Heavenly Courage

[Sermon from All Saints' Day, Nov. 1, 2015]

In this strange and wonderful line of work, you find yourself at deathbeds.  And I'm blessed to say that I’ve never seen a death wrapped in fear.  Maybe I’ve just been fortunate, but my experience of being with people as they die is that they’re not afraid.  Nearly to a person, they seem to find peace and freedom.

Instead, where I see fear of death is among the living.  It expresses itself lots of ways:  We deny our age, being perpetually 39.  We have mid-life crises, making choices more like teenagers than 55-year-olds.  We build up possessions until we find ourselves possessed by them.  We invest ourselves in overwork, trying to hang our portrait on the office wall rather than build relationships at home.  We become chronically ill and seek a third or fourth or fifth opinion, unable to step into a new normal of decline.  And at the end of the line, we find ourselves prolonging life for the sake of postponing death.

Well, on this All Saints’ Day, as we come to the end of our sermon series on “The Generous God,” let me share with you what I believe to be God’s greatest blessing to us, the most astonishing act of generosity we’ll ever receive.  Here it is:  We need not fear death.  Let me say that again:  We need not fear death.  This truth is so central to what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ that we may miss it, like the fish that doesn’t notice the water in which it swims.  When we enter the waters of baptism, as Charlotte Cynthia Murray will do in a few minutes, we are buried with Christ in his death.  Enlivened by that water, we share in his resurrection.  Rising from that water, we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.  The battle with death is a battle we simply need not fight because it’s a battle Jesus has already won. 

We hear that story every Holy Week and Easter, and we heard it foreshadowed in this Gospel reading for All Saints’, too.  Though Jesus has healed many people before this crucial turn in the story, he chooses not to heal his dying friend.  He’s told that Lazarus is sick, but he waits two days to come see him.  By that time, it’s too late.  Lazarus’ sisters meet him on the road and rail at Jesus in their grief; and Jesus himself breaks down, sharing and bearing the sorrow of all.  But he’s done this to accomplish a larger purpose: that the crowd might believe Jesus is the Son of God, the one who brings eternal life into the here and now, the one whose restoration of Lazarus will cost him his own life at the hands of church and state.  Jesus tells them to roll away the stone, roll away the power of death; and then he commands, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43).  And “the dead man came out” (11:44), Scripture says, still bound in his shroud, still struggling, like us, with the remnants of death.  Unbind him, Jesus says, from the body of decay.  Unbind him from the human expectation of finitude.  Unbind his friends and family from their grief.  Unbind them and the disciples from their fear of what might come when the powers of the world do their worst.  Unbind them from their fear, Jesus says, and let them go.

For as we remind ourselves when we commend a saint to God’s care and pray the burial rite: To God’s faithful people, “life is changed, not ended” when we die (BCP 382).  Life is changed, not ended.  That means two things.  First, of course, it means death is not the end of our stories, no matter how final or fatal transitions may feel.  As baptized people who commit ourselves to follow Jesus as Lord and to live in the light of his sovereignty, we are assured that “neither death, nor life, not angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God” (Romans 8:38-39) – much less the death of our physical bodies.  We know this, even though we may forget sometimes, in our worry and anxiety.  We know this promise for all the saints, the promise of life in God’s presence, the promise of heavenly life that never ends.

What we may not know so well is the other stunning implication of that statement that “life is changed, not ended” when we die.  If it’s true that life is all of a piece, from birth to heavenly life, then we must be living in eternal life right now, not merely waiting for it later, in the sweet by and by.  Of course, we don’t experience it as fully now as we will.  For now, we still know “mourning and crying and pain” (Revelation 21:4).  We still suffer the brokenness of creation and the smallness of our own hearts.  But that is not the whole story because, just as the divine Word once spoke forth creation, the One now seated on the throne has spoken forth new creation:  “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).  God has given us the most astonishing gift of all, the gift of Christ’s resurrection.  And with it, we are set free from death now, even as we wait for life to be changed into its fullness.  “I am the resurrection and the life,” Jesus says – present tense.  Welcome to the kingdom of heaven, every day you rise from sleep.

Some days, we’re blessed to see it more clearly than others.  I remember seeing it right here one morning, three years ago, when someone else stood in this pulpit.  It was Connie Smart.  One of the great sadnessses of my time here is that I was on sabbatical last fall, when Connie joined the company of saints gathered around the heavenly throne.  A couple of years before that, Connie had received the news of her cancer diagnosis; and all of us were fearful for her – fearful of the pain of treatment, fearful of the disease’s course, fearful of the likely outcome.  Well, Connie stood here in this pulpit one Sunday morning, and she proclaimed eternal life in the here and now.  She proclaimed the love of her family, and the love of her church family, and the love of God she’d known through her life.  And then, she said,

“This cancer has turned my prayer life in a different direction.…  In my daily prayers, I [once] held up others in need [and] expressed my thankfulness for my many blessings….  However, now I really want to have more one-on-one [with God] by asking questions and hearing his answers.…  I have been blessed with an amazing life, and I have no fear of dying.…  It’s up to us to learn and be trusting, through our ears and our hearts, and to know, no matter what, that [God is] always there for us.”¹

With the power of death set aside, Christ invites us to embrace what Connie embraced: courage.  Heavenly courage.  If we truly don’t fear death, imagine what that freedom empowers us to do.  It empowers us to live as new creations.  It empowers us be the people we talk ourselves out of being – people who love unreservedly, people who speak the truth, people who give generously from abundance, people who risk – not for our own gain but to accomplish God’s purposes.  If we truly don’t fear death, we can be living sacraments of the generosity of God – icons of the Creator who gives us all we see and hold, icons of the Son who gives himself to redeem us, icons of the Spirit who gives us life day by day. 

So free us, generous God, from the boundaries the world sets around us.  Free us from the fear of death that keeps us small and still.  Unbind your saints, Lord, and let us go.

1. Smart, Connie.  Address to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Feb. 23, 2012.  St. Andrew’s Archives.

The Gift of Sacrifice

[Sermon from Sunday, Oct. 18, 2015]

This is the second installment of our sermon series, “The Generous God,” and the theme we’d planned to explore today was sacrifice.  As it happened, some tragic news this week brought the “gift of sacrifice” to newscasts and front pages, too.  The city mourned the loss of two firefighters in the line of duty, Larry Leggio and John Mesh, two men who put their lives on the line every day they went to work.  Their sacrifice makes us grieve, but I think sacrifice also makes us uncomfortable – at least it does me.  Did it have to happen; could the suffering have been avoided?  And deeper, there’s the question of whether the rest of us deserved it.  I often think of the scene at the end of the movie Saving Private Ryan, when the now-older private tearfully asks his wife, “Have I been a good man?”  Decades after the battle, he still doesn’t feel worthy of the suffering and loss it took to save his life.

