What I Was Going To Say....A Sermon for 3 Pentecost Proper 8C

 

Well, COVID finally got me. 

I'd managed to avoid it for these past two-plus years. But Tallahassee is awash in new cases, and I know that I have had close personal contact with at least three people who tested positive, so the fact that I got it is just...well...figures!

And it came at a time when the nation is reeling from the recent U.S. Supreme Court case to undo the decades long precedent of Roe v. Wade, which established the right of women to seek safe, legal abortions. The court has returned the decision to the states, and state upon state controlled by ultra-conservative legislatures and Governors are rushing to outlaw the procedure entirely. This goes against the vast majority of Americans' opinion. Even those people who oppose what they call "abortion on demand" still believe if the life of the mother is at risk or that the pregnancy was the result of forced sex such as rape, there should be the option to abort. 

But that's not what is going to happen. Oklahoma, for example, has said that life begins "at fertilization." That means that if a woman has an ectopic pregnancy, which is a life-threatening condition where the fetus is lodged outside the uterus, she must go through with the birth and likely die; otherwise, she is murdering "a child". Medical schools have already been reportedly very skittish about teaching the procedure because doctors have been killed for performing abortions.

I fear things in the country are going to get worse before they get better. 

+++

Sermon for 3 Pentecost Year C

Proper 8

June 26, 2022

Luke 9:51-62; 2 Kings 2:1-2, 6-14

 

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be always acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

 

There are those times when the assigned lectionary texts feel especially challenging.

And our readings this morning are very challenging given some of the events in our nation over the past few days.

I am not going lie.

When I read in our Gospel about John and James going into a town in Samaria and…finding them to be less than hospitable…wanting to rain down smoke and fire upon the place…I had to take a pause.

We don’t really know from the text what the Samaritans objected to.

We can get a sense that it might have something to do with the ongoing Hatfield vs. the McCoy feuding that existed at the time between Samaria and Israel.

The Samaritans were Jews who had intermingled with Gentiles, the Assyrians to be precise, during the years of the Babylonian exile. They were the ones who had remained while the rest were dispersed.

Jews wanted nothing to do with this mixed race of people…and the feeling was mutual.

The fact that they rejected the message of the apostles could mean they were rejecting the message of Jesus. And here’s James and John… who had just been with Jesus up on the mountain at the transfiguration with Moses and Elijah…ready to rain down fire on the Samaritans.

Elijah had rained down fire and brimstone on his opponents in the chapter in Second Kings right before the one we heard this morning. So there was precedent for this response.

As I sat with this particular part of the passage…I had to examine my own internal monologue as my phone kept pinging with news alerts.

The U.S. Supreme Court says states cannot enact stricter gun laws despite the rash of mass shootings lately…but they can control the autonomy of women and what happens with their bodies.

And there is a suggestion from one of the Justices that the court should overturn rulings that allowed married couples to have access to birth control pills, and end protections for LGBTQ-plus individuals including the right to be married.

This suggestion comes at a time when LGBTQ+ people are feeling a little on edge.

There were militia members ready to rumble at a gay pride event in Idaho in an effort to disrupt what is essentially a big block party.

A pastor in Texas suggested that LGBTQ people should be shot in the back of the head.

Such statements…said from a church pulpit…enrage me.

Such disregard for women’s lives and their healthcare infuriate me.

Seeing Christianity linked or invoked as supporting policies that demean people and threaten their lives makes my blood boil.

Like John and James, I found myself ready to call down fire from heaven, too!

But then there’s Jesus basically telling John and James… and me:

“Knock it off!”

(The text says “rebuke” but really I imagine Jesus being a little more blunt.)

That sort of violence, that eye for an eye, “you hurt me so I’m going to crush you” violence is not at all what Jesus is about.

It is totally counter to his identity and his mission.

What Jesus demands of me…of all of us…is a totally countercultural and antithetical to how we would want to be when we knee-jerk respond to those things which hurt us.

We can’t burn it all down or even expect God to take out those who we see as enemies.

