Andy James

wandering the web since 1997

Presbyterian minister in Atlanta.
Music lover.
Found beer in seminary.

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Tragedy, Repentance, and New Life

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a sermon on Luke 13:1-9
preached on February 28, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It seems that most every generation experiences some sort of tragedy that makes us aware of the fragility of life. For some people here, I suspect this moment was the assassination of John F. Kennedy. For an earlier generation, this moment might have been the attack on Pearl Harbor. For another, later generation, it might have been the attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11. For my generation, though, it was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.

By that time, launches of the space shuttle were becoming more routine, as had been hoped, but that launch was special for many because it included the first teacher-astronaut, who was scheduled to present a live lesson from space to schools across the country. That teacher never made it to space—she and her six fellow astronauts were killed 73 seconds after launch in a massive explosion. I was in first grade at the time, and while we were not watching the launch on TV at school, I vividly remember hearing about the disaster in the van on my way from school to my after-school program.

It was a strangely important moment in my life. I don’t recall having much interest in space exploration before that time, but I know that afterward I started to pay much more attention to such things, and some of my favorite family and school trips throughout my younger years were to space-themed spots. But even more than this, I think it was the first moment that I realized that something bad could happen in the world. While I don’t recall being particularly traumatized, I certainly left that moment of my life recognizing that something was different—and that my view of the world would never be the same.

Our reading from the gospel of Luke this morning recounts Jesus’ response to two of these sorts of tragic moments in New Testament times. First, some people in the crowd told Jesus about some Galileans who had been killed in the temple by Pilate, then had their blood mingled with the sacrifices that they had brought with them. Then, Jesus himself brought up another incident in which the tower of Siloam had fallen on a crowd and killed eighteen people. Both of these horrible incidents provoked Jesus to ask if the crowd thought that these terrible disasters were caused by the sinfulness of the persons who had been killed.

This sort of mindset was pretty common in Jesus’ time—although plenty of people today offer similar explanations for bad things, too. Blaming the sinfulness of the victim when bad things happen is deeply rooted in some parts of the Bible, but Jesus was not comfortable with such a simple answer to this longstanding human conundrum. Rather than blaming the victim, he insisted that the victims’ sinfulness was not to blame for their deaths in these moments, yet he also refused to make this a moment of comfort for those who would listen to him. While these people did not die because of their sinfulness, Jesus still told the crowd that their actions mattered. After recounting each of these incidents, Jesus offered the same words to the crowd: “Unless you repent, you will perish just as they did.” This had to be a stark realization. As one commentator puts it, “The arbitrary cases of tragic death, while not owing to any particular wrongdoing by the victims, should alert all to the necessary destructive consequences of universal human sinfulness.” (F. Scott Spencer, “Exegetical Perspective on Luke 13:1-9,” Feasting on the Gospels: Luke, Volume 2, p. 29)

But Jesus did not let this strange realization stand on its own—as he did so frequently, he offered them even deeper meaning for it by sharing a parable about God’s approach to repentance. In the parable, a man approaches his gardener after finding a fig tree empty of fruit for a third consecutive year. The man is ready to have the tree cut down, assuming that it is doing nothing more than wasting space in the ground. The gardener, though, is not quite ready to do this. He knows that this tree may still bear fruit again if it is only given the attention and care that it needs, so he suggests that they turn the soil over around it and add some manure to it, then give it another season to start bearing fruit again before cutting it down. In telling this parable, Jesus seemed to make it clear that the need for repentance is always balanced with an extra dose of mercy, that the connection between sinfulness and suffering is best seen not at the individual level but rather through a much larger lens, that the bad things that happen to us are clearly not a direct result of our sinfulness along the way and yet we need to change those things, too.

As much as Jesus tried to shift the crowd’s understanding of the impact of sinfulness on the tragedies of our world, so much of this mindset carries over to our world today. After every tragedy, some televangelist or street preacher or other similar eccentric will inevitably place the blame for this terrible event on some group of sinful people. But even beyond this, people closer in to these difficult situations get sucked in to a mindset that their errors make them personally responsible for such horrors.

