moments, these confirmands are going to come forward and make their own procession of faith, some will be baptized, some will join in membership. During the liturgy of blessing the water, we will call upon God to pour out God’s Holy Spirit on the water and each of them. In this calling, we are submitting to the power and grace of God’s work. We know that we cannot do this on our own. This – is the work of Holy Spirit.

 

I’m suggesting to you today that a way we as Christians can gear up, can armor up and go out to be the hands and feet and the embodiment of Jesus Christ is to ask God to pour out Holy Spirit. Don’t do if you don’t mean it.

Friends, as I’m wrapping up my time here in fort nite, I must confess to you that are times in my life I find myself feeling a bit irritated and frustrated. If I’m not careful, it can get the best of me. There are times when I call on God to help a sister out. My prayer is something like:

• Oh God pour out your sweet Spirit to temper my salty spirit.
• Oh God pour out your cool Spirit to quench my hot-tempered spirit.

 

Siblings, I’m suggesting to you today that a way we as Christians can gear up, can armor up and go out to be the hands and feet and the embodiment of Jesus Christ and love our way through this journey is to ask God to pour out Holy Spirit. Let’s not pray it if we don’t mean it.

 

Note – This written script is a primary basis of the preached word. Extemporaneous preaching accompanies the written script.

 

[i] http://biblehub.com/greek/1632.htm

Evangelical

Evangelical

Rev. Mark Schaefer

Foundry United Methodist Church

May 6, 2018

2 Samuel 4:5–12; Matthew 11:2–6

 

2 Samuel 4:5–12 NRSV • Now the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, Rechab and Baanah, set out, and about the heat of the day they came to the house of Ishbaal, while he was taking his noonday rest. They came inside the house as though to take wheat, and they struck him in the stomach; then Rechab and his brother Baanah escaped. Now they had come into the house while he was lying on his couch in his bedchamber; they attacked him, killed him, and beheaded him. Then they took his head and traveled by way of the Arabah all night long. They brought the head of Ishbaal to David at Hebron and said to the king, “Here is the head of Ishbaal, son of Saul, your enemy, who sought your life; the LORD has avenged my lord the king this day on Saul and on his offspring.”

David answered Rechab and his brother Baanah, the sons of Rimmon the Beerothite, “As the LORD lives, who has redeemed my life out of every adversity, when the one who told me, ‘See, Saul is dead,’ thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and killed him at Ziklag—this was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more then, when wicked men have killed a righteous man on his bed in his own house! And now shall I not require his blood at your hand, and destroy you from the earth?” So David commanded the young men, and they killed them; they cut off their hands and feet, and hung their bodies beside the pool at Hebron. But the head of Ishbaal they took and buried in the tomb of Abner at Hebron.

 

Matthew 11:2–6 NRSV • When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.”

 

 I.        BEGINNING

Friends, I am here to talk to you about Jesus.  The only Son of God, our Lord!  He came to us from heaven, lived among us and died for our sins on the cross!  Can I get a hallelujah?  But the story did not end there, friends, no, it didn’t.  Because he ROSE again.  He came back from the dead so that ALL would know that God has given us a gift of life from the dead, of eternal life through the blood of his precious son, Jesus Christ!  Can I get an amen?

I don’t know how long I can keep that up. That gets kind of exhausting for a Methodist from Upstate New York.

But I am willing to bet that something close to that kind of religiosity is what many of you think when you hear the word “evangelical.” Something about loud, emotional preaching. Charismatic religious leaders with huge congregations or tent revival meetings and altar calls, people weeping in the aisles. Lots of jumping up and shouting “Hallelujah!”

Or maybe your mind goes less to the worship style and more to the implicit theology: exclusivist claims to salvation, an emphasis on individual—often sexual—sin rather than systemic sins like poverty and racism, a preoccupation with whether you’re in or you’re out. A lot of asking, “When were you saved?” (My favorite answer to that question is: “2,000 years ago on a hill outside Jerusalem.” Feel free to borrow that one.)

Or maybe it’s the particular set of political beliefs that tend to come with the Evangelical theology: social conservatism, lack of inclusion toward the LGBTQ community, a strong support for law-and-order justice, a strong military, and other traditionally conservative political positions.