To do so would be to give in to the very things that we say we are not.

When Jesus calls us to follow him, it’s not just the call to discipleship.

It’s to understand that when Luke says that Jesus “sets his face to Jerusalem” this is a call to be resolute.

To not back down.

We’re marching forward…there’s no turning around at this point.

This is the moment when Jesus knows what he must do.

He must head toward the place where the prophets go to die.

And He’s prepared to meet such resistance in this place that will put him to death by a kangaroo court.

The fact that he sets his face toward Jerusalem and then enters into the fraught and fractious territory of Samaria tells us that the journey is going to be a challenge. Don’t expect praise or gold stars and confetti-throwing crowds or parades.  

John and James somehow forgot that Jesus had already told them…and is telling us…that when a town won’t accept them… shake the dust off your feet and keep those feet moving forward.

Don’t turn back.

Don’t stop to say good-bye.

There will be others along the way who are ready to hear a message of unconditional love.

And we must accept that a radical love such as this…one that strives for justice and peace and respects the dignity of every human being (BCP, 305) will be costly.

We know this from our history in the Episcopal Church from struggles over the ordination of women to the ordination of LGBTQ people.  Our siblings in the Methodist Church are undergoing those pains now.

In our reading from Second Kings…where we hear about Elijah’s amazing ascent in the chariots of fire…we have a slightly different look at what it takes to step out as a leader.

We know that Elisha…seeking to inherit the prophetic strength of his teacher…has been told he must watch for Elijah’s ascent.

Elisha does as he’s told.

He keeps his eyes on the prophet as he rides off into heaven.

Elisha picks up the mantle of Elijah…both literally and figuratively… through witnessing this fiery departure.

Jesus on the other hand as the teacher is saying, “Don’t wait; the mission of God…to bring about freedom from oppression and more love for those who desperately are searching for it…can’t stop for anything!”

 The prophetic witness we are called to bring to the world requires us to not hesitate in confronting those things that challenge us. But we don’t go about it with a clenched fist or great balls of fire from heaven…that’s the temptation.

Hard as it can be at times…we must continuously seek strength in the love of Jesus and the determination not to let those who want to bring us down…in fact… drag us into a pit of anger and despair.

In the same way Jesus had his eyes fixed on Jerusalem…we must remain fixed on Love.

We are to stand with all of those who are facing a future where power structures are putting their basic human life and dignity in jeopardy and with those of any race or gender identity or social status who feel they’re repeatedly being left behind.

This place…this holy ground… is where the church must hold in our times.

Speak in Love to power…now and always.

In the name of God…F/S/and HS.

 

 

Be the Love We Need: A Sermon for 5C Easter

 We are in some very dark and depressing times. Over the weekend, there were mass shootings in Buffalo, NY, and then later in Orange County, CA. In the Buffalo case, hatred of Blacks fueled the rampage at a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood. The Orange County shooting was at a Presbyterian Church which hosts a largely Taiwanese congregation. The shooter is a Chinese man with a grudge against Taiwan.

I didn't address gun violence in this sermon. But I did give a brief mention of the other major activity over the weekend: the Bans Off Our Bodies rallies in reaction to what's happening with the U.S. Supreme Court. The pending ruling in the MS case has many of us wondering, "They came for our right to privacy in abortion, what other privacy rights are at stake?" It is unnerving. 

All the more reason for followers of Jesus to step it up in the name of Love. 

This sermon, which I pounded out following three days at Honey Creek for the spring clergy retreat, seemed to hit home with the St. Barnabas congregation. Maybe it might speak to you as well.

+++

Have you ever had a conversation that just seems as if it’s going to be really important or pivotal? A time when you hear something in the moment that makes you realize in your heart of hearts that this is something I will remember forever? 

One such moment that I had like that was with my father at the end of his life. He’d been sent back to his assisted living facility from the hospital after they treated him for aspiration pneumonia. My dad had been diagnosed with something called progressive supranuclear palsy, which had the same effect as Parkinson’s disease. His speech was greatly affected and at this point in his life it was really hard to understand anything he said. 