In the recent looks back at the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster I mentioned earlier, NPR interviewed engineer Bob Ebeling, who worked for a NASA contractor at the time of the disaster. Ebeling and several of his colleagues had told NASA back in 1986 that it would not be safe to launch the shuttle that day, that the cold temperatures the night before the launch would render the o-ring seals in the rocket boosters ineffective and allow flammable gases to escape, resulting in a massive explosion, but higher-level management at their company and at NASA overruled their advice. On the day of the launch, they watched the launch and subsequent explosion unfold from their offices in Utah, and they immediately knew what an investigation would soon reveal about the cause of this disaster.

For 30 years, Ebeling felt deep pain and guilt for not doing more to stop the launch of Challenger. He told NPR last month, “I think that was one of the mistakes that God made. He shouldn’t have picked me for the job. But next time I talk to him, I’m gonna ask him, ‘Why me? You picked a loser.’” The record of this story is clear, though: Ebeling could not have stopped the launch himself. His superiors and NASA managers heard these warnings from the engineers’ lips, then ignored their safety recommendations. Still Ebeling carried guilt and grief over his role in this disaster—not all that unlike what was being expressed around Jesus about the victims of these tragedies in New Testament times.

Thankfully for Bob Ebeling, though, the anniversary of this terrible incident brought an outpouring of support for him. He had retired soon after the Challenger disaster and suffered from deep depression from this memory over the last 30 years, caught up in guilt and grief that he could have done more to prevent the death of those seven astronauts. When his current situation came to light, though, people started to reach out with words of support, insisting that his long-held feelings of guilt were misplaced and that he should not blame himself for this tragedy as he had.

He was only somewhat comforted, though. He appreciated these good, well-meaning words but insisted that he needed to hear something from NASA or his employer before he could shift his mindset. Soon he received a call from his boss at the time, a letter from a former NASA official who had argued with him at the time, and an official statement from the press spokesperson for the current NASA administrator. All of them insisted that Ebeling had spoken up with courage and done everything that he could to protect the safety of the astronauts, and his guilt and grief began to ease. NASA had changed dramatically in the 30 years since Challenger, and their recognition that problems could not be blamed on any one person and yet needed a real and systemic fix was an important reminder of the importance of the kind of change that repentance requires.

So often, repentance is not so much some sort of personally-focused cataloging of individual moral missteps but rather a deeper accounting of the ways in which we prop up systems and structures that get in the way of God’s intentions for the world. Bob Ebeling’s story reminds us that blame is an incredibly potent weapon, that Jesus’ insistence that sinfulness has consequences that may be far beyond our control sometimes doesn’t sink in very well in our lives, that systemic change comes only from the real examination not of personal flaws but rather of our participation in injustice.

So as we live in a world filled with plenty of tragedy and just as much sinfulness, may God guide us to this kind of repentance not so that we can insulate ourselves from the next disaster or overcome our guilt from the last one but so that we can be ready for God’s completion of the transformation of our world begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Politics, Religion, and Jesus

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a sermon on Psalm 27 and Luke 13:31-35
preached on February 21, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Jesus, Donald Trump, and Pope Francis walked into a bar, and a huge fight broke out. The bartender said, “When I saw them coming I thought this was a joke, but it sure seems to be real!”

With the events of the last week on the national stage, with Pope Francis suggesting that some of the policy ideas of Donald Trump are not consistent with Christian values and then Donald Trump suggesting that the pope ought not to question his Christianity and would wish that he was president when the Vatican gets attacked by ISIS, the collision of religion and politics seems to be more real than ever before—except than in the story of Jesus himself.