However it’s understood, for many Christians who do not so identify, the word evangelical has left something of a bad taste in people’s mouths for a while. In fact, fifty years ago, when the Methodist Church merged with the Evangelical United Brethren to form our current denomination, they didn’t choose to be called the sensible combination of their names—the Evangelical Methodist Church or the Methodist Evangelical Church—they instead dropped the word evangelical and opted to carry over united, instead. (As an aside, this is why it’s preferred to refer to us as United Methodists—so that we honor the EUB churches who joined with the Methodists five decades ago.)

But all of this is to say, that there is a lot of discomfort around the word evangelical. But what does it mean for us, really? Is there a sense of the word that those of us on the other side of the theological aisle can embrace? Despite all of the connotations that we perceive when we hear it, what does the word actually mean?

II.     EVANGELICAL

On a basic level, Evangelical means “Gospel based.” It comes from the Greek word euangelion meaning “good news” or gospel.

Now, at first, this word was meant to be in contrast to those Christians who based their doctrine on things other than the scriptures, specifically, the Catholic Church which derived much of its doctrine from its accumulated theological tradition rather than directly from the scriptures themselves. Thus, Evangelical was a term that meant something like “according to the gospel” as opposed to “according to the church.”

In Germany, for example, the word Evangelisch simply means “Protestant.” (By the way, when I typed that word into the Google translation software to double-check, I still had my translation set to Latin and the site rendered Evangelisch as haereticus “heretic”—so, it appears that the Vatican may still have some lingering feelings about the Reformation, or at least those writing in Latin, anyway.) To this day, the Lutheran Church in German is simply the Evangelische Kirche and its sister church in the US is the ELCA—The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Now, in America, from the 18th century onward, the term evangelical referred to those who affirmed the importance of a personal experience of salvation, known in the heart. This experience of salvation was seen as a central and essential element of Christian faith.

And during the heyday of what was known as the “Evangelical consensus,” there was an agreement that this affirmation of the experience of God was accompanied by a commitment to outward expression of faith, frequently in acts of “piety” and “mercy”—which we would call “worship, devotion, service, and justice.” This was particularly the case among those Christians whose traditions emphasized the assurance of salvation, the new birth in the believer as a result of one’s justification and pardon of sin, and the gradual sanctification of the believer under the power of God’s grace. And especially those traditions whose founder himself had come to this theological understanding after years of tutelage by pietist Moravians who emphasized the religion of the heart and who himself had had the experience of his heart being “strangely warmed.”

So, yeah, I don’t know how to break this to you all. But Methodists are … Evangelical.

Wesley was absolutely convinced of the power of God’s justifying grace to work a change in us that regenerated us or that gave us a new birth. This, in turn, precipitated an assurance of salvation that he believed was every Christian’s birthright. It was these experiences of salvation that was what drove the early Methodists to work for prison reform, seek justice for the poor, establish schools and universities, fight for abolition, and so on. We did these things because we were evangelical, not despite being so. The Social Gospel was an outgrowth of Evangelical Christianity.

Now, in the early 20th Century, the Evangelical consensus began to collapse. The progressive social gospel was viewed with suspicion by more conservative elements and there arose a divide between those Christians who saw sin as a primarily personal issue and those who saw it as a societal problem.

After the Scopes Monkey Trial about teaching evolution in the public schools took place in the 1920’s the term Evangelical arose as an alternative label for a conservative Christian who wasn’t quite a fundamentalist. And the more progressive, Social Gospel Christians were content to let them have the label.

Reeling from the embarrassment of the Scopes Monkey Trial, most evangelicals withdrew from active engagement with public life and opted out of organized participation in politics. This retreat was so great that the language of Evangelical Christianity, disappeared from the collective awareness. Whereas an old Evangelical concept like being “born again”—or as John Wesley would have called it “regeneration” or “new birth”—once made it into Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address as “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” now journalists no less respected than Walter Cronkite had to explain to his viewers that they’d looked into it when Jimmy Carter had claimed to be a “born-again Christian” and discovered that this was fairly common.