It was in the evening. He was lying in his bed in his room and making all kinds of noises because he was in pain. I kept trying to understand what he was saying, but I just couldn’t make out the words. Finally, I looked up at the ceiling (because…y’know…God always is up in the ceiling, right?) and I prayed. I asked God to please help me understand what was going on with my dad. 

And then it came to me. 

Leaning down, I told my father to breathe out his words one by one so that I could understand him. 

I placed my ear next to his mouth and clear as day he breathed out each word. One by one.

I. Want. Outta. Here.

I straightened up and looked at him. I repeated back to him what he had said.

“I want outta here? Do you mean outta here as in Alterra (which was the name of his facility) or outta here as in the whole shebang?”

I leaned in again to listen. And again he breathed out his words one by one.

“Whole. Shebang.” 

I straightened up once again. I took in the meaning of what he’d said.

“OK. OK. You don’t have to keep going, dad. You’ve done enough. Mom and everybody…we’re all going to be OK.”

My dad stopped groaning. His body relaxed. I laid my head down on his chest and gave him a hug. 

Those moments…especially end of life moments…often feel as if all rules of physics and time and space are suspended. Perhaps that’s why those types of conversations make such an indelible impression on us. 

As I read our gospel…I wondered if the disciples who were there at the table with Jesus could appreciate the words he was imparting to them. 

Did they know that this would become known as the beginning of his farewell discourse? Could they understand the intimacy of him calling them “little children”? Could they comprehend the meaning of his command to “love one another” or that he had reached the time of his glory?

Do we even understand all of that now?

When we think of who gets glorified in our society…it’s usually associated with somebody rich, or meets some unattainable standard of beauty. Some of us might think of sports figures or whole teams like when the Braves won the World Series. But the glory Jesus talks about at the opening of this passage is different.  This comes right after Judas has left the building to betray him to the authorities. The “glory” Jesus is about to experience is ridicule, mockery, and be nailed to a tree to die. From the standpoint of any rational person, that’s not very glorified. 

Any reasonable person will do everything they can to avoid being attacked in that way. 

But that’s the upside downness of God. In God’s economy…those who seek glory for their own gain and their own fortune are not the rich; that’s how we judge who is worthy of attention. But God is not fixated on the outside of our selves; God looks to our heart, to the core that motivates us to act. For God, true glory belongs to the one who says that they “will lay down their life for their friends” (John 15:13). That’s glory and the way of God’s love.

Jesus talks about love. And he tells the remaining disciples that he’s giving them a new commandment, to love one another just he has loved them. 

In truth, there is nothing new about this commandment. All of these disciples, good and devout Jews, would know that the commandment to love is found in the 19th chapter of Leviticus. Fun fact: the Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis at Duke Divinity School came to Tallahassee to do a teaching about Leviticus as the greenest book in the Bible. At that lecture, she highlighted the beauty of the poetic Hebrew language that is in Leviticus, and more importantly, she revealed that if you don’t have time to read the whole book, just turn to chapter 19. She says it’s basically the Reader’s Digest version of the all the codes and instructions written in the rest of the book. 

OK…so it’s not really a “new” commandment as in one they’ve never heard before. But what makes it “new” is the source of this love comes from God and not as part of a ritual code. This love needs to be the way…the truth…and the life of anyone who has come to believe in Jesus.  

This is a reshaping of what they had known before. They’re called to become the new hands and feet of Jesus in the world. 

And if they do this…if they love one another just as he has loved them…and just as he will be showing how far that love extends by going to his death…then…then…people will know the disciples as followers of Jesus because they will be known by their love. 

There’s a tune that’s popular at Christian camps written by a Catholic priest in the 1960s that plays on that theme of Christians being known by their love…by their love.

Trouble is…too often…what people have encountered from those who call themselves Christian has not been too loving. 

We are fortunate that at least in our Episcopal Church, there are real concerted efforts to acknowledge and atone for sins such as slavery…and the attempts to wipe out the indigenous cultures of various Native Americans. 

