Jesus doesn't leave anyone for dead. Ever. - 5th after Pentecost

The other reading referenced is Galatians 3:23-29.

The holy gospel according to Luke (8:26-39)

²⁶Then Jesus and the disciples arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. ²⁷As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.

²⁸When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”— ²⁹for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.)

³⁰Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him. ³¹The demons begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss.

³²Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So Jesus gave them permission. ³³Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

³⁴When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. ³⁵Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. ³⁶Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed.

³⁷Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. ³⁸The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, ³⁹“Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” So the man went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him.

The gospel of the Lord.

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This last week has been awful.  It is a hard week to be me and to preach.  This sermon is so hard and so complicated. 

47 years ago this month transgender women of color protested brutality and attacks on who they were in a gay bar called Stonewall and from that protest, a movement grew so that throughout the country and the world parades and marches are celebrating the lives and worth of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, and Two Spirit people.

Last Sunday a man with weapons in his car was stopped before he could arrive at and attack the Los Angeles Pride Parade.  The night before, last Saturday during the night LGBTQ+ Latinxs were targeted and killed in one of few spaces that are supposed to be truly safe.  Bars and clubs like Pulse in Orlando are sanctuary for LGBTQ+ communities and that sanctuary was defiled as bullets rained down on beloved children of God.  Throughout the week, we have continued to hear of threats of violence and graffiti directed toward LGBTQ+ people.

This sermon is hard because in light of all of this, I don’t know who is who in today’s gospel.  It would be easy to preach on Galatians and proclaim us all united in Christ, that our differences aren’t as important.  But it’s not true.  Our differences are important.  Our diversity matters.  God cherishes our differences.  And difference matters because it is precisely the “difference” of being LGBTQ+; of being Latinx, that was targeted last week at Pulse in Orlando and that has been targeted over 200 times in the last six months with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation throughout this country.

But who in our gospel is the Gerasene man, possessed by so many demons that they are called “Legion”?  The one the rest of the community has chained up and left—literally as though he were already dead to them—in the tombs?  Are the demons the evil? Or is it the chains—the exile imposed? 

Chains of division and demonization, of othering,

            of claims about splinters in their eye, not seeing the planks in our own. 

Chains of silencing and refusing for so long

            to name homophobia, transphobia, and racism as sins. 

Chains of blame—

            to blame Muslims for this act of terror that is decidedly “American,”

bred by fundamentalist faiths and fearful and hateful rhetoric and policies,

            not by Islam. 

Or are we, the church, the one possessed by the demons of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and islamophobia? Are we the ones who are chained up, living in death possessed by these demons we don’t know how to banish?

Are we the community, terrified that Jesus has exposed our exclusion, the brokenness of a community that casts out those we don’t understand, those we are afraid of? Are LGBTQ+ communities that community?  Afraid of or rejecting the church that could tear us apart, in its possession by demons that lead not to life but to death?

I honestly don’t know who is who.  Maybe because I am both.  I am this church that struggles with our legacy of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, islamophobia and so many other systems of discrimination.  And I am queer.

During my second year in seminary, in 2011, a group of ELCA bishops visited our seminary, as different ones do each seminary each year. 

During their visit, when asked how they would support women, LGBTQ+ people, and people of color as new pastors in their synods,

            the bishops were so bound in chains from fear

                        that they had no words of comfort, support, or encouragement for us—

            they could only defend a need to “protect” congregations

                        from queer people like me. 

I was devastated. We were devastated.

That weekend, a group of us went to SideTrack, a gay bar in boystown in Chicago, for Show Tunes night.  It was there that I found sanctuary.  It was there that my whole being was affirmed.  It was there that I was supported as a queer person.  Last week that sanctuary was attacked.

So, I don’t know who we are or where we fit             in this story, except that Jesus shows up anyway.  Jesus comes to Gerasene on purpose.  Jesus meets the one possessed by demons.  Jesus goes to the one left out, rejected, sent to live in the place of the dead.

Jesus was at Pulse last week, telling people to leave and run and then staying with those who could not leave, holding them in his arms, crying with them, being crucified again and again and again.

Jesus was at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston last year.  Sitting in Bible study and sending people running when shots rang out, and then staying with those who could not leave, holding them in his arms, crying with them, being crucified again and again and again.

And Jesus is with those who brave the Rio Grande, the Straights of Florida, and the Sonoran Desert of Arizona for a better life, hope, a chance to live.  Jesus is swimming and walking with them, urging them to safety, and then staying with those who can go no farther, holding them in his arms, crying with them, being crucified again and again and again.