The mainline traditions that had come out of the evangelical tradition, had not just abandoned the label of evangelical, we’d abandoned the language of evangelical Christianity, such that our sense of being “evangelical” in any way was lost. Evangelical now meant what the conservative Christians had claimed it as: a conservative Christian who wasn’t quite a fundamentalist.

But that is a depleted sense of the word. The term evangelical is not just a subset of a subset—it’s meant to encompass us, too.

III.   GOOD NEWs

What does it mean, then, for us to claim to be evangelical?

At its most basic level, to be evangelical is to be rooted in the gospel—in the good news. To share the good news. But what’s the good news?

In the TV show Futurama, there’s a running gag wherein Professor Farnsworth, owner of the Planet Express delivery service, will come into the meeting room and make an announcement that always begins with “Good news, everyone!” But the announcements tend to be things like:

• “Great news, everyone! You’ll be delivering a package to Chapek 9, a world where Humans are killed on sight.”
• “Good news, everyone. Tomorrow you’ll be making a delivery to Ebola 9, the virus planet.”
• “Good news, everyone! Today you’ll be delivering a crate of subpoenas to Sicily 8, the Mob Planet!”

With Professor Farnsworth there is a disconnect between his assertion that he’s bringing good news and the nature of the news he’s actually bringing.

We see something of that in the passage from 2 Samuel that we read earlier. In that passage we read of the aftermath of the dynastic struggle that follows in the wake of David succeeding Saul as king of Israel. Rimmon and Rechab found Ishbaal the son of Saul and slay him while he was taking his noontime rest. They behead him and ride all night to deliver the head of Ishbaal to David, clearly expecting to be rewarded for this. David’s reaction is quite different:

“As the LORD lives, who has redeemed my life out of every adversity, when the one who told me, ‘See, Saul is dead,’ thought he was bringing good news, I seized him and killed him at Ziklag—this was the reward I gave him for his news. How much more then, when wicked men have killed a righteous man on his bed in his own house! And now shall I not require his blood at your hand, and destroy you from the earth?”

The men who did this and who reported it thought that they were bringing good news to David, just as the one who brought the news of Saul’s death did. But in neither case was this actually good news. David has enough sense to know that the death of these men—a political rival and his innocent son—might have been seen as politically expedient but can hardly be characterized as “good.” It’s important to understand that news that might be advantageous to you is not necessarily synonymous with good news.

I think this is the case with so much of what is held out as “good news” in contemporary Christianity, and part of many people’s responses to the word evangelical is because the Gospel that is frequently encountered doesn’t seem to be good news.

Somehow, the proclamation of Christ’s victory over death and sin gets translated into an almost Professor Farnsworth version of the Gospel:

• “Good news, everyone! The overwhelming majority of the human race is condemned to eternal hellfire and damnation!”
• “Good news, everyone! The key to salvation is intellectual assent to a very specific set of extraordinary propositions that must be believed without any trace of doubt!”
• “Good news, everyone! It doesn’t matter how loving your Hindu and Muslim neighbors are, because they have not accepted Christ as we do, they can expect an eternity of psychic torment when they die!”

Does any of that sound like good news to you? Sure, it’s good news for the people who happen to fit the narrow definition of the faithful, but it’s hardly the kind of thing that would be understood as good news to anyone else. This sounds closer to the “good news” that brought word of the deaths of Saul and Ishbaal.

Now, if you’re one who is worried about your own eternal fate and someone were to tell you that you have nothing to fear because you are one of those for whom Christ died, then, yes, that would be good news. But it’s hard to see that proclamation being understood broadly in the same way to people who didn’t have that angst. If I’m an atheist who doesn’t believe in God or life after death, telling me that I’m going to hell unless I adopt a particular creed wouldn’t sound like good news in the slightest.

IV.   GO AND TeLL JOHN

So, then,  what is good news? How do we know what counts as good news such that we should proclaim it? As in so many things, it is instructive to look to Jesus. After all, Jesus began his ministry in Mark’s gospel by saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15 NRSV)

Further, we read in our Gospel lesson earlier that John the Baptist’s disciples came to Jesus to relay a message from John asking him if he was the one they were waiting for or should they wait for someone else. Jesus’ response is:

Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.