We believe in the sacredness of life…including women and girls.

And we have largely lived through the upheaval of acknowledging the existence of LGBTQ persons in the church. A painful process which our siblings in the United Methodist Church are now facing for themselves involving many of the same factions as the ones who broke away from the Episcopal Church almost twenty years ago. 

Fear and the desperate need for control always seem to want to get in the way of Jesus simple command to love one another.  

What Jesus is communicating in this farewell speech is like a last will and testament to his friends. 

They might not have known in the moment how important these words were going to be for them going forward. 

But we know that seed got planted and came to bloom in Peter when he realizes that he can love those foods and people he thought were unclean.

Philip will baptize an Ethiopian eunuch.

James of Jerusalem will settle a dispute between the way Peter wants to grow the church and how Paul was ministering to the Gentiles. 

All with love. A love that flowed from them from having known Jesus.

His simple words to love spoken at the end of their final meal together became imprinted on their souls and guided their actions in a world where they faced indifference and hostility.

If this was true for them…how much more so is it true for us? 

The closer we stick to the source…the more we pay attention to the words and ministry of Jesus and open ourselves to seek and serve God in each other…the greater chance we have to be the agents of change that this world needs now more than ever.

In the name of God…F/S/HS.

     

 

Mother's Day: It's Complicated

For the first Sunday in what feels like forever, I did not preach. 

I did not even attend a church service in-person or virtually. 

Instead, I was moving furniture, vacuuming and cleaning as we prepare our house for some major and long overdue renovation work. We're lucky to have neighbors who are letting us house sit and take care of their cat while they're away and we are being displaced. 

Because I wasn't preaching, I didn't have to figure out how to handle my own...and maybe others...complicated feelings about the secular Hallmark holiday called "Mother's Day."  My own mother passed away in 2014, and while she appreciated the attention, this was never as an important an occasion for her as--say--Easter or even Christmas. 

It is even more complicated this year because of a leaked U.S. Supreme Court opinion penned by the acerbic Justice Samuel Alito which threatens to undo the nearly 50-year-old legal precedent on abortion called Roe v. Wade. I couldn't help thinking about the dangers that thousands of women will face if Alito and company have their way and abortion laws are turned over to the states. Already, Republican-controlled state legislatures have passed so-called "trigger" laws that would go into effect if the SCOTUS overturns Roe. Some of those laws would make abortion totally illegal, even in cases of rape, incest, or risk to the woman's life. Others shorten the time frame for a legal abortion to 15 weeks, even though medical researchers have concluded that a fetus is not viable outside the womb until 26 weeks. OB/GYN doctors are worried that the criminalization of abortion suggested in some of these state laws will lead to a generation of medical professionals who don't know how to perform the procedure which may be medically necessary if a woman miscarries. Suddenly, doctors and their patients become murderers.

The decision to have a child, and then the risks involved with childbirth, should not be in the hands of politicians or courts or pundits or priests. This is solely the woman's decision, made with a mind toward embracing a vocation of mothering a child. And it is a vocation. Some women are exceptionally good mothers. Some, like me, looking at the responsibility of bringing forth life into the world, have rightly concluded that we are better as supporters of those who want to be mothers rather than becoming one ourselves. 

The debate about abortion in this country, and others, has often been tied up in religion and religious belief. The Episcopal Church has been nuanced and consist in its position on the ethics of abortion. While we support the sacredness of life, we also recognize that the life of the mother is as sacred as any other life. 

The draft of Alito's opinion on this matter makes it clear that women are seen not as having fully-realized human lives. Our wombs are factories meant to meet the demand of a shrinking supply of babies eligible for adoption. 

I can't think of a more anti-Christian position than reducing one half of the human race to being merely a baby making machine. 

I pray this is not the last word on this question. I fear that it might be.  

Hear My Cry

This morning I underwent one of the most uncomfortable medical procedures I have ever endured. I have been having pain associated with my pelvic region, and my doctor, who believes in not leaving any stones unturned, ordered that I have a pelvic and transvaginal ultrasound. The tech was unable to do the pelvic exam (they said my bladder wasn't full, and that all the water I had consumed probably went elsewhere in my body). So, we skipped ahead to the transvaginal exam.