I remember, in the years before seminary, driving from Kansas City to Springfield.  There was a billboard for a Baptist Church just outside Springfield that read, “Jesus Saves – the Sacrifice for Your Sins.”  That’s not exactly a new idea, especially in Southwest Missouri.  But I was wrestling with God at that point about this whole priesthood thing, and one of my big struggles was Jesus being sacrificed on the cross.  I hated that idea.  Why did the Son of God have to come to earth and die?  Well, the standard answer would be, “To save us from our sins.”  OK.  So, I thought, are my sins really that bad that I needed Jesus to be sacrificed to take them away?  I mean, come on, God:  I don’t smoke; I don’t drink that much; I don’t sleep around; I basically try to be a good person and put others first most of the time.  Am I really wallowing so deep in moral depravity that I needed God’s Son to die to take that stain away?  That’s not really the “me” I like to see.

Well, God won the wrestling match and I went to seminary; but seminary didn’t get me much further with all this.  I did get a handy label for this doctrine I didn’t like: substitutionary atonement.  So, “atonement” is a fine thing.  It actually means just what the pieces of the word say: “at-one-ment.”  It’s the idea that God’s mission involves restoring the broken relationship between God and people, making us “at one.”  Cool.  But that billboard near Springfield reflected a particular way of understanding the atonement – a substitutionary model.  It’s actually a medieval notion rooted in the social relationships between serfs and the lord of their manor.  Here it is, in a nutshell:  By turning away from God through original sin, humanity had inflicted an outrageous moral insult against God; and God, the divine lord of the manor, had to receive satisfaction from his offending serfs.  But here’s the problem:  No sinful human could ever pay what was owed to balance the scales.  Only a human who didn’t share in the offense could make satisfaction.  And the only human who would meet that criterion would be God’s own Son.  So, the blood of his sacrifice washed away the offenses of all sinful humanity. 

Well, several of my classmates and I really balked at that view of atonement.  We came from spiritual backgrounds where sin wasn’t emphasized nearly as much as humanity’s creation in God’s image and potential for good.   And we liked it that way.  I mean, who wants to see yourself as inherently broken, with no hope of solving your own problems?  Especially in American culture, we’re all about solving our own problems, right?  Plus, all that “washed in the blood of the Lamb” stuff felt more than a little creepy.  And honestly, we didn’t have any idea what our classmates meant when they said it.

I may not be the only Episcopalian who’s been uncomfortable with the notion that Jesus had to be sacrificed to pay the debt of my sins.  But yet, there it is – a theological truth we have to wrestle with, like Jacob wrestling with the angel.  I mean, Jesus’ sacrifice runs all though the Prayer Book.  In just a few minutes, we’ll remember that he “stretched out his arms upon the cross and offered himself, in obedience to [God’s] will, a perfect sacrifice for the whole world.” (BCP 362)

Running into that language is like a walk I took at Conception Abbey in north Missouri this past week.  The place has a lovely walking path through the beauty of creation, taking you around a peaceful pond, over rolling hills, through an apple orchard, into a stand of trees – and then, face to face with a life-sized man hanging on a cross.  That sacrifice just won’t go away, no matter how much I may not want to see myself in need of it.

Well, here’s the truth, as best as I can see it now.  I am absolutely in need of redemption.  And I use that word, “redemption,” on purpose.  It’s what Jesus is getting at in the Gospel reading this morning.  Now, “redemption” is one of those church words, like salvation and justification, words that get all blended together like theological granola; and it’s hard to sort out the mix.  Well, in biblical times – and, actually, in America’s history, too – redemption meant something very specific: buying someone out of captivity or slavery.  If you were a prisoner or a slave, and someone paid your captor a certain price, that person “redeemed” you and literally set you free.

So what does that have to do with you and me?  Well, let me speak for myself.  I am bound in slavery to powers far greater than my poor power to withstand.  Left to my own devices, I am bound to sin.  That works in both senses of the word “bound”:  I will sin; and I am held captive by the inclination to sin.  I’m not killing anybody or sleeping around.  But every blessed day, I distance myself from love so much more to be desired than what I find myself wanting instead.  And what’s that?  I want to be free from mistakes.  I want to accomplish a lot – more than other people, in fact.  And I want to be recognized for it, to get a little credit for what I’m able to do.  In a word, the sin is pride. 

We heard about that sin in today’s Gospel reading, too.  James and John have heard Jesus talking about how he’ll soon suffer and die but then be raised into glory – and they’re looking to secure their spots in the kingdom land.  They say to Jesus, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory” (Mark 10:37).  We all have our moments there with James and John – moments when we try to get what we can, usually at the expense of someone else.  It happens even when we don’t think of it – when we consume resources while others go hungry, when we get out of a traffic ticket that would land someone else in jail.  I do that kind of thing, taking the advantages I can take – and I don’t even realize it.  Because I am bound to sin, shackled to separation from God, and I cannot free myself from it.  I am enslaved to powers I cannot overcome on my own.

So were the Jewish people held in exile by the Babylonians.  They were the ones to whom the prophet Isaiah wrote about a suffering servant whose sacrifice would free God’s people and leave the rulers of the nations in slack-jawed astonishment.  Also enslaved were the Jewish people of Jesus’ day, held under the thumb of their oppressors, the Romans and the Pharisees alike, beating down regular folks with the weapons of empire and religion.  Those rulers “lord it over” their subjects, Jesus says, and “their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you.” (Mark 10:42-43)

It is not so among you, for I have come to free you, Jesus says.  I have come to give my life as your “ransom” and liberate you from captivity, Jesus says.  In Christ, God has not sacrificed a son in an act of cosmic child abuse.  In Christ, God has entered into the ultimate battle with sin and death in the most unthinkable but mighty way – by pouring out God’s own self.  By sacrificing God’s own self.  That is not simply a good man hanging on the cross.  That is the second person of the Trinity, paradoxically battling the power of sin by letting whips strip flesh, battling the power of death by letting his broken body die.  But then, with the dread foe lulled into complacency, God in Christ arises; and death’s grip on life is broken forever.  No longer can sin and death claim the last word, because now the last word is, “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5).

And to that, what can I say?  Thank you?  Jesus, you’ve fought and died to win a battle I didn’t even want to admit I faced.  “Thank you” hardly seems enough.

Well, then – what?  How does the ransomed hostage repay his liberator?  By taking up the liberator’s mission, costly though it may be.  Jesus says to James and John, “You will drink the cup I drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized” (Mark 10:39).  We follow the one who sets the prisoners free, who breaks the captives’ chains, who pays the price required to prove that love’s worth more than power or prestige.  We follow the God who came not to be served but to serve and give his life a ransom for many. 

And so, I think the only way we can say “thank you” is by walking Christ’s path just as he walked ours.  We say “thank you” by giving of ourselves for those still bound in darkness and the shadow of death.  We say “thank you” by being the Church and going into this world not to be served but to serve.  We say “thank you” by giving ourselves away.