There are two things to note about this passage. The first is Jesus’ answer to how it is they can know whether Jesus is the long-awaited messiah: because, among other things, the poor have good news brought to them.

“Bringing good news” is connected to the poor. If we’re looking for a test to determine what is “good news,” let me suggest that the good news isn’t news the poor would receive as such, then perhaps it isn’t really good news. Or at least, the kind of Good News that the Christian is to be bringing.

Second, all of the verbs are in the present tense:

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. This means that the good news is not about something that happened centuries ago, but something that is happening even now in our midst.

If we are to be good-news based, if we are to be sharing the gospel, if we are to be evangelical then let this be our evangelion. Let our Gospel be that God is active in our midst. Let our Gospel be that we are the agents of God’s grace and mercy. Let our Gospel be one that speaks powerfully to the needs of the disadvantaged and the marginalized, to the widow and the orphan, to the immigrant and the poor. Let our actions be an illustration that we truly are bearers of the “Good News.” Let our Evangelicalism be about sharing a message of liberty to the captive, justice to the oppressed, binding up of the brokenhearted.

If we claim that as our Good News, there should be no reason to shy away from being evangelical. Nor would we have any reason to shy away from insisting that everyone should have a powerful experience of that kind of salvation, and should know the love and grace of God deeply within their hearts.

V.      END

For a long time, I have argued that the Evangelical Christians have a lot of fervor but don’t always know what to do with it. And mainline Christians are really busy but we don’t always know why. That needs to end. And, mercifully, it’s starting to.

I have worked the last eighteen years on a college campus and have worked alongside a number of different Christian campus ministry communities, including Catholic, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and Pentecostal. And if there’s one thing that’s been consistent over the years is the growing interest in the Evangelical and Pentecostal communities to engage on matters of justice. Many young Evangelicals are deeply committed to environmental justice, racial justice, anti-colonialism, and economic justice for the poor. One of my chaplains representing InterVarsity was in my office talking about the racial justice work he was doing with his students and was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Love your Muslim Neighbor” in English and Arabic. InterVarsity, folks. InterVarsity.

It’s clear that there is a hunger in Evangelical Christianity for the Social Gospel. And at the same time, there is a hunger in mainline Protestantism to connect our concern for justice to some deeper experience of God and of salvation. If you have any doubt about that, look around you: at this very moment you are surrounded by hundreds of people who come here regularly to hear your pastor preach the Good News of Jesus Christ, and then translate that into meaningful social action and sacred resistance to evil, injustice, and oppression. You all know how much Pastor Ginger talks about Jesus—and that only makes your commitment to justice and inclusion here at Foundry stronger.

The two sides of contemporary Christian faith need each other. The Evangelicals are reclaiming the outward expression of faith in social justice. And it’s time that those of us on the progressive side, especially us Methodists, reclaim the title Evangelical.

For we serve a God no less powerful, we are no less convicted of our need for grace, we have experiences of God’s love no less meaningful, no less personal than that of those more comfortable with the label.

It wouldn’t hurt for us to get in the habit of telling people why we were doing the work we were doing, of sharing the good news of God’s liberating power, of being evangelical.

Indeed, it is because of that deeply powerful experience of God, it is because we have come to understand the grace of God’s Son Jesus Christ, it is because we believe in the transformation of the self that is possible through love, the “new birth” of a person who has come to know the depths of God’s love, it is because of all these things that we go out to share a word of power, a word of justice, and a word of hope with a broken and hurting world.

Can I get an amen?

Believer

Believer

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, April 22, 2018, the third Sunday after Easter. Polyphony sermon series.

Texts: Psalm 119:64-74, Acts 5:12-21

 

Describing the process of an infant learning to communicate with the sounds of her voice, author Kathleen Norris writes, “Eventually the rudiments of words come; often ‘Mama,’ Dada,’ ‘Me,’ and the all-powerful ‘No!’ An unqualified ‘Yes’ is a harder sell, to both children and adults. To say ‘yes’ is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Not being quite sure of what we are doing, or where it will lead us, we try on assent, we commit ourselves to affirmation. With luck, we find that our efforts are rewarded. The vocabulary of faith begins.”[i]

 