Jesus shows up in those places where people and communities, like the man from Gerasene, are bound by chains and where we bind each other with chains.  Where we claim demon possession and where we are possessed.  Jesus shows up and exposes the injustice and names the evil. 

And Jesus begins the scary process of healing, because the whole community is broken when one person is bound by chains,

            when one person is sent away,

                        when one person does not belong.

We are all broken. 

And yet Jesus comes to our brokenness and recognizes us. 

Jesus claims us as beloved and as we work to follow Jesus,

            Jesus sends us to Proclaim the healing and wholeness,

                        to glorify God even in our new and scary reality.

Jesus breaks the chains that bind the Gerasene man possessed by demons

            and the chains that bind us. 

Jesus shows up at gay bars and Bible studies;

            in deserts and rivers;

                        in bread broken and parades marched;

            with rainbows and love and hope for a new way

                        and a new world where all live,

                                    claimed as family. 

Because Jesus doesn’t leave anyone beyond hope. 

            Jesus doesn’t leave anyone for dead. Ever.

Thanks be to God.

God is faithful until death and gives the crown of life.

We're going off the lectionary for the rest of the summer and I'm preaching on people's favorite bible passages.  This week's favorite bible passage was from Revelation 2, specifically verse 10b: "Be faithful until death and I will give you the crown of life."

The first reading was Job 19:1-12.

The gospel was Luke 12:22-31. 

A reading from Revelation (2:8-11).

God says,

⁸“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write:

       These are the words of the first and the last,

              who was dead and came to life:

                     ⁹“I know your affliction and your poverty,

                            even though you are rich.

                     I know the slander on the part of those

                            who say that they are Jews and are not,

                                   but are a synagogue of Satan.

                     ¹⁰Do not fear what you are about to suffer.

                            Beware, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison

                                   so that you may be tested,

                                   and for ten days you will have affliction.

                     Be faithful until death,

                            and I will give you the crown of life.

                     ¹¹Let anyone who has an ear listen

                            to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

                                   Whoever conquers will not be harmed by the second death.

The word of the Lord.

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Today’s readings are a bit of a mixed bag.  Job complains about the treatment and poor advice of his friends toward his trials and tribulations while in Revelation we hear God’s words to the church in Smyrna, a community of faith that is afflicted even in its affluence, facing persecution.  And into the midst of that fear God speaks words of encouragement. “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

God is saying, “No matter what may come, I am with you.  I have chosen you as my own.”  God does not promise an easy life.  God does not even promise survival.  These words are spoken into the midst of suffering and persecution.  I wonder how those who gathered for Bible Study at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston would hear these words.  "Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life."  Or those whose church buildings have been set ablaze.  What would they hear in these assurances from God? 

But God is the only one who can speak encouragement into persecution and into suffering because God is speaking as one who suffered the deepest depths of torture and death on the cross.  God knows the pain and the sorrow of each community and still speaks words of promise and assurance.

God knows Job’s complaints as he confronts his friends and laments that “God breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, God has uprooted my hope like a tree.”  Job is in the full throes of his despair and yet God knows them and knows it is not the full story.

The ravens have food enough, the lilies are clothed in splendor and Jesus declares, “Of how much more value are you than the birds!”  Job’s worth and yours is so immense that it is immeasurable to God.

Claimed in the waters of baptism, God put our sinful selves to death with Christ, bringing us to new life in the crucified and risen one, giving us “the crown of life.”  We have been put to death and yet are alive, poor even in richness.

As Lutherans especially, we live into the paradox of things that appear to be opposites—dead yet alive, sinner and saint, living into God’s reign on earth, even as it has yet to be fully realized.  Even our language about God is paradoxical!  Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  God is the alpha and the omega, or as in Revelation, “the first and the last, who was dead and came to life.”  God is a paradox, a mysterious mix of unknown and knowable.

Right now we have many people trying to win the crown to rule our country.  Ok, it might not be an actual crown, but sometimes it seems like that with all the pageantry and pontificating.

Political campaigns are the perfect place to examine human hypocrisy, human paradox.  Each campaign works overtime to root out opponents’ hypocrisies—flip flop positions, suspect donors, and actions that don’t match up with stated values.

Lesson learned:            everyone is a hypocrite:                        you, me, every one of the many candidates for president on all sides;            we’re all hypocrites.  In theological language we could say that “we have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) 

The hypocrisy is not that we fall short, but that we pretend we do not.  We put on a face of perfection, we do our best to appear to all the world as beings without fault, totally put together, without sin, without any complicity in injustice, completely unbroken and unwavering in our faith.