And when we do that – as every giver knows – when we do that, we find ourselves made new.  That path of sacrifice leads straight to Easter morning.  You’re never more alive than when you’re bringing life to someone else – in gifts of time, in gifts of talent, in gifts of treasure.  For broken people like us, struggling always against the power of our own disordered desire and the power of a world turned sour – when broken people like us follow the path of sacrifice, that’s when we know the deepest joy.  That path leads us back to the Garden, back to the wholeness God intended for each of us in the beginning.  That joy you know when you dig down deep and give yourself away – that’s nothing less than the Trinity’s dance of creation, the joy of being the image and likeness of God, the joy of pouring divine love straight from your own broken heart.

Gratefully Giving Our Selves, Our Souls and Bodies

[Sermon from Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015.]

In the midst of the day-to-day pressures and craziness of our lives, it’s good sometimes to step back and really notice how richly we’ve been blessed – actively call to mind what God has given us.  I’ve been struck by this recently in my own prayer life, both how God has blessed me and my need to live that blessing out loud.  So if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to share with you some of what’s been on my heart.

This year, Ann and I are celebrating our 25^th anniversary, a milestone that, for the past 14 years of her illness, I seriously doubted we’d ever reach.  Our daughter, Kathryn, is safely in London, starting a graduate program.  Our son, Dan, is working, living on his own, and happy – more consistently happy than I’ve ever known him to be.  I get to serve an amazing parish, some of the most gifted and faithful people I’ve ever known.  I get to serve with richly talented clergy and staff who deeply love God and the people around them.  I get to write a book – I have a contract with Church Publishing for a book based on my sabbatical project last year.  I get to live in a country where, in a single election, we’re free to entertain the possibility of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as candidates for the highest office in the land.  And on Friday, I got to be here with Janet Smith and Lynn Kellen, and many of you, as we blessed their civil marriage using the same rite we’d use for anyone else.

I am deeply, richly, astoundingly blessed.  And you know what?  I don’t always feel it.  I sometimes find myself back there with the people of Israel in the wilderness, as we heard in the first reading today.  They’ve been wandering in the wilderness for what seems like forever.  God has given them manna, divine sustenance, the “bread of angels” (Psalm 78:25) come down from heaven every day just for them.  But by this point, they’re sick of it.  They want meat.  “Hey, Moses,” they complain, “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing; the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions and the garlic. …  Now … there’s nothing at all but this manna to look at.” (Numbers 11:5-6)

I had lunch recently with my old boss from the American Academy of Family Physicians, where I used to be managing editor of their practice-management journal.  That was the job I left when God nudged harder than we could resist and we moved off to Texas for seminary.  I was telling my old boss about all the cool things going on here at church.  And at the same time, I found myself remembering work life as I’d known it then.  I went to work every day at 8:30.  I took a lunch break.  I left at 5.  I had a nice little cubicle where I edited articles about running physician practices.  I had a couple of meetings a week, never at night.  Frankly, I had almost no stress coming from my work life.  And as I talked with my old boss, those melons and leeks and onions in Egypt were sounding pretty good in my memory of working at the Academy.  What was it, God, that was so wrong with that life?  I mean, yeah, sure, there’s manna raining down for me here every morning – mortals eating the bread of angels, blah, blah, blah. 

You know, sometimes even astonishing blessing becomes run of the mill – or, worse, it feels like one burden after another.

In the story, it isn’t just the people of Israel who are feeling resentful; it’s Moses, too.  He’s had enough of everybody’s complaints about all this manna they have to eat.  And more troubling, he feels like God doesn’t really care about the burden he’s been carrying.  In the stress of that moment, even Moses forgets his own story: saved from death as an infant … raised as royalty in Pharaoh’s palace … given a prophet’s eye and heart to see his people’s need for freedom … commissioned by God’s fiery Spirit  to lead them … trumping the power of Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt … delivered by God to walk through the Red Sea as on dry land … and now fed with the bread of angels in the wilderness, on the way to the land of promise.  All that’s true, but the pressure gets to Moses anyway.  And he forgets his own story.

God’s answer to Moses is this:  Look for the story’s next chapter.  You know how I’ve been with you, God says; trust that I’m with you now.  Look around you: You’ve got 70 people right here who will help you bear your burden.  Look for my next gift to come from this fountain of blessing, God says, and honor me for it.  See and know that all that you have, and all that you are, and all that you will be comes not by your own might or power but by the Spirit of God (Zechariah 4:6).  And then, stop whining and say thank you for the gift. 

And Moses does.  He sees this exercise in collaborative leadership paying off, with scores of his people speaking as God’s own agents; and he exclaims, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29).  Though he’d just been railing against a God who didn’t seem to care, Moses now remembers God’s M.O.: Even in the darkness, the next blessing is just around the corner.

So when we receive a gift, especially a gift we can never really repay – when we eat the bread of angels – what’s our response?  I think about my relationship with my parents.  They blessed me with life, and raised me in love, and taught me to love, and have been there through my ups and downs for 50 years.  How on earth do I pay that back?  Well, we talk on the phone each week, which is a good outward and visible way to live gratitude.  But the love they gave me also makes me want to love – to be the best husband I can be, and the best father I can be, and the best priest I can be.  And the same is true of the love I know from Ann, and from Kathryn and Dan, and from you.  Those gifts of love make me remember, deep in my bones, how incredibly blessed I am.  And those gifts of love make me want to love in return.  Like the song says, you want to pass it on.  You want to pay it forward.

In a couple of weeks, we’ll begin a season of gratitude.  In those four weeks, we’ll be asking you to remember, specifically, what you’re grateful for; and we’ll be asking you to name what it is that you’ve done, or are doing, or will do in gratitude for the gifts you’ve received.  In the Narthex, we’ll have a couple of trees on the wall (don’t worry, they’re vinyl, and they’ll come right off again).  On those four Sundays and through the fall, we’ll ask you to name your gratitude – to write down on one leaf a gift you’re grateful for, and then to write on another leaf the response of gratitude that comes from that gift. 

What do those responses of gratitude look like?  The short answer is this:  They look like your whole life.  In just a few minutes, there at Jesus’ altar, we will offer not just gifts of bread and wine; we will “offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies” (BCP 342).  One essential part of that offering, which we also bring to God’s table every week, is the outward and visible sign of all we have: the sacrament of money. 

Our offering of money is our relationship with God in a nutshell.  It’s not about the amount; it’s about the place of that offering in your life.  Now, for those of you who are having a Moses moment right now, noticing some resentment slithering around in the shadowy corners of your heart, let me tell you:  I’ve been there.  I remember – maybe 20 years ago now, before seminary – I remember coming out of church one night after a meeting, sitting in my car, and fuming.  Someone had said something similar to what I’m saying to you; and I heard it, at best, as a rationalization and, at worst, as a scam.  They’d been talking about tithing, about giving back to God 10 percent of the income God has given us, and I heard it as simply a regressive tax.  I thought it was deeply unfair, and maybe a little disingenuous, for the Church to tell me that poor people and rich people need to give at the same rate (and, of course, I saw myself as one of the poor people in that scenario).  I worked up a nice little internal tirade against God – how I didn’t have enough anyway, and now you want me to have less? 