It’s easy to make things more complicated than they are.  And when we are talking about God things can really get out of hand. So I love Norris’s reminder that faith—at least its vocabulary—begins with simply saying “yes.”  We “try on assent” and “commit ourselves to affirmation” and this risky leap of faith is done in the context of relationship.  We all know something about this.  Someone says “yes” to me—am I willing to respond with my own “yes?”  Someone reaches out to me in relationship, will I affirm that action and that person by reaching back?  Such a move will change your life, will lead to new experiences—and to places you’d never imagine.  Through the experience of human relationship, we learn about love, trust, commitment, friendship. We also learn the pain of betrayal when our trust is broken, we learn the frailty of our own constancy when we fail to be a good friend or partner, we learn the heartbreak that follows when one we have loved deeply must be released into the arms of death.  These experiences teach us about real love and commitment and help us identify what and who is worth risking our “yes” for.

Folks have often said that Jesus is God’s “yes” to us and to the world—that is to say, Jesus is God’s affirmation of us and the sign that God believes in us even with so many good reasons to just pack it in.  God, it seems, loves us and is determined to hang in there with us even when we’re at our worst.  God, it seems, continues to reach out to us to offer encouragement, friendship, correction, and guidance along our journey.  God evidently will forgive us time and again to help us live and love more freely, wisely, and lovingly in relationship with others. That is the Gospel, the good news of this life we share as followers of Jesus.

 

Kathleen Norris says, such news, such love, such a God “is not readily understandable.”  I imagine many would find that an understatement.

 

One of the great perversions within the Church is the teaching—either explicit or implicit—that if you have doubts you’re supposed to pretend you don’t, that if you struggle with teachings of the faith or with issues in your life, then you don’t really belong in the Church.  I can think of nothing further from the truth.  Sadly, there are those who stay away from the life-giving experience of Christian community because no one has ever convinced them that they don’t have to have all the answers—or that they don’t have to blindly go along with what they’ve heard or been taught about the Church, about Jesus, about the Bible.  Also, sadly, there are those who have been part of the Church for years who have never felt it was OK to admit what they don’t understand.  And so they never ask their questions and so they are never able to develop or deepen their faith.

 

Every week you hear me say “no matter what you believe or doubt” you’re welcome to come and bring it!  And even though I say that pretty much without fail, I imagine there are still folks who struggle to trust that their doubts and beliefs are really welcome.  There are plenty of good reasons for this difficulty.

 

Norris writes, “The word ‘belief’ has been impoverished; it has come to mean a head-over-heart intellectual assent. When people ask, ‘What do you believe?’ they are usually asking ‘What do you think?’ I have come to see that my education, even my religious education, left me with a faulty and inadequate sense of religious belief as a kind of suspension of the intellect. Religion, as I came to understand it, was a primitive relic that could not stand up to the advances made in our understanding of human psychological development or the inquiry of higher mathematics and the modern sciences.” She goes on to share “When I first stumbled upon the Benedictine abbey…I was surprised to find the monks so unconcerned with my weighty doubts and intellectual frustrations over Christianity…I was a bit disappointed—I had thought that my doubts were spectacular obstacles to my faith and was confused but intrigued when an old monk blithely stated that doubt is merely the seed of faith, a sign that faith is alive and ready to grow.”[ii]

 

This is quite different from what lots of folks will imagine or experience of the Christian perspective on doubt and belief.  So many who write Christianity off do so because they think, as Norris did, that it requires them to believe ridiculous things.  Others reject or abandon the faith because they get a taste of a form of Christianity that is so narrow and legalistic that there is little or no room for questions, for freedom to explore the depths of a wondrous God, for space to wrestle with themselves in the safety of divine love.  Some Christian tribes do emphasize strict adherence to their understanding of the Bible or theological concepts as a requirement to be counted among the “believers.”  This more legalistic approach can lead to a great deal of fear and guilt that you aren’t thinking right or feeling what you’re supposed to feel or doing the right things.  It can end up feeling like a very dysfunctional—if not abusive—relationship.  But the word most often translated “believe” in the Bible—pisteuo in the Greek—is not defined as only what you think or as blind surrender to a questionable relationship

 