Our reading this morning from the gospel of Luke shows us one of the great examples of how Jesus got involved in both religion and politics in his own life and ministry. As he was teaching and healing in the villages of Judea and making his way to Jerusalem to proclaim his message there, Jesus was confronted by some Pharisees. The Pharisees had caused plenty of trouble for Jesus before, but this time they came to him with something of a warning about what Herod was up to: “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Now Herod was not a particularly powerful ruler—Rome ultimately exercised full authority over Judea and Palestine in those days, and they used puppets like Herod to give a false sense of some local control and influence in government. This Herod actually had even less power and authority than his father, that familiar figure from Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, who received the magi upon their arrival to celebrate the birth of the king of the Jews and then was so desperate to find and kill this newborn child that he killed all the boys under age two in the entire town of Bethlehem. While the Herod of Luke’s story certainly shared his father’s murderous disposition, the Romans did not allow him to use the title “king,” and he was clearly subordinate at every turn to the Roman authorities who were really in charge and didn’t seem quite so interested in getting rid of Jesus.

Still, the Pharisees bore this message from Herod to Jesus, but Jesus wanted nothing of it. He responded by inviting them to go back to “that fox” Herod and tell him that he would not get in the way of Jesus’ work. Herod’s threats would not pull Jesus away from “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow.” And their plotting and planning would not distract him from his journey to Jerusalem, for even if he was to suffer and die there, he would stand in a long line of prophets and others who had done exactly that.

In this brief encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus made it clear that he had not come to appease the religious leaders, prop up the political establishment, or even promote independence from Rome. His mission in the world was not to blindly identify with others’ agendas or support earthly governments—and in fact his actions along the way would quite likely challenge the powers that be at every turn. Instead, Jesus insisted that his was a mission of transformation and care, grounded in his work of healing and continued in his “gathering [Jerusalem’s] children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” Amid all the foxes of the world like Herod who sought to preserve their own power and position at the expense of the poor and outcast, Jesus set out to protect this brood who may have struggled from time to time but who were ultimately deeply loved by God and so deserved real and true protection from those who were out to exploit them, both spiritually and politically.

This incredible commitment of Jesus to stand against the powers that be and protect those who were left to fend for themselves was grounded in far more than just his own chutzpah. Navigating the journey that was ahead for him required far more than just an internal sense of doing what was right—it required a deep relationship with God that recognized how God would go with him along this difficult way. So I imagine Jesus carrying the words of Psalm 27 with him along this journey, grounding him in the tradition of his ancestors and supporting him as he faced the difficulties of the journey to the cross:

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?

The LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

In these words, the psalmist offers assurance to Jesus and to us that there is nothing to fear when we place our confidence and trust in the Lord. The trust and fearlessness that the psalmist proclaims here stands behind Jesus’ response to the Pharisees—and his journey to Jerusalem to face the powers of death.

Even as the words of Psalm 27 gave him confidence for his own journey, Jesus embodied the words of the psalmist in his mission of teaching, healing, and protecting God’s people from harm. So in the same way, we are called not just to enjoy this protection but to protect others along this way as well, embodying the kind of love and justice that Jesus offered in his ministry in our daily lives, caring for the people that Jesus set out to protect—the poor and outcast, those typically neglected—joining in what God is doing to stand up to the work of the powers that be in our world and make it clear that our human politics and institutional religion are no match for God’s great transformation.

Living out this sort of thing has never been easy, but I suspect it is about as difficult as it has ever been right now. We do not have to look very far or listen all that carefully to discover places where politics and religion are getting all mixed up in ways that make it clear that the kingdom of God is the last thing on our minds. Too many political candidates use religion as a tool to build support and momentum without recognizing that Jesus came to inaugurate a different way entirely, setting aside such confidence in human institutions and instead affirming the power of God to make all things new. Too many churches put their confidence in political solutions to the problems that we face, ignoring the real and important steps that we must take to bring about change and the ways that our religious institutions are themselves complicit in oppression and injustice. And too often politics and religion become those things that we refuse to discuss in polite company like the church, assuming that they will inevitably result in conflict when in fact they really do matter as we figure out how we will participate in God’s new creation that is taking hold in our world.