But in the end, I turned in a pledge card and began letting God go to work on me.  Long story short:  Today, I tithe from “my” salary because I’ve come to see that it’s not actually my salary.  Yes, I work hard.  But what I receive – from every breath I take, to every relationship I live, to every dollar I earn – all that I receive is God’s, on loan to me in the present moment, given from a well of love I cannot fathom and into which God asks me to toss back the coin of one-tenth – not because the well will run dry without it but because I need to remember whose well it is.

I may not be the only one who finds himself walking in Moses’ sandals from time to time, resentful of life’s challenges rather than grateful to live the story of one amazing blessing after another.  If that sounds familiar to you, I hope you’ll join me in cataloging the cascade of blessings that have come your way.  Bring some to mind, write them down, and then ask yourself: “How do I pay this forward?”

And let me offer one more concrete practice, an ancient and efficacious antivenin to the snakebite of resentment.  It’s simply a prayer – an amazing prayer, actually.  Those of us who grew up in the Episcopal Church before the 1979 Prayer Book might still have this prayer ringing around in our hearts, the way we sometimes remember snippets of bedtime stories.  Please turn to page 101 in the Prayer Book, to the end of the service of Morning Prayer, and find “The General Thanksgiving.”  We’ll offer it now, and I would commend it to your daily use to keep that snake of resentment at bay.  Let us pray:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies, we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all whom you have made.  We bless you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.  And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies, that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise, not only with our lips but in our lives, by giving up our selves to your service, and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory throughout all ages.  Amen.

Dog Grooming in the Kingdom of God

[Sermon from Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015]

It’s Labor Day weekend, the end of the “lazy, hazy days of summer.”  For some of us, this weekend means time at the lake, brats on the grill, and cold beer to wash them down.  For others of us, we’re here in church this morning; and the lectionary gives us tougher food to chew:  A reading from the Letter of James about practicing love for the poor, and a Gospel reading about Jesus bringing the kingdom of God to people outside the bounds of Jewish society.  Oh, and by the way, as we celebrate Labor Day, our city is in the midst of a political battle about labor, arguing over raising the minimum wage.  So, as much as some of us might want an end-of-summer reflection on the beauty of creation at the lake, I’m afraid God’s giving us meatier issues today. 

That minimum-wage proposal is on hold, at least for the moment.  In July, the City Council passed a measure increasing the minimum wage here to $13 an hour by 2020.  It was intended as a middle-way approach; and like many middle-way approaches, it angered people on both sides of the debate.  Church and social-justice groups are petitioning for a vote in November to raise it to $15 an hour instead; business groups are petitioning to keep it where it is; and the state Legislature will soon try to make any local minimum wage illegal.¹  So it’s a complicated time.

Now, I can hear some of you thinking this isn’t a religious issue and shouldn’t be getting air time on a Sunday morning.  But I would say poverty is an issue of faith, and Scripture seems to back me up.  If you search the Bible for the words “poverty” or “poor,” you get 238 verses.  Some of the most pointed are in the Letter of James, as we heard this morning.  Of course, like any other issue of faith, the fun comes in the interpretation.  At one end of the political spectrum, people argue that raising the minimum wage would reveal the divine justice of God’s kingdom because, in Scripture and tradition, God is always trying to advance the interests of the poor.  At the other end of the political spectrum, people argue that raising the minimum wage would harm the working poor by cutting jobs and putting more people out of work; so, they would say, letting the market create opportunity is the best way to reveal God’s kingdom and answer “the cry of the poor” (Proverbs 21:14). 

Well, I don’t claim to know much with certainty, but I want to share with you three things I do know to be true. 

First, if you ask five economists about raising the minimum wage, you’ll get five different answers about the likely effects.  But probably even five economists would agree that regardless of whether we raise the minimum wage or keep it where it is, the law of unintended consequences will put up roadblocks along each side’s highway to the kingdom of God.  Raising the wage will probably cause at least some jobs to evaporate.  Not raising the wage maintains a status quo in which lots of the people who through the lunch line at the Kansas City Community Kitchen actually have jobs but don’t earn a living.  Myself, I think it should be more than $7.65 an hour.  But raising the wage, or not, will bring outcomes neither side wants to see.

Here’s the second thing I know to be true:  In issues that quickly move to abstraction, it helps to walk in someone else’s shoes.  I have never tried to live on minimum wage.  But recently, I’ve seen this question through the eyes of someone I love – my son, Dan.  Dan works at a local country club serving food and drinks.  He’s been making more than minimum wage, $9.50 an hour.  And he loves it.  As some of you know, Dan decided not to go back to college this year but to work full-time, living in his own apartment and paying his own bills.  He loves his job, and he loves being (more or less) a grown-up.  For Dan, at 19 years old, he’s been making it just fine on $9.50 an hour.  But … he’s still on my health insurance; he doesn’t own a car; and he doesn’t have a family.  What amounts to a living wage for him now won’t be a living wage as his life changes.  He’ll need to grow into positions of greater responsibility and higher pay; and he may well need to go back to school to make that happen.  Now, here’s where it gets interesting.  Ann and I are blessed in that we could help him do that.  When he wants to go back to school, he and we probably can find a way to make that happen.  But there are thousands of people in our city who don’t have the social and financial capital even to consider a future like that.  My son can work his way up, but it’s tremendously harder for a mom at Operation Breakthrough or a guy who didn’t finish high school, someone who moves from one minimum-wage job to another.  They need something to change.

And here’s where all this becomes an issue of discipleship for us.  Throughout Scripture, God calls us to recognize the full humanity of those who live past the boundaries of our social worlds and then act to bring God’s kingdom to life among them.  In today’s Gospel reading, we see that even Jesus – being fully human as well as fully divine – even Jesus was boxed in by his social expectations.  He’s approached by a woman who’s not a Jew but who’s heard about the Spirit’s power working through Jesus; and she asks him to heal her daughter.  Before he thinks better of it, Jesus says “no” because she’s one of “those” people, a foreigner, someone outside the Jewish social world; and Jesus had come to bring God’s healing to the people of Israel.  So he calls her a “dog” and says the master’s “children” should be fed first (Mark 7:27).  Yikes – so much for warm-and-fuzzy Jesus.  But the woman’s faith makes Jesus stop short and see that, yes, she, too, is a beloved child of the Most High God – someone worthy of a miracle, someone worthy of an in-breaking of God’s ordering of things, even though she was outside Jesus’ world.  When we, too, see “those people” as children of God, we see that they have just as much claim on God’s blessings as we do.