Pisteuo means several things including “thinking to be true,” “place confidence in,” and “entrusting or being entrusted with a thing.”  One resource says, “The verb πιστεύω works two ways like the English verb ‘commit.’ If you commit yourself to someone, then you are entrusting yourself to them… At the same time you are supporting them. The two sides are really the summary of a covenantal relationship.”[iii]  (“I believe in you”…)  Kathleen Norris says that “at its Greek root, ‘to believe’ simply means ‘to give one’s heart to.’ Thus, if we can determine what it is we give our heart to, then we will know what it is we believe.”[iv]

 

What I want to suggest today is that to be a “believer” doesn’t mean you are without doubts or that you’ve sacrificed your critical thinking.  To be a believer doesn’t require you to pretend you understand things that baffle you or to act in ways that challenge your sense of integrity. A believer is one who as a result of thinking there is something somehow True about the Gospel message, places confidence in God, and entrusts their heart to God.   A “believer” is simply one who—in one way or another—has been drawn to the love of God and has decided to say “yes” to the journey. 

 

The book of Acts in the Bible is the story of the people who first risked saying “yes.”  The lives of those who traveled with Jesus had a first-hand experience of what it feels like to be perfectly loved and forgiven.  Lord knows the apostles had asked questions, had doubts, missed the point, failed spectacularly in trying to do what Jesus did.  And yet because Jesus believed in them and didn’t give up on them and loved them, they kept walking the path, kept trying to follow and to learn.  They witnessed the wonders of the risen Jesus who appeared to them, proving they didn’t need to be afraid, even of death.  Their changed lives and the story they had to tell and the power of love that flowed from Holy Spirit through them was powerful and healing.  It must have been amazing to see them, these simple, uneducated people—without title or standing in the community—risk so much (even jail!) to share their story and to care for those whom others ignored or cast out.  This is what the apostles did and, through them, other people learned of the good news of God’s love and mercy and meaning and came alongside to travel the way of Jesus.  

 

An angel (literally messenger) of God comes to the rescue of the imprisoned apostles and relates this charge: “Go, stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.”  Notice, the angel doesn’t set them free to go and tell the “rules” or the “ideas”…they’re encouraged to tell the whole message about this life. 

 

“This life” is the life they had been given—a life of loving and just relationship with God and other people, a life that is meaningful and purposeful.  It’s a life that says “yes” to love, that says “yes” to compassion, that says “yes” to forgiveness, that says “yes” to vulnerability, that says “yes” to risk and trust and generosity and solidarity… For centuries it is this life that has drawn people to embrace the Christian spiritual path.  That path is well-worn and there are sign posts along the way in the form of spiritual practices, theologies born out of the crucible of experience, prayers, songs, and stories, all resources to help you grow more strong and free, more wise and kind, to help you discern the ups and downs, twists and turns of this life.  We are encouraged to bring our intellect and questions to all of it, to engage the resources and words and images of our faith with the curiosity of an explorer and the wonder of a child.  

 

What if we perceived a “believer” not as someone who has all the answers but who trusts God enough to sit in the ambiguity and frustration of the questions?  What if we perceived a “believer” not as someone who thought a certain way, but rather as someone who lived a certain way, as someone who loved a certain way?  What if being a “believer” is a willingness to entertain Spirit as a companion along your journey, to make yourself available in the spaces where Jesus reportedly shows up (along the margins, among the poor and disenfranchised, with the sick and grieving), and to sit in the discomfort of uncertainty that is guaranteed when we stumble into places like this one?

 

What if?  I don’t have all the answers.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

[i] Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 1.

[ii] Ibid., 62-63.

[iii] http://www.torahtimes.org/NewTranslation/concordance/pisteuo_definition.html

[iv] Kathleen Norris, 62.

Righteousness

Righteousness

A sermon preached by Rev. Ginger E. Gaines-Cirelli at Foundry UMC, April 8, 2018, the first Sunday after Easter. Polyphony sermon series. Sunday following the 50^th anniversary of MLK’s assassination.