In this day and age, I completely understand the dual temptations that Christians have faced in politics and religion over the centuries. Too often our ancestors have thought that we could just fix everything if we made it all Christian, if everyone shared the same creed and everyone lived out their spirituality in the same way. And plenty of other ancestors in the faith have suggested that the better way would be to step out of the political world entirely, to let this world crumble to its inevitable end sooner rather than later so that we can take up the glorious perfection of the kingdom of God.

But neither of these temptations were good enough for Jesus. These were the easy way out, for they refused to engage the world as it really is, with all its religious and political complexity, for these are very much part of who we are as human beings created in the image of God. So when the world threatened to do him in, Jesus did not ignore these challenges but instead kept his focus on his mission, staying the course in his interactions with the religious and political authorities of his time, engaging the people in his prophetic teaching, touching them with healing for physical, emotional, and spiritual ills, doing his best to protect them from the evils that threatened them, and finally even offering his life so that the whole world could live in the new kingdom that he had announced even from the beginning of his ministry.

So when we are tempted to depart from joining in God’s new way, when we are afraid of the Herods and Pharisees of our world who threaten us with their sham authority, when we wonder how we can keep the faith amid the rocky world around us, when we get lost trying to sort out all the challenges of politics and religion in these days, when we lose sight of the call to participate in God’s new creation, may the witness of Christ give us confidence, and may the words of the psalmist give us hope, for the Lord is our light and our salvation and the strength of our life, and we have no reason to fear as we join in God’s work in Christ to make all things new. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Light on the Mountaintop

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a sermon on Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36
preached on February 7, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Transfiguration Sunday is one of my favorite days of the church year. It is one of those church holidays that will almost certainly never get taken over by commercialism, in part because different parts of the church celebrate it at different times! It brings us to a story that seems to be incredibly important in the three synoptic gospels and that carried over into the celebrations of the church for many centuries in art and life. And it takes us to a mountaintop to see incredible and amazing light, helping us to see our faith and our world more clearly as we enter the season of Lent.

Our two readings this morning offer us two visions of this very clarity of sight because of God’s light on the mountaintop. First we hear of Moses’ strange shining face after encountering God on the mountaintop. After receiving the law from God on top of the mountain, Moses came down to meet with the people. The people were taken aback when they saw Moses. His face was shining with great light as it reflected the glory of God after his encounter on the mountaintop, and they were surprised and afraid. They knew their God as a fearful and vengeful God, as one whose glory they could not glimpse, as one who knew them and their foibles and flaws all too well, and when they saw Moses’ face aglow with even the reflection of that glory, they wondered and worried what might be coming next for them.

But this was not what Moses intended. He came down from the mountain hoping to engage the people in what God had shared with him. He wanted them to get a glimpse of the glory he had seen so that they might understand God’s presence better in the everyday. In sharing the light of his face, he hoped that they would join him in reflecting the incredible glory of God that had led them out of Egypt and would guide them into the Promised Land. But Moses’ shining face after his encounter with God on the mountain ended up being an incredible distraction for the people, so he covered his face with a veil when he was speaking with the people because they just weren’t ready to experience this light from the mountaintop quite yet.

Our second unique encounter with God and light on a mountaintop comes in our reading from the gospel according to Luke, where we hear of the transfiguration of Jesus that gives this Sunday in our liturgical calendar its name. As he prepared to begin the journey toward Jerusalem that would result in his trial and execution, Jesus took three of his disciples with him up on the mountain to pray, and suddenly “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” In the midst of this strange moment, Jesus was joined by two men, immediately recognizable as Moses and Elijah, and together these three “were speaking of [Jesus’] departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

As this light broke on this mountaintop, though, Peter, James, and John were barely able to keep their eyes open. Even amid their exhaustion, their glimpse of this glorious sight led Peter to utter one of the most bumbled lines of the New Testament: “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

As Peter was fumbling for words and actions to hold onto this moment of glory rather than to share it, a cloud overshadowed them, leaving the disciples filled with fear and trembling all the more, especially as a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” After this voice, the visitors disappeared, leaving Jesus alone with the disciples on the mountain, the strange radiance of the moment quickly dissipating as they all returned to the plain, recognizing all the more clearly that Jesus would soon be turning his face toward Jerusalem.