But we proclaim Christ crucified.  The cross, an instrument of political torture used to keep Jesus in his place, has become the symbol of life.  It is our theology based precisely on this cross            that compels us to name reality as it is.   

We mess up.  We are complicit in injustice.  We do not do everything we can to stop the killing of children of God of African descent, we shy away from tough conversations even as we know their importance.  We harm ourselves and we harm others.  We doubt and we worry.  We are slowly being put to death by the subtle ways our culture undermines all of our humanity.

But lest you preemptively despair, joining Job in his lament that “God has stripped my glory from me, and taken the crown from my head,” remember God’s words in Revelation, “Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.”

God comes in to save us.  Putting us to death with Christ in our baptism, making us “faithful until death” in order to “give [us] the crown of life.”  God makes us alive again with Christ.

God gives the crown of life to the whole body of Christ, not just you or me or Christ the King or even the whole ELCA, but the whole body of Christ, the whole church.  The crown of life empowers us to live into our new identities as saints in Christ and empowers us to name the ways we are still sinners, the ways we don’t measure up, because no one ever does.  No one can measure up.  And no one has to. 

God doesn’t ask us to be perfect.  God doesn’t ask us to do better than everyone else.  God’s hope is that we will be ourselves, that we will live into our identities as beloved children of God.  God bestows love and blessing on us.  “Be faithful until death,” death at the hands of a racist man with a gun in bible study or at the end of a long life, and even death in the waters of baptism, whether those waters poured over you last year or decades ago.  God’s faithfulness in death brings us to the death of Christ in the waters of baptism so that God may “give [us] the crown of life.”

In our baptism we are crowned with the crown of life, that whatever may come, whatever our mess ups and triumphs may be, our God who loves us is the God of new life.  The God of hope.  The God of our future, with us now and always.

Thanks be to God.

Jesus calls us through the storm to the other side: 4th after pentecost

The first reading, which I also relied on, is Job 38:1-11.

The holy gospel according to Mark (4:35-41).

³⁵On that day,

       when evening had come,

              Jesus said to the disciples,

                     “Let us go across to the other side.”

              ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind,

                     they took him with them in the boat,

                            just as he was.

                                   Other boats were with him.

³⁷A great windstorm arose,

       and the waves beat into the boat,

              so that the boat was already being swamped.

                     ³⁸But Jesus was in the stern,

                            asleep on the cushion;

                     and they woke him up and said to him,

                            “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

                     ³⁹Jesus woke up and rebuked the wind,

                            and said to the sea,

                                   “Peace! Be still!”

                            Then the wind ceased,

                                   and there was a dead calm.

                     ⁴⁰He said to them,

                            “Why are you afraid?

                                   Have you still no faith?”

⁴¹And they were filled with great awe

       and said to one another,

              “Who then is this,

                     that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

The gospel of the lord.

-----

On Monday and Tuesday, and even Wednesday as I worked on and planned for my sermon, I wanted to talk about the storm we are in as a community of faith.  The storm of emotions inside us, the storm of uncertainty about what is on the other side of August 31^st, of closure.  I could still do this, and we could have a sermon on that, and it would be important and meaningful, and it would be easier than tackling what has been going on this week.

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45 years old, was a beloved track coach and a minister at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Clementa Pinckney, 41 years old, was the lead pastor at the AME church, a state senator, and a graduate of one of our ELCA seminaries. Cynthia Hurd, 54 years old, was a librarian, whose birthday would have been today (Sunday). Tywanza Sanders, 26 years old, was a recent graduate of Allen University’s Division of Business Administration, and he died trying to shield his 87-year-old aunt from the shooter.

Myra Thompson, 59 years old, was reverend Anthony Thompson’s wife, Ethel Lee Lance, 70 years old, was the church sexton, Daniel L. Simmons, 74 years old, was a ministerial staff member, a father and a grandfather and a veteran of war. Depaynoe Middleton-Doctor, 49 years old, sang in the choir and preached at her church. Susie Jackon, 87 years old, sheltered young people who needed a place to live after her son moved away from home. 

The wind and storm that rages around us here in this community as we struggle with the reality of Christ the King’s closure can block from view all that is happening in the world.  In light of our anxiety and sorrow at leaving this faith community, the struggle we have with the God who is in the whirlwind, what does anything else matter?