Text: Mark 10:35-45

 

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  What a pile of hooey.  This old saying is just so…untrue.  Words can hurt us deeply, leaving wounds much more difficult to heal than even the worst broken bone.  As we journey through this Easter season, we’re going to think about some words from the Christian spiritual tradition that have been used in very hurtful ways.  We’re calling this series “Polyphony,” a term describing music that includes many parts, voices, or sounds.  The words we will explore—abomination, believer, saved, evangelical, born again—are words that get spoken by many different and disparate voices.  Our goal is to reclaim some of these words, to listen for the sound the words make when spoken in the context of God’s grace and mercy.

 

Today we begin with the word “Righteousness.”  Growing up as a teenager in the 1980’s I heard the word “righteous” used alongside words like “awesome,” “rad,” “gnarly,” and, I’m slightly ashamed to say this, “tubular.”  It generally meant “great” or “neat” or “cool.”  But the word “righteousness” in the Christian context has been spoken in ways that are not awesome.  Here’s the first definition that popped up in an online search: “Righteousness is the state of moral perfection required by God to enter heaven.”  If this is true, we’re all in trouble.  That particular site did hasten to add that we are not able to achieve this moral perfection on our own; and then launched into a very legalistic explanation that Jesus’s blood “satisfies God’s justice” by paying the debt for all our sins—like a bloody “get out of jail free” card.  I take issue with this theology and, if you are interested in my alternative take, I encourage you to look online at the Good Friday homily I preached last year entitled “Ultimate Witness.” The thing I want to lift up today, however, is the way “righteousness” becomes a tag for the “in” and the “out” crowd the “good” and the “bad” people. If I am righteous, I can judge another for not being righteous.  When righteousness is understood as saying certain words or showing up in a certain place at certain times, when righteousness is strict adherence to a list of “do’s and don’ts,” then it is very easy to smoothly slide into self-righteousness.

 

I submit that righteousness is not about figuring out how to get into the “righteous club,” but rather about faithfully nurturing loving and just relationships that reflect God’s wisdom and way.  In the Hebrew scriptures (aka the Old Testament) righteousness is connected to God’s nature and covenant with Israel; in the New Testament, righteousness has to do with the kin-dom of God and life in Christ.  Covenant and kin-dom are the ways of living in right relationship with God and with one another.  Righteousness is about right relationship.

 

And that brings me to our text for today.  James and John ask to sit at the right hand and the left hand of Jesus in his kingdom.  At this point, they don’t understand that Jesus isn’t going to establish the kind of kingdom that the Hebrews had been longing for, an earthly kingdom that would set them free from Roman oppression, that would reestablish the throne of David.  They wanted to have cabinet positions in the new administration; after all, they’d earned it, leaving everything to follow Jesus, being devoted and hard-working.  Why shouldn’t they sit at his right and left hand in the throne room?

 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously preached on this text, pointing out how quickly we might want to condemn James and John for their selfish request but that, if we’re honest, we’ll acknowledge that we have the same basic desire to put ourselves forward so that we can be seen and recognized, so that we can get attention or praise, so that we might feel important.  This instinct to be “out front,” to be first, is what King called “The Drum Major Instinct.”  You may not want to stand up in front of people to speak or to be in charge of an event or movement or to lead the marching band.  But, even for those who are more shy or who like to work behind the scenes, in one way or another, the need for attention and praise and recognition is part of us all.  In ways both overt and subtle we try to get the attention that we desire, to put ourselves forward in whatever way we know how to be acknowledged and to feel that we matter.

 

It is perfectly human to need attention and affirmation, but the drum major instinct can easily become perverted and get in the way of right relationship with God and others. Pitfalls include comparing ourselves to others and being driven to outdo others through our material possessions, through our appearance, through joining this group and that group, through collecting letters after our name or striving to always come in first. A personality distorted by the drum major instinct will begin to boast or may become an “influence peddler,” dropping names and manipulating situations to try to seem more important.  King goes on to say, “when one fails to harness this instinct…you engage in some of the most vicious activities. You will spread evil, vicious, lying gossip on people, because you are trying to pull them down in order to push yourself up.”[i]

 