So here’s the third thing I know to be true.  We have some power, and with it the responsibility, to help make the kingdom of God come to life in our own spheres of influence.  God asks us to open doors between this conflicted world we inhabit and God’s commonwealth just waiting to break in.  For those of us in a position to set other people’s wages, including those of us who set wages here at church, we need to imagine ourselves living the life those wages make possible.  To whom responsibility is given, loving stewardship is expected. 

So if God is asking us to open doors between our world and the reign and rule of God for the working poor, what might that mean for ministry at St. Andrew’s?  What can the church do?  Well, we can serve working-poor people directly, as we do each week at the Kitchen downtown.  We can support kids and teachers in our partner schools and try to equip them to succeed.  And we can do something that takes outreach ministry in a new direction, something bridging the political gap by preparing poor people for jobs that pay even more than an increased minimum wage.  You may have seen in the Star² or on TV³ last week the good news about Natasha Kirsch and her social entrepreneurial start-up, Empower the Parent to Empower the Child, or EPEC.  Natasha is one of the first partners we’ve brought into the Red Door Center, which is St. Andrew’s own social-entrepreneurship incubator.  For more than a year now, officing out of St. Andrew’s, Natasha has been working with church members to build a board, raise money, network with city officials and civic leaders, and find a permanent location for her enterprise.  And what is it she’s creating?  EPEC will train unemployed and underemployed people for jobs as dog groomers.  Little did we know there’s a huge demand for dog groomers in Kansas City and that they earn $19 an hour.  So Natasha’s start-up will train people to groom dogs but also to manage their household income, and be good parents, and succeed in the workplace.  She’s gathering clients from Operation Breakthrough, the Rose Brooks Center, and other agencies.  And as of last week, the City Council is leasing her a formerly vacant building, dirt cheap.  Parishioners here helped her get that building, and have designed its renovations, and have helped her raise the construction costs, and serve on her board of directors.  And, to complete the circle, Natasha is now a part of this church community, serving on our Outreach Commission and worshiping here with us.  Our Red Door Center has incubated EPEC to a point where it’s now taking flight.  And 18 students a year will see their lives, and the lives of their families, transformed by it. 

You can say, well, that’s only 18 people a year.  OK.  But Jesus healed individual people, too.  We are commissioned to enact God’s reign within the scope of our spheres of influence.  And when we do, those spheres of influence grow as others see and know the reign of God breaking into our reality and transforming our sometimes-so-small sense of what’s possible.  We serve as agents of the God for whom nothing is impossible, even in this complicated and broken world. 

It’s easy to get stuck on the horns of political controversy.  And it’s even easier for many of us to avoid the conflicts that political controversy brings.  You’ve heard me say before that our congregation’s functional vision statement has sometimes been, “It’s nice to be nice to the nice.”  We carry a long history of that, so it’s understandable that we’re not exactly wired, as a church, to jump into political issues.  But we can’t let that keep us from truly seeing the children of God on the margins of our awareness.  We can’t let that keep us from acting as God’s agents to change the realities that keep people trapped in poverty and hopelessness.  We serve a God who makes the blind see and the deaf hear and the lame walk – and who brings good news to the poor.  Well, amazingly enough, God chooses to do that through us, commissioning even us both to speak and enact good news to the poor, sending even us to say: “Be strong, do not fear!  Here is your God … he will come and save you.” (Isaiah 35:4)  It is nothing less than miraculous what God can do when we live out the “royal law” – to love our neighbors as ourselves (James 2:8).  We can’t just wish the working poor well, in the abstract, and hope that God will be nice enough to take care of them.  As James says, “Faith without works is dead.”  But faith with works?  That is divine – God’s own love, in the flesh.

1.       Alonzo, Austin.  “Competing referendums put brakes on KC minimum wage increase.”  Kansas City Business Journal, Aug. 17, 2015.  Available at:  http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2015/08/17/kcmo-minimum-wage-increase-delay.html.  Accessed Sept. 6, 2015.

2.       Horsley, Lynn.  ‘KC dog grooming school aims to provide jobs to unemployed parents.”  Kansas City Star, Aug. 26, 2015.  Available at:  http://www.kansascity.com/news/government-politics/article32423133.html.  Accessed Sept. 6, 2015.

3.       Pepitone, John.  “City Council to approve plan to create dog grooming school aimed at helping single moms get jobs.”  Fox 4 News Kansas City, Aug. 27, 2015.  Available at:  http://fox4kc.com/2015/08/27/city-council-to-approve-plan-to-create-dog-grooming-school-to-help-single-moms-get-jobs/.  Accessed Sept. 6, 2015.

Buy Low, Sell High, Give Always

[Sermon from Sunday, Aug. 30, 2015.]

I have to tell you that I’m not a close follower of the stock market or financial news in general.  But last week, even I couldn’t help but pay attention to the economic instability in China and its effects on world markets, including ours.  I knew it was generating serious buzz when my 19-year-old son, who’s not exactly a heavy investor, came back from work at Milburn Country Club talking about China and the Dow and what it all might mean for us.

By Tuesday’s news cycle, the wild ride had led to an 11-percent drop in value on U.S. stock indices.  As I read about that on CNN’s website, I came across what I think may be a modern-day icon of American life – maybe an anti-icon, actually, if icons give us windows into heaven.  The article I was reading referenced CNN’s “Fear & Greed Index.”  Yes, that’s right, the Fear & Greed Index.  It’s a composite of indices reflecting market volatility, demand for junk bonds, stock-price strength and breadth, demand for safe havens, put and call options, and market momentum.  I don’t even know what most of those terms mean.  But put them all together, and apparently you get a metric of which emotion is driving the market at the moment – with fear at one end of the dial and greed at the other. 

So, if fear is at one end and greed is at the other, what’s in the middle?  Boredom and ennui?  I’m not sure where I’d want the needle on that dial to point, if these are our options for what drives our economics.  Neither fear nor greed seem like particularly inviting emotional spaces to inhabit.  All of this probably explains why I’m not a broker or a market analyst. 

I don’t mean to make fun of our collective reaction to last week.  A lot of people, and a lot of us in this room, have a lot riding on the success of the market, whether we really understand it or not.  And that’s no less true for the Church than for any other part of American society.  After all, where does the Church Pension Fund invest my pension contributions?  Not in organic berry farms.  And, by the way, where do your pledge payments come from?  Some come directly from stock transactions; others come from income that won’t be there if the stock market isn’t healthy.  So I don’t mean to minimize the fear we feel when the market takes a dive.

And … when that happens, as all the financial advisers said this week, it’s vital that we stop and take a deep breath.  Come on, let’s do it together.  Slowly.  Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Now, do it again.  Isn’t that better?  Nothing’s changed in the market, or in our personal lives, because we took those deep breaths, but I’ll bet most of our necks and shoulders are looser.

So, where’s the sermon, Fr. John?  What does all this have to do with the Good News of the kingdom of God?

Actually, everything.