I would place this experience right up there with the oral surgery I had as a teenager that required an injection of Novocaine to the roof of my mouth. I remembered thinking that it was strange that there were such heavy oak wood doors in this surgeon's office that led to the operating room. But when that needle pierced into my upper palate causing me to grip the arm rests and choke on my scream, I understood why those doors were so necessary to protect the innocent still out in the waiting room.

There were no heavy doors involved in this procedure. Just a dimly-lit room with medical equipment and a table with stirrups. The tech gave me the simple instructions to place my things on the chair in the room and then lie down on the table. When we figured out that I wasn't sufficiently full in the bladder to do the pelvic ultrasound, she asked me to put my feet in the stirrups. Here begins the pain.

"This is going to feel cold and goopy," the tech warned me. Then she slipped what felt like a very hard super-plus-sized tampon into me.

"Aiiii! Lord, have mercy!"

"I'm sorry," she apologized as she pressed on with inserting the transducer deeper inside. Everything in my body tensed at the shock of this moment, and I realized this wasn't going to help my situation, so I started breathing in an effort to relax my muscles. She kept moving and pushing this device, first to my right, then to my left.

"Fuck!" I breathed out. This was the area that had been giving me such pain recently and this camera-on-a-stick was touching every inch of my tender areas. More breathing, and holding back tears, and wondering when this was going to be over?

Owww! She moved the wand and was now taking pictures of my uterus. And while my bladder wasn't full enough for a pelvic ultrasound, it certainly did have some pee in there. The more she pressed, the more I worried I was going to let go and piss all over her hand, which, in that moment, I believed she rightly deserved. In my head, my pleas continued, "Please, God, when is this going to end?!"

It finally did. The tech nicely and calmly explained to me that the results of the exam would be known in approximately three to five business days and that I would hear from my doctor about them. There is a bathroom in the waiting area where I had been that I could use.

"Did you see anything?" I asked.

"I'm not the radiologist..."

"And so you just take the pictures, you don't interpret the results." I knew this would be the answer, but I thought I'd ask. She was done with her job. Time for me to get out of the room and go back to get my shorts on. Welcome to the world of clinical procedures.

I am a fortunate woman in America in that I am not in that statistic of women who has been raped. According to the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, approximately one out of every six women has been either assaulted or had someone attempt to assault her sexually. And while I would not equate or want to put myself in the place of a woman who has been raped by a boyfriend, husband, father, brother or even a stranger, my experience of a transvaginal ultrasound gave me a keen understanding of that feeling of being violated. Mine was for medical purposes, scheduled and known ahead of time. Still, I felt powerless. I felt pain. And the clinical nature of the whole event made it feel "cold and goopy" in more ways than one.

I cried. Not for me. Not for my own experience. I cried because this is the procedure that state legislatures and the United States Congress, dominated by men, want to require for a woman seeking an abortion. I know how uncomfortable and unpleasant this had been for me in fulfilling my doctor's desire to rule out ovarian cancer. But to require this for an abortion? What if the woman was with an unwanted child because of rape? We want her, and this fetus, to experience a medical form of penetration and violation, so we can make her feel that sense of loss of power all over again? Is there no level of cruelty we don't know?

My tears came even more readily as I thought of the men who are so insistent on this procedure. I thought of how many of them go to church on Sunday, so they can be seen by their constituents and held in high regard as they profess a belief in Jesus Christ as their "personal" Lord and Savior, the pocket-sized God they can carry around with them, and claim as "their God," not "your God." No God in my understanding and imagining would take pleasure in putting a woman's body through this type of procedure. When I let out that cry of "Lord, have mercy!" I believe that Jesus was with me in my every breath. And in so doing, opened my mind to see the wrongness of making a pregnant woman undergo an unnecessary and uncomfortable procedure to satisfy a sadistic human impulse to control other humans.

It is not right. It is not just. It should not be required.