These two moments of light on the mountaintop give us glimpses of God’s glory shining into our world in incredible and surprising ways, but they also give us insight into the ways that we respond to this glory breaking into our midst. In both of these stories, the witnesses to this transfiguring light are taken aback. With Moses, the people shrink back when they see his face aglow and demand that he keep it covered up, and with Jesus, the disciples just want to find a way to hold on to the moment so that they do not lose it.

It seems that whenever we come close to the light of God, whether it be on the mountaintop or in the valley, we end up cowering in fear, seeking to avoid it and run away or to capture it and control it to limit its real effect on our lives. I suspect that this fear and anxiety around this light of God on the mountaintop probably comes less from it blinding us or showing us too much of God’s glory. Instead, it may be that this light illuminates us for who we are, showing that we are not the people God has made us to be, that we are not the people we claim to be, that we are unwilling and therefore unable to reflect the light of God’s glory into our dark and weary world.

All this may be what makes the story of the transfiguration so difficult for us. As much as we want God to change things in our world, we are so very deeply hesitant to change ourselves. As much as we want light to shine into the darkness, the glimpse of glory that comes from this light on the mountaintop leaves us speechless and fearful as it illumines our lives more than we might like. And as much as we want God’s glory to shine in us, we see in these stories that the reflections of God’s glory that can come in us might also require us to recognize the glory of God in others around us, to set aside our assumptions, stereotypes, and fears, to see our fellow humans as equal bearers of God’s image, regardless of the color of their skin, the understanding they carry of their gender, the form of their religious practice, the identity of those they love, or any other human characteristic.

Yet in spite of our fear, God’s glory still breaks into our midst, beginning with these encounters of light on the mountaintop, slowly but surely extending even into the dark valleys where things seem to be hidden but light slowly breaks in. The light of God’s glory shines upon our world in ways beyond our understanding, peeking through the clouds of hatred and anger that seem to overshadow the hopeful and joyous light of our lives, sending hope and life even into places where these seem to be so far away. And by God’s mercy, the wondrous light of God reflected in Moses’ shining face and Jesus’ changed appearance is reflected in us, for even when we resist God’s call to bear this light into our lives and our world, God guides us to overcome our fears and break through our uncertainty so that we can reflect the wonder and hope of this glory into our world.

The light on the mountaintop shines far and wide. This light begins in these incredible and beautiful places, illuminating faces with tremendous glory, glowing with wonder and hope for our weary world. This light shines on us and reflects through us into our broken and fearful world, giving us hope for all the difficult journeys of our lives and guiding us through the challenges of the Lent that lies ahead. And this light opens the pathway for us, showing us that even the darkest pathways will lead us to light, for even Jesus’ journey through death ended with an empty tomb.

So may God shine this light on us on this mountaintop, at this table where we gain another glimpse of this glory, and in every place on our journey, so that we might reflect the wonder and hope of God’s new life each and every day of the coming Lenten journey and beyond, until the joy of the resurrection is real for all as the whole creation is made new in Christ Jesus our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A Body with a Purpose

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a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a and Luke 4:14-21
preached on January 31, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Since we didn’t have worship together here, what did you do last Sunday? Did you sleep in and enjoy the beautiful snowscape from the warmth of your bed or couch? Did you get up and start clearing your sidewalk or digging out your car, trying to get at least a few of those 26 inches of snow cleared away before having to venture out on Monday morning? Did you find an online devotional or streaming service where you could set aside even a little of the day for worship?