And yet this week I spent time with church leaders from around the country—siblings in the ELCA and siblings in Christ.  While we were together, talking about the church, our struggles, what it’s like to be women and men, racially diverse in the church and the country, a white ELCA Lutheran man went into a historically black church, engaged with the people gathered in Bible study, and then opened fire, as he murdered 9 beloved children of God.

Welcomed into the body of Christ at Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, he created a storm around his fellow followers of Christ.  I could not help but remember the four girls killed in Birmingham, Alabama during the Civil Rights movement when a bomb went off in their church.  This is not the first time that African Americans have asked Jesus, “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  And this is not the first time even in the last year, that they have asked us as well.  What we must ask ourselves, then, is: in the midst of our storms and worries, do we not care that they are perishing?

Jesus calms the storm that threatens the disciples’ lives and yet the storm of racism, as evidenced by the hate crime of this week, continues to rage on.

As I think about that white man who entered and was welcomed into community by those he would later murder, I can’t help remember the privilege I have had in my life to be welcomed into Black congregations, Latin@ congregations, as well as white ones.  Communities that constantly battle against racism have often been the most warmly welcoming to me. 

This week I could lift Emanuel AME up in our prayers and continue with the sermon I wanted to preach, but that betrays the trust and hospitality I have received in my life from people of color.  It is also a mark of privilege that African American pastors and preachers who are also facing the kinds of storms we are do not have.  They cannot lift Emanuel AME up in their prayers and keep on the way they were, because their congregations are receiving bomb threats, their sanctuary has been violated, their people are being killed by the sin of racism.

And it’s not just their people.  It’s our people.  A member of our church body committed that terrorist attack and graduates of one of our ELCA seminaries were killed.  Siblings in Christ were on both sides.  Fellow humans are dead today.  Grief and sorrow, suffering and anger.  Our people are hurting.  Our siblings in Christ.  Our fellow humans.

Charleston, South Carolina may feel far away, but it is only the most recent, most evident example of the devastation that racism causes in our country.  It happens here in Utah as well.  We know what it is like here to not be part of the dominant culture.  We know the exclusion, especially that of our children, who are left out at school because of who they are—or rather, who they aren’t. 

Even so, we have the benefit of visibly fitting in—of looking like the dominant culture, of being judged positively by the color of our skin. 

And yet even here, children of God like Darien Hunt are killed and children of God are told they are not worth as much because of who they are, the color of their skin.  All the while, many of us are not willing to cross to the other side for fear of the storm.   Many of us are scared of the water that will crash over the side of the boat, the whirlwind that swirls around, the lack of control that comes with boats and storms, and comes with deep caring and pain. 

It can be scary and it is hard to know what to do in the storm, what we will encounter on the other side, but that is where Jesus goes.  Jesus is in the storm, Jesus is in the storm of racism that rages around us, Jesus is with those who ask “Do you not care that we are perishing?”  Jesus leads us to the other side—through the storm, Jesus calls us into engagement on the other side.  Jesus is unperturbed by the storm we think will do us in.

Jesus knows the way.  He knows that there are demons waiting.  He also knows that those demons will remain if we don’t cross to the other side.  What does that look like?  How do we as individuals tackle the monsters of terror?  How do we tackle racism?  What can we possibly do? 

We are not alone.  We are not in this fight alone.  People of color have been fighting this fight their whole lives.  As we engage in the struggle against racism, we journey with each other.  We journey with congregations across Utah and across the country. 

There are steps we can take. 

This week, try to listen and read only news and information about the domestic terrorism attack on Emanuel AME from Black people.  Listen to them.  Read their words.  And believe them.  Too often we encounter white people talking about people of color.  Or when people of color do speak, we dismiss them and their very real emotions.  Resist this.  Listen to people of color.  Read their words.  Believe them.

Focus not on the terrorist who attacked, but on those who were killed, the community of Emanuel AME Church—Mother Emanuel as it is called.  Honor them by learning about their lives and their faith community.  Support their congregation financially as well as in prayer. 

Learn about privilege and racism.  There are articles and books that open space for understanding, like Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh.  I know some more and am happy to recommend them. 

Jesus calls us to follow him.  We don’t have to know the whole way.  We don’t have to know what awaits us on the other side.  We don’t even have to be excited or calm or confident.  We just follow.  Get in the boat, and see where Jesus leads.  It won’t be easy.  He ended up on the cross, after all. 

But our God is a God who brings life out of death.  If the life that he brings out of this week’s deaths is awareness of the pain of racism, the impact of the color of our skin on us, a commitment to learn more, to care more, to avoid the pain a little less.  If God brings this life out of these deaths, then God is good.  All the time.