Go back to the Old Testament reading we heard today.  Moses, by now a very old man, is standing before the people of God after they’ve wandered 40 years in the wilderness.  They’re about to cross over the Jordan, enter into the promised land, and create a society that was to be all about revealing God’s kingship, God’s authority.  That was God’s whole point in creating Israel – that other peoples around them, worshiping carvings and heavenly bodies, might see and know that this nation of Israel was “a wise and discerning people,” specially blessed with statutes and ordinances written by God’s own hand (Deuteronomy 4:6).  Do not let these things “slip from your mind,” Moses commands the people, but “make them known” – to your children, yes, but also to the rest of the people around you (4:9).  For God’s people are set aside, sanctified as a missionary presence among the nations of the world.

Well, we are the new Israel, God’s missionary people in this time and place.  And being that missionary presence doesn’t exactly jibe with fear and greed.  I don’t recall seeing a “Fear & Greed Index” anywhere in Scripture.  A “Hope & Mercy Index,” absolutely – that’s the index of God’s love, measured in board-feet of a cross.  But a “Fear & Greed Index”?  As followers of Jesus Christ, we’re specifically called to witness against fear and greed as dominant forces in our hearts and in our culture.  The phrase “fear not” appears 62 times in Scripture, and that doesn’t count similar things like “be strong” and “take courage.”¹  “Do not let your hearts be troubled,” Jesus says, “and do not let them be afraid” (John 14:27).  And greed?  Well, in addition to making the list of the seven deadly sins, greed comes up 36 times in Scripture.  If you add “avarice” to that search, you get one more – in Jesus’ vice list from today’s Gospel reading (Mark 7:21-22).  It’s one of the “evil things … that defile a person,” Jesus says (Mark 7:23).  So when it comes to fear and greed, I think we’d have to say Jesus is not a fan.

What would Jesus advocate instead?  Well, taking a deep breath is a good place to start.  But from there, I think he might tell us to remember – to remember who we are.  We are the baptized, and that means more than any other mark of identity that competes for our allegiance.  As baptized people, we are God’s own children.  As baptized people, we are born anew, freed from the bonds of sin and death.  As baptized people, we are the head and the heart and the hands of Jesus Christ today, his body blessed and broken and given for the world he redeemed.  As baptized people, we are inheritors of eternal life.  None of those realities appears on the evening news when the stock market tumbles.  But neither the Chinese economy nor the Fed’s Board of Governors can take these truths away.  Remember who you are.

And after we remember, maybe our next step is to take a small, simple, sacramental stand.  Let me offer you the last thing you came to church expecting this morning – a wealth-management tip from your priest.  You already know the conventional wisdom:  Buy low and sell high, right?  Well, here’s your heavenly wealth-management tip to go along with that:  Buy low, sell high, and give always – especially in times of fear and greed.  No matter which direction the dial is pointing on that Fear & Greed Index, it’s a sign to stop and give away a little something extra to remind ourselves where hope and mercy lie.

It’s a lesson we learned from our partners in Haiti a few years ago.  When we were about to replace the roof on our church, we shared that news in worship during a visit to Maniche.  The people of St. Augustin’s pledged to give us their profits from a day at the market, to help us out with our roof.  Not that they had it to give … but they found the faithfulness to offer it.

Giving something extra won’t solve the world’s problems.  But that small gift – the intentional practice of generosity when everything around you says, “Hold tight” – that “generous act of giving,” as the Letter of James calls it, is a sacrament (James 1:17).  It’s an outward and visible sign of the divine reality, the reign and rule of God, just beyond the sometimes toxic bubble of our worldly fears and sins.  Like dipping your fingers in holy water or taking the body and blood of Christ, your small “generous act of giving” is a way be a doer of the Word in real life.  That small, generous act will remind you who you are and whose you are.  In fact, it will heal your heart because it will remind you, when you’re bound by the world’s ground rules, that you’re actually sealed by the Holy Spirt in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever – that you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, not a prisoner in the kingdom of anxiety.  For we serve a God who leads faithful people to what seems like certain death at the water’s edge, only to pave their way to freedom in a promised land.  We serve a God whose prophets come out of fiery furnaces and lions’ dens, singing songs of victory.  We serve a God who is whipped and nailed to a cross but calmly stares his tormentors down, knowing the empty tomb awaits. 

If God is for us, what shall we fear?  And how much more security do we really think we need?

1.      Blacketer, Larry.  Musings of a Lifetime Bible Teacher.  WestBow Press, 2013.  203.

The High Dive

[Sermon from Sunday, Aug. 2, celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration and baptizing three children.]

Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27).  Now, if you were listening, you know that verse wasn’t in the Gospel reading we just heard.  Instead, it comes just before it in Luke’s story.  “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “there are some here who will not taste death before they see” what the kingship of God, the sovereignty of God, actually looks like.  Keep that thought in mind as we move along this morning. 

We’re celebrating the Feast of the Transfiguration today, and it’s one of those scriptural stories that sort of loses its punch with over-telling.  Many of us have heard it too many times; it’s become commonplace.  But if you happen to be someone who hasn’t heard this story very often – or maybe never heard it before today – I wonder how it strikes you?  

Let’s look at a few key words and phrases.  We’re told Jesus and his three closest disciples go “up on the mountain to pray” (Luke 9:28).  They go away to the place, in Scripture and still today, where people often go when they’re seeking a deep encounter with God – up on the mountaintop.  OK, there’s our setting. 

Then, there’s this phrase:  Jesus’ “face was changed, and his clothes became dazzling white” (9:29).  Clearly, something’s happened up on the mountain, something otherworldly and mysterious. 

Then we hear, “Suddenly … Moses and Elijah were talking to” Jesus, appearing in “glory” (9:30,31).  OK, so a strange situation has just gotten seriously weird, as long-dead religious heroes suddenly appear out of nowhere.  And what they talk about seems strange, too:  Jesus’ upcoming “departure” at Jerusalem – and, even stranger, the word for “departure” in Greek is exodus (9:31).  We’ve heard that before.

Meanwhile, the disciples are drifting in and out of sleep in their meditative state up on the mountain – not sure what’s real and what’s not, not sure whether they ought to do something to make this mystical moment last, like notes scribbled in a dream journal.  Soon enough, it becomes clear they’re not dreaming after all.  A dark cloud comes and overwhelms them, and the disciples are “terrified” as the cloud swallows them up (9:34).  Finally, to freak them out completely, the very voice of God booms from the dark cloud, thundering, “This is my Son, my Chosen, my Beloved; listen to him!” (9:35).  And suddenly, Jesus and the disciples are standing there alone.  I imagine the disciples are looking for somewhere to run. 

This is not a happy little Bible story.  This is a terrifying encounter with the sovereign Lord of the universe.  And it’s made even more terrifying for the disciples as they come to realize that the guy they hang out with, their leader, their teacher, their rabbi – he’s a whole lot more than that, sharing directly in God’s terrifying glory. 