I myself actually did all three of these things, but beforehand I took advantage of our snow Sunday by watching soccer. Watching soccer is something of a surprising hobby for me—I only played one season of it as a child, and I spent about half of that season sidelined at home with chicken pox!—and I only picked up interest in it as an adult three or four years ago. But now I am a season ticket holder for the New York Red Bulls and I spend far too many hours sitting on my couch watching soccer, mostly from the United States and England. Before these last few years, I’ve not been much of a sports fan in general, only watching the major championships here and there and not really taking up support of any particular team along the way. But now I watch three or four games a week on average, and I’ve started to learn more about the different strategies that get played out along the way.

I’m particularly interested in how teams get put together, especially in the American Major League Soccer. Some of these teams are built around highly-paid star players, with supporting casts made up of those who can fill in the gaps without breaking the salary cap. Other teams bring in stars who have made a name for themselves in other parts of the world but are now a little—or a lot—past their prime, hoping that the wise presence of these veterans will rub off on the young guys who fill in the other nine or ten positions on the field. And other teams put together a roster of young unknowns who may not play quite so wisely or quite so perfectly but who come together as a team to build on one another’s strengths and fill in one another’s weaknesses.

The body of Christ, the church, operates in similar ways. While we are not quite a team in the traditional competitive sense, we are certainly a group of people with different gifts who come together for a common purpose, and each little corner of the body approaches its form in a different way. The apostle Paul makes this abundantly clear in our reading from 1 Corinthians this morning. Paul insists that we are one body—one body with many members who come together to be something more than we would be on our own; one body that belongs together, even when we think that we could do things better on our own; one body that benefits from the gifts that each one of us offers; one body that treats one another with honor and respect; and one body that goes wherever we may go together.

Paul’s image of the body of Christ is incredibly helpful for most people to understand how different people come together to be the church, as it invites us all to think about how we fit into the body of Christ. We are part of something larger than ourselves, and we can see this so clearly when this approach is before us. And we all have a part to play in the life of the church, whether it be as an arm, a toe, an eye, a stomach, or even a hangnail! Today is a great day to remember these things, for as we gather after worship today to do the work of our congregation in our annual meeting, as we elect officers and hear reports looking back and looking forward, we are reminded very, very well of the ways in which we all contribute to the life and work of this part of the body of Christ.

But when we our focus is on how the body of Christ comes together, as it is here, it is easy to miss the deeper call of what we do together. When we spend most of our time wondering how we fit into the body of Christ, we are thinking about the parts, not the whole. When we are focused on the very helpful and generous gifts of the individual arms and legs and hands that make up the body, we can easily miss the need for all these parts to work together for a common purpose. And when we miss the ways in which the different parts of the body are united into one, we forget that the gifts of the Spirit come upon us all—the hands, the feet, the arms, the eyes, and even the hangnails—to guide us as we join in God’s work in the world.

The words of Jesus himself in our reading from Luke this morning point us toward our common purpose as the body of Christ. As his continuing body on earth, we the church are called to fulfill the scripture once again, just as he did:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon [us],
because [God] has anointed [us]
to bring good news to the poor.
[God] has sent [us] to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

This week at our presbytery meeting, I think I got a better understanding of all these things than I have had in quite a while. On Tuesday, the presbytery approved the service of a ruling elder from the Church of Gethsemane in Brooklyn to broaden his ministry and perform the sacraments in this congregation and in their ministry in prison. This congregation does incredible ministry and mission among the incarcerated, and this elder who we commissioned on Tuesday began his connection with this church when he himself was in prison. Now there is a strong gospel command to share good news with those in prison, to visit those who are in jail, to care for those who are held captive in whatever way, but for a variety of reasons, this has not been a part of my own personal ministry. Yet on Tuesday, the body of Christ honored and supported one of its parts who is very much called to do this work. We laid hands on Chibueze and affirmed his call to be a part of our body, to witness to God’s presence in a place where it is all too often invisible. We recognized that not all of us have the gifts we need to do the kind of work that he does, and so we commissioned him to proclaim release to the captives, trusting that God would use our gifts in the body to support his gifts in the body, too. And we charged him to be the body of Christ in his work in ways that others of us are not gifted and called to do.