King also points toward “snobbish exclusivism,” that self-righteous energy that wants to be “in” at the sake of others being “out.” And he calls out the church for the tendency to become focused on the so-called “important people” who attend—the doctors, lawyers, business leaders, presidents, and so on—as if the other folks don’t really count.  But he goes on to say, “When the church is true to its nature, it says, ‘Whosoever will, let him come.’ And it does not propose to satisfy the perverted uses of the drum major instinct. It’s the one place where everybody should be the same standing before a common master and savior. And a recognition grows out of this—that all…are [siblings] because they are children of a common [parent].”[ii]

 

The failure to see this and to embody it in our lives, puts us out of right relationship. This failure opens the door to the destructive tendencies of the drum major instinct, the need to feel superior over others.  Dr. King says this “can lead one to feel that because he has some training, he’s a little better than that person that doesn’t have it, or because [she] has some economic security, that [she’s] a little better than the person who doesn’t have it.” And this uncontrolled, perverted use of the drum major instinct also leads to “tragic race prejudice.” King says it “is a need that some people have to feel superior…to feel that they are first, that their white skin ordained them to be first” and that is a perversion of the instinct that leads to the “most tragic expressions of…inhumanity”[iii]  toward one another.  Perversions of the drum major instinct leads nations to endless war and violence, to selfish and cruel policies against other nations and peoples.

 

Now considering all of this, you’d think that Jesus would lay James and John out for their selfish request.  But he doesn’t do that.  Instead, Jesus takes the opportunity to offer a lesson, to help these faithful followers grow up a bit more and learn what it really looks like to be in right relationship.  Jesus teaches that the relationship we seek should not be that of ruler, but rather of servant. It is the relationship of kin-ship, of mutuality, of humility.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that we need to abandon the drum major instinct.  Here’s how King imagines Jesus responding to the brothers:

 

“‘Oh, I see, you want to be first. You want to be great. You want to be important. You want to be significant. Well you ought to be. If you’re going to be my disciple, you must be.’ But he reordered priorities. And he said, ‘Yes, don’t give up this instinct. It’s a good instinct if you use it right.  It’s a good instinct if you don’t distort it and pervert it.  Don’t give it up. Keep feeling the need for being important. Keep feeling the need for being first.  But I want you to be first in love.  I want you to be first in moral excellence.  I want you to be first in generosity.  That is what I want you to do.’”[iv]

 

Righteousness, right relationship with God and others, is achieved through the grace of God that helps us to understand that we are all kin, all beloved children of a loving God. Righteousness is about relationships marked by humble service, compassion, and love.  Righteousness is about relationships that are just—that are not marred by prejudice, greed, ego, and insecurity.  This righteousness isn’t something we can achieve without God’s help.  It is so easy to slip into destructive attitudes and actions when we feel even the slightest hint of fear or insecurity. 

 

But the heart of the message from our Gospel is that we are all on the same playing field when it comes to greatness in the kin-dom of God—because all that is required of us is a loving, servant heart that seeks to embrace each and every other as kin.  That’s the long and short of it.  Anyone can serve.  Everyone can serve.  Some will choose not to, but the door is open to all. The kin-dom’s message is “whosoever will, let them come.”

 

It has been intentional to lift up some of the teaching and insight of Dr. King on this Sunday following our remembrances and recommitment to the work he championed for racial and social justice and for an expression of the Christian gospel that truly has integrity.  And, as a closing for this reflection, I’ll share some of the final words from his sermon:

 

“Every now and then I guess we all think realistically about that day when we will be victimized with what is life’s final common denominator—that something we call death…Every now and then I ask myself, ‘What is it that I would want said?’ And I leave the word to you…

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day…I’d like somebody to mention…that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others…tried to love somebody… tried to be right on the war question. I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try to feed the hungry. And I want you to be able to say that day, that I did try, in my life, to clothe those who were naked…to visit those who were in prison. I want you to say that I tried to love and serve humanity. Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness…Yes, Jesus, I want to be on your right side or your left side, not for any selfish reason. I want to be on your right or your best side, not in terms of some political kingdom or ambition, but I just want to be there in love and in justice and in truth and in commitment to others, so that we can make of this old world a new world.”[v]

 

 

 

 

[i] Martin Luther King, Jr., “The Drum Major Instinct,” A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., ed. James M. Washington (New York: HarperOne, 1986), 262.

[ii] Ibid., 263.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid., 265.

[v] Ibid., 267.