And as they keep reflecting on all this, I imagine it becomes even more confusing still.  God’s voice had thundered, “Listen to him!”  But, you know, Jesus didn’t have anything to say in this story.  No grand proclamations.  Not a single word, actually.  So, Peter and James and John might have wondered, what were we supposed to listen to?

Well, rewind the story a bit.  The last thing Luke describes before this account of the Transfiguration is one of those moments – maybe the supreme moment – of Jesus tellin’ it like it is.  He asks his friends, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” (9:18).  And then he asks, “Who do you say that I am?” (9:20).  Peter gets the answer right, though he hasn’t really understood it yet.  He says, “You’re ‘the messiah of God’” (9:20) – which for them meant, “You’re the one God has anointed to be king of Israel, the one who will bring back God’s direct rule of our land, just like the good ol’ days of David and Solomon.”  Jesus basically says, “Yes … and no.”  He gives them the deep mystery of messiahship – that being God’s anointed king means he “will undergo great suffering, and be rejected by [the religious leaders], and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (9:22).  And then, he hits his friends in the gut with the mystery they’ll spend their lives trying to live into:  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” (9:23-24)  This truth comes directly from God’s beloved Son.  “Listen to him!” boomed the voice from the cloud.

So, if you’re hearing this story with fresh ears, let me ask:  Are you scared yet?

*    *    *   *

Well, it’s summertime.  These are supposed to be lazy days of relaxing and reading on the beach – or at least cooling off at the local pool.  So every summer, in my mind’s eye, I go back to Meador Park pool in Springfield, Missouri.  Meador Park was about 2 miles from my house growing up; and once I reached the age of emancipation for a kid in Springfield in the 1970s, which was about 10 years old, my parents let me ride my bike to the pool by myself.  It was a different day.  I had no fear, as a boy, going off to the swimming pool by myself – apparently neither did my parents.  So I’d go and swim, maybe meet friends that day, maybe not, but definitely revel in the freedom and relaxation of summer.

One day, I met up with some friends.  And as boys do, we started bragging about what we could do in the water – how long we could hold our breath, how deep we could dive, how far we could swim.  It moved quickly into dares, and the dares moved quickly to the last place I wanted to go: the high dive.

Now, I know this will shock you, but I wasn’t exactly an athlete as a kid.  Nor was I particularly coordinated.  And I hated getting water up my nose.  And I’d never jumped off the high dive.  Ever.  To me, the high dive at Meador Park pool was about 100 feet tall, like a circus scene from a Bugs Bunny cartoon.  Probably not, actually; but it sure felt that way.

So you know how this story goes.  After the obligatory posturing of 10-year-old boys negotiating a dare, I found myself climbing the ladder up the high dive.  I got to the top.  And I walked slowly out, feeling the board quiver harder and harder the farther out I stepped.  I walked to the end. 

And I stood there.  And I stood there.  And I stood there.  And the longer I stood there, the worse it got.  The longer I stood there, the higher the high dive became.

*    *    *    *

In a few minutes, three babies and their families are going to gather around this tiny pool here in the chancel.  It’s not a very imposing sight, really.  There’s not much water there.  But let me tell you, that water’s got power.  Because in that tiny pool is the water of life … and death … and new life in Christ. 

As newborns, we burst from the womb’s primordial waters, overcoming blood and pain before we even gasp our first breath.  So water is life … but it’s also death.  In these lazy, hazy days of summer, we always hear of boating accidents and drownings; and we know, even if we don’t like to admit it, that the difference between life and death in the water is razor-thin.  So water is death … but it’s also new life.  Soon these three young people, and the adults who’d give their lives for them, will be asked to jump off the high dive into this tiny pool.  The stakes are high because in that water, yes, we do die.  “In it, we are buried with Christ in his death,” as we’ll pray before the baptisms.  But just as surely, and so much more powerfully, “By it, we share in his resurrection.  [And] through it, we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.” (BCP 306)  Rising out of that pool, we are reborn as members of the family of God.  Rising out of that pool, we are washed clean of every stain.  Rising out of that pool, we are clothed in the garments of transcendent glory, like Jesus on the mountaintop; and we are sealed with the oil that’s anointed prophets and kings as we join Jesus as members of his royal priesthood. 

And as we rise from that water, born again, we hear the voice of the risen Lord whose company of disciples we join.  We hear him commission us for service in the reign and rule of God:  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross daily, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” 

As the songwriter Marcus Mumford sings:

In these bodies we will live; in these bodies we will die. 

Where you invest your love, you invest your life. 

Awake my soul –

For you were made to meet your maker.¹

As you stand at the end of the high dive, are you ready to take the plunge?  Come on in.  The water’s fine.

1.  Mumford & Sons.  “Awake My Soul.”  Sigh No More.  2009.

Out of Many, One

[Sermon from July 5, 2015]

This Independence Day weekend, our nation pauses to remember, to celebrate, and (at least for some of us) to pray for these United States.  We do so in a historic moment marked by both grief and hope.  Two and a half weeks ago, when nine children of God were gunned down in a Charleston church, it pulled open racism’s wound once again in our country.  We all know that; and we’ve heard voices from all sides mostly talking to people who already share their points of view.  It’s usually cast in terms of “our country needs to” do this or do that, as if we believed that, if we only gave people the right answer, the body politic would change. 

It’s harder than that.  Living into what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” is excruciatingly hard work.  From a Christian perspective, it’s the work of discipleship – loving God, loving neighbor, and loving each other the way Jesus loved.  Though it’s easy for us to say “those people” ought to change in this way or that, I believe healing our nation begins by healing hearts.  Let me tell you about a couple of those hearts – hearts afflicted with blindness.

The first is the heart of a South Carolina state representative, Doug Brannon.  Representative Brannon is a third-term Republican from a small South Carolina community, a lawyer, a white man.  Had he not run for office, he’d have probably never met state Senator Clementa Pinckney, the AME pastor and legislator who was killed in his Charleston church.  But in their time in the state house, Brannon and Pinckney had become friends.  Remembering his friend, Representative Brannon said, “When he walked into a room, the smile just lit the room up.  As big as he was, he was so inviting. … just a welcome sight.”¹ 

Soon after the shooting, as the calls came to take down the Confederate flag on the capitol grounds, Representative Brannon stopped short in the realization that he had a sin on his heart, a sin of omission, a sin that now weighed on him like an anvil.  He’d walked past that Confederate flag hundreds of times, but as he said, “I don’t look at it.  That may sound ridiculous, but I don’t look at it.  So it didn’t mean anything to me.”¹  But now, he said, “It’s time to do my job.”²  So Representative Brannon will introduce a bill to remove that flag, though it will likely cost him his job.  He said, “The switch that flipped was the death of my friend.  I’ve been in the House five years; I should have filed that bill five years ago.  But,” he said, “the time is now.”²  Two and a half weeks ago, Representative Brannon didn’t even see that flag.  His friend’s death opened his eyes and, for a moment, let him step into his friend’s world.  And with fresh eyes, he could see a wound to heal.