As we go into our annual meeting today, I invite you not just to think about the gifts that you bring to this little corner of the body of Christ on the corner of 149th Street and 15th Drive but also to wonder together about how the Spirit is upon us. How are we being anointed, together, to do the work that Jesus began and called us to continue? How is the Spirit leading us to proclaim release to the captives of our own time, to help people see in new ways where they have been blinded for so long and open the pathway of life to the oppressed? How is God working in our midst to help us to show that this is a season of the Lord’s favor, not of God’s condemnation? Thankfully we don’t have to do all these things ourselves—as the commissioning service at presbytery reminded me, not all of us are called to every important work of the church, and we as a congregation may not be called to do all of these things that are before us from Jesus’ proclamation—but we are most certainly called to use our individual gifts for the good of the whole body.

As we enter the second month of 2016, I feel that we are probably closer to this work than we have been in a long time, for in 2015 I saw a new sense of mission and outreach in our life together, with our focus on the Orange Campaign and Presbyterian mission in Madagascar taking center stage, and I am hopeful that this new year will see this work continue to grow. But as we do these things, how will each of us get involved? What will be your role in the body of Christ in this time? Will you be the legs that do the walking,  the arms and hands that do the writing or typing, the eyes that keep looking for other ways to get involved, the ears that listen to the voices of those who need help, the hangnail that keeps on reminding us that there is more to be done, or some other part of the body? It is much like the decision we each faced last Sunday: how will we spend the time that is before us? How will we worship and praise and serve God, each in our own way, yet joining together as best we can to do God’s work in this time and place?

So may God give us wisdom for our worship and work, so that together we may truly be the body of Christ, individually members of it, proclaiming the good news of God in word and in deed until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Speaking Up

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a sermon on Isaiah 62:1-5
preached on January 17, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent…”

These days, it feels like there are lots of people who are taking this word from the Lord very seriously! As we approach the presidential primaries this spring and the national elections this fall, candidates and pundits and regular people are speaking up constantly! But even beyond this moment, people are raising their voices more than ever before. Sometimes reading on Facebook or Twitter or other social media makes me wonder if some people ever have a thought that they do not say out loud! The comments section of many online news articles is even worse, as hate and vitriol pour forth unchecked. And the constant call all around us to speak up about one thing or another by posting on Facebook, signing a petition, writing a representative or senator, or even sending smoke signals just leaves me wondering if any words I choose to offer will ever be heard above the din of the world in these days.

The biggest issue about all this noise for me, though, is that it is so often about the wrong things. Who are those who refuse to keep silent speaking for? Are they raising their voices for themselves or for others? Are the issues being lifted up for the benefit of a few or the many? Are these people speaking up on behalf of the well-off or of the poor and downtrodden? So often in these days, those who refuse to keep silent are concerned only about themselves and not others. They so often seek the well-being of a few at the expense of the many. So many who speak up in these days seem to be working for the safety of those who are quite safe already while endangering those who have no way of protecting themselves.

While so many loud voices around us today are focused on self-preservation and permitting injustice, the prophet Isaiah here declares that God will raise God’s voice on behalf of those who might not otherwise be heard, of the people of Israel and Judah who were struggling to find their voice—and a way to raise it up—following their exile to Babylon. While many of the exiles had returned to their homeland, they could not forget the trauma that they had experienced. Their story was deeply and directly marked by the experience of their exiled refugee ancestors, and they were still suffering the effects of this experience. They may have been back home, with reconstruction of the buildings and institutions of their homeland taking place all around them, but they were still filled with the signs and markers of deep brokenness, of long-term defeat, and of a feeling of abandonment by God. And God may have offered them deep promises of comfort and hope for generations, but they still bore the scars of a people violated by siege and invasion that divided them from one another and from their God who had seemingly left them alone to suffer.