Here’s the second example of a heart afflicted with blindness: mine.  I grew up in Springfield, Missouri.  When I was a boy, Springfield was 98 percent white.³  At my school, there was no racial diversity.  Literally, I didn’t know an African American kid, or any other kid who wasn’t white.  The one black person I knew – as trite as it sounds, it’s true – the one black person I knew was the woman who cleaned our house. 

Most of Springfield’s small black population lived in the north-central part of town.  My friends and I played in a basketball league at the Boy’s Club there; and one day, we were in the game room, playing pool.  Three black kids came up to join us.  My friends and I had had so little interaction with black kids that we couldn’t understand the words they spoke.  We literally didn’t speak the same language. 

In an earlier day, Springfield’s population was about 10 percent African American.  Black people owned thriving businesses, served on the City Council, served on the school board, served in law enforcement.  But in 1906, on Holy Saturday, as Jesus lay in the tomb, three young black men were lynched and burned on the downtown square.  Understandably, many black people left Springfield for good the next morning, after Easter services.  The governor declared martial law and sent in the state militia.  But no one was ever convicted for the lynchings.  Eventually, the city’s black population shrank to less than half of what it had been.⁴ 

I knew about that lynching because my parents had told me, several times.  But I never heard about it in school.  In 12 years of public education in Springfield, we never talked about that lynching or any of the rest of the city’s black experience.  It’s not that Springfield’s racial history was denied.  It just wasn’t.

We are formed by the reality we inhabit, as I said last week.  And, growing up, the reality I inhabited was that African American people were “other.”  I knew they were there, but I didn’t know them.  I didn’t even see them.  And when we don’t see, we don’t change.

Of course, over the years, I’ve had the chance to see and hear a bit more.  I’ve learned from black conversation partners in college, at work, and in this congregation.  And then, this year, a relationship has been growing with a man some of you were blessed to meet in May – Pastor Mike Patton at United Missionary Baptist Church.  He’d contacted me about being part of an ecumenical Good Friday service.  I couldn’t do it because of our services here, but Pastor Mike and I kept talking.  And we decided we’d have a joint service – gathering at their church, with our choir singing, and with me preaching. 

It was a great experience; and afterward, we knew we needed to get together again.  But sadly, the next opportunity was an interfaith service the day after the Charleston shootings.  Pastor Mike, Mtr. Anne, Fr. Marcus, John Walker, Jim Bridgeford, and I – we all went to that service together, praying for healing in Charleston and for our nation.

After the service, the six of us went to lunch at M&M Deli at 31^st and Woodland.  In many ways, that meal was a foretaste of the banquet of the kingdom of heaven.  It was Eucharist with Ruebens and potato chips and Diet Coke.  We even started the feast by sharing a single, perfect doughnut, broken and given among us as we waited in line for our sandwiches.  The Body of Christ was truly present around the table as the six of us unwrapped our sandwiches and opened our hearts.  And the Body of Christ was present all around that room, too: black people, brown people, white people; folks from the neighborhood, workers on lunch breaks, cops on the beat.  Those diverse hearts and hands were united in the fellowship of our common humanity.  There was plenty for all, and all the hungry were fed. 

There in the church of M&M Deli, the six of us talked about what was next for our two congregations.  The worship we shared in May at United Missionary Baptist had been amazing, people from both congregations describing a sense of welcome and an ease of relationship they might not have expected.  As a next step, we talked about a couple of options.  Now, their congregation is small, 50 or 60 people on a Sunday.  And I didn’t want to presume that we’d trump their service by having all of us gather here on a Sunday morning.  So I suggested they come to the Feast of the First Tomato, which is this Wednesday – beautiful music and a great party afterward. 

Well, Pastor Mike put down his sandwich and said, “There’s nothing wrong with that.  But you know, for us, it would be important to sit down at the table with your family for Sunday dinner.”  I heard him.  What I had feared would seem dismissive – “You all shut down your little church one Sunday and come to our big, pretty church” – what I had feared would seem dismissive was gracious hospitality instead.  Who knew?

So on Sunday, Aug. 9, at our 10:15 service, we will welcome the people of United Missionary Baptist to gather with our family for Sunday dinner, here at Jesus Christ’s table.  When we went there in May, our choir provided the music and I preached.  When they come here in August, their praise band will provide the music, and Pastor Mike will preach.  And the kingdom of God will be revealed among us.

All this may seem an odd topic for a Fourth of July sermon.  But I heard something in the Old Testament reading this morning, a key to unlock the shackles of racism that bind us and keep us from true equality and freedom.  Here’s what I heard:  “The Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome … who loves the strangers. …  You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 10:17-19)  And then, in the Gospel reading today, I heard Jesus say this: “Love your enemies. …  If you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others?  Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” (Matthew 5:44,47) 

We will never grow into the full stature of the Body of Christ, and we will never grow into the fullness of blessing God intends America to be, if we do not love the stranger.  For when we love the stranger – around a deli table east of Troost and around the welcome table of Jesus Christ – when we love the stranger, we come to see that we need not be strangers.  We come to see, as Jesus wished, that we are one, as he and the Father are one (John 17:22-23).

All this may sound like pie-in-the-sky preaching from an out-of-touch priest.  Maybe.  But I’ll let the pragmatic politician in me tell you this:  The only way to dismantle the systemic racism that clings like slime to our national body politic is to change one heart at a time.  Those of us who never heard a black voice in school, those of us who don’t notice the Confederate flag – we will not change just because we’re told to, no matter how compelling the case.  But I have faith in the God who changes hearts every day.  I have faith that when we come to see the stranger, when we hear the stranger’s story, and when we share our story, too, then “we will all be changed – in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).  We will be transformed, made new by the Holy Spirit who longs for the Body of Christ, and the body of our nation, out of many to be one.

1.       “S.C. State Legislator Hopes To Remove Confederate Flag This Summer.”  All Things Considered, National Public Radio.  Transcript available at: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=416538096.  June 22, 2015.  Accessed July 3, 2015.

2.       “Calls for Confederate flag to come down after Charleston church shooting.”  CBS This Morning.  Available at: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/calls-for-confederate-flag-to-come-down-after-charleston-church-shooting/.  June 22, 2015.  Accessed July 3, 2015.

3.       U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.  “General Demographic Trends for Metropolitan Areas, 1960-1970.”  1970 Census of Population and Housing, PHC(2)-27 Missouri, Final Report.  1971.  Available at: http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/42189394n27-52ch1.pdf.  Accessed July 3, 2015.

4.       Fillmer, Jenny.  “1906 lynchings grew from tensions, racism.”  Springfield News-Leader, April 14, 2006.  Available at: http://archive.news-leader.com/article/20060414/NEWS01/604140328/1906-lynchings-grew-from-tensions-racism.  Accessed July 3, 2015.