In response to all these things, the prophet offers the people the words of God in poetry that, as commentator Kathleen O’Connor describes it,

takes historical circumstances and transposes them into the small story of a couple and their household. The poetry moves between language about an ancient city and the life of a bride. It attends to and gathers up the suffering of generations by using imagery of a women cast off and abandoned. In ancient Israel such a woman faced life-threatening peril, because she could not survive without family to support and protect her. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

But God’s proclamation here makes it clear that such peril is not the last word for this woman—or for the people. God will speak up to make it clear to all the world that this woman—and these people—are not only protected but beloved and celebrated. God will make it clear that these whom others may deride as devoid of beauty and wonder “shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” God will transform these who once were desolate and forsaken into a joyous, hopeful, and beloved people. Amid all their conflicts, all their fears, all their uncertainties, all their as-yet-unfulfilled promises, God’s light will break forth in their midst, making it clear that they are beautiful, beloved, and special. All the harm that they have endured, all the dishonor that has been poured upon them, all the fear that has surrounded them—all these things will be vindicated as the world is shown that this harm, this dishonor, this fear is not the last word, for the glorious transformation of new life will shine brightly as God rejoices in these new things.

In our day and age, when there are so many who will not keep silent about the wrong things, when there are plenty of people who are attacked or left without support and protection, when there are so many in our midst who struggle to find a hopeful way to interact with one another, these words still echo loudly among us. These words are not so much addressed to us for ourselves—after all, if we are truly honest with ourselves, most of us are not the kind of downtrodden people God is addressing here—but rather these words are shared with us so that we might offer God’s love and light to those who might not otherwise know it. In our world, there are plenty of people who need to know that they are chosen and singled out and gifted as God’s beloved. As Kathleen O’Connor puts it so well,

Isaiah’s passage supports divine election not to buttress the contented, to uphold the secure, the confident, or the arrogant. Isaiah’s theology of election is rhetoric of immense power because it tells the poor, the second-class nation, the excluded and cast-off women of this world, that God takes immense delight in them. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

As God’s people, then, we are called to share this kind of new life and light with exactly these people—these who are dismissed by the world as “illegal” because they fled across human borders seeking hope for their families and themselves; these who are caught up in the violence of systemic racism and sexism and homophobia and religious preference because they do not look or act or believe like others; these who long for a safe place to escape violence against their bodies and spirits because they have been hurt in body, mind, and spirit by those who say that they love them; even these who find themselves mixed up in anxiety and fear over an uncertain future and so lash out against others who seem to be so different from them. We are called to remember that God’s care is first and foremost for those who are not cared for by the world—and that we join in God’s work when we reach out in mercy, grace, and love to make God’s presence real.

There is no better time to remember all these things and return to this pathway of hope and justice than on this weekend when we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. More than any other figure in our history, Dr. King embodied the fullness of these words in his life and work. He refused to keep silent and did not rest in his pursuit of the case of justice and righteousness for all of God’s people and especially for the downtrodden and excluded among us. He insisted that God’s vindication and glory would be revealed among those who had been cast down, that their lives would be “a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord.” And he made it clear that God delights in all people and will bring us all to a new day of equality, justice, and peace, fulfilling not just our national commitment to care for our people but our human responsibility to embrace the wonder of God’s love in ways beyond our immediate understanding and outside of our usual knowledge. Martin Luther King, Jr., insisted that we as a people could be more than we were and can be more than we are, carrying the potential of great wonder, hope, and restoration for ourselves and all the world, for God’s liberating glory invites us to shine God’s light into every dark and uncertain place.

So, my friends, it is time for us too to follow these prophets’ proclamation, to set aside our silence and to take up a new voice, to shine God’s vindication of the poor and outcast before all the nations to broadcast God’s salvation of the excluded and cast-off to the ends of the earth, to join the faithful saints of the ages who have shared this message of transformation and hope with our actions in solidarity with God and others so that it will be clear to us and the downtrodden and all the world that we are all God’s beloved and that we are called to celebrate all the ways that God rejoices in us and all our sisters and brothers until the whole creation is made new in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.