Sermon Series Title: How To Heal the World

Breathe Life | Coda to How to Heal the World

Last Sunday, we opened our pool.

Now make no mistake this is not a fancy in-ground pool.

This is a 4ft deep, above ground blow-up pool that I bought at Big Lots two summers ago for $150 –  so that my daughter who is a swimmer could stay sane and still swim (with a tether tied around her waist and anchored to a tree… I think she did that twice).

Anyway – it’s become over the past two summers a spot for my teenage son –  and his many, many teenage boy friends to congregate, to cool off.  Which mostly looks like them trying to drown each other, and do dangerous running flips into the pool. 

But there’s this one kid in the bunch, Sadon – who, when given the chance, will just float, quietly in the pool…for long, long periods of time!  This week my son Reed, was out of school with a high fever (for four of the five days) – but at some point in one of those afternoons I looked out the window and there was Sadon – alone in the pool, quiet, floating on his back, eyes closed. “JEEZ, Sadon!!”

And I went to run out back and say, “how long have you been here, child?!” “Do you want to say hi to Reed?”

But the Spirit of God nudged me to take a minute. And I watched him – wondering if he was breathing – because he was so still. But I watched his chest rise and fall – long steady, deep breaths, so at peace… his face still so animated, so full of life, so child-like, so alive.  Tears filled my eyes.

Realizing how much I had been holding my breath, how shallow my breath had been since the news of Uvalde, TX  … how much I had been holding my breath since the weekend before with Buffalo, California, and Dallas’ shootings…realizing how much I’ve been holding my breath over the past two years.  And just how long it’s been since I felt simultaneously that alive-full of breath, and that at peace – like Sadon.

So today – I’m going to invite us to wonder together,

“What would it be like to have Jesus breathe life into us?”

Into the spots of us that are so heartbroken,  fractured, splintered – weary.  And to press in with the Spirit of God to ask how this breath of God – could not only be a balm to the aching – but be the stirring of a resurrection of sorts. Where “new” life could be made. Where we could be animated enough to participate in the new creation, imagining new dreams, new ways of healing this world – when often it feels like this world relentlessly threatens to kick the wind out of us at every turn.

We technically ended our spring series of “Healing the World” last week – but I wanted to add some additional thoughts this week, a little Coda.. a little p.s. to that series. In a way that I hope can be some oxygen to our souls.

I want to talk about how God inspires all of us to be makers of this new creation, this beloved community. How we’ve been given by our great Maker – artistic and creative ways to heal this world – that are central, necessary and essential.  I’m going to highlight two artists to minister and inspire us –  a local artist by the name of Rob “ProBlak” Gibbs and also an international Japanese artist, Makoto Fujimara. Along with accompanying scripture – one from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament. 

Faith is the reality of what we hope for, the assurance of what we don’t see.  And our vision is to continue to create the kin-dom of God, which is not yet in full view. It will take all of us as makers to grasp that imagination and creativity is essential, central and necessary in this journey of faith… and essential to return to the breath of God so that we in turn can breathe this life and healing, into the world around us. 

Prayer: Spirit of God, could you breathe new life into us? Please, God – breathe new life into us. 

I’d love to start with Scripture, because the Bible itself is really a work of art.  

“The Bible is a collection of texts, not one text, written over fifteen hundred years, in three languages, and from very different political and cultural contexts and it records the dialogue between God and God’s people. It also records the dialogues among

God’s people. It is not meant to be a source by which people arrive at one right answer – for all people across all time.”  (Thanks, Steve Watson and David Gushee)

The Bible invites us to enter into the art of our faith – of story, and expression,  story-telling and the creative – breath-filled-Spirit-filled application to our present day lives, with poetry and song, and imagination!

All throughout scripture we are offered story after story of the makers and ancestors of our faith. 

  • Bezalel and Oholiab were two men who constructed the Ark of the Covenant-  tabernacle, the dwelling place of God. 
  • Miriam, who helped rescue Moses at the Nile River,  led the Hebrew women in singing, dancing, and playing drums after crossing the Red Sea.
  • Shiphrah and Puah were two Nubian midwives who creatively and subversively disobeyed Pharaoh’s command to kill the Israelite male newborns.
  • The eunuch as I mentioned last week, is one who makes a way for the follower of Jesus to be enlivened and stretched by the very message he himself hopes to give.
  • The fishermen, the textile workers, the ones who make salves for lepers sores. 

And on and on I could go – right? This is just a meager sampling of the abundance of makers that Scripture beholds. And all of them: 

  • Make way for more of God’s spirit to be encountered.
  • Make way for breathing more life into people, neighborhoods and beyond.

And you might think – well I can’t build a Tabernacle, or an ark – or sing or dance – or really have the energy for much of anything creative these days. Do you see these days? It’s chaos. Void of anything that looks like it could be shaped into something helpfully new. 

And I hear that – and I think we might be helped by starting at the beginning in Genesis:

1When God began to create the heavens and the earth—

2 the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters—

3 God said, “Let there be light.” And so light appeared.

4 God saw how good the light was. God separated the light from the darkness.

5 God named the light Day and the darkness Night. (Genesis 1: 1-5)

 The Scriptures open with a depiction of God breathing over cosmic chaos. We read it was formless, barren, and darkness was over the surface of the deep (noting that darkness isn’t a description of something evil, but rather of something absent), and yet God’s wind/ in other translations…

God’s “Spirit” sweeps and blankets the sea. The Hebrew word for Spirit is Ruach, which can also mean “Breath.”  So God’s breath, even before words are uttered, is the substance by which creation is brought into existence. 

It primes the canvas of our own lives.

And by faith the universe was created – by God so that the visible came into existence from the invisible. (Hebrews 11: 3)

And as we continue in Genesis: 

…the Lord God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life.  (Genesis 2:7 )

God places God’s breath within us.

God’s breath is the source and the sustenance of human life.

And here we have the unassuming template of how to create, of how to embrace our “maker-hood.”

  • A backdrop of chaos.
  • A lot of unworkable components.
  • And the breath of God.

((Deep breath))

This is big.. God is saying

“anything and everything around you”

is possible for this New creation as you and the breath of the God move together.

Well, I’d love to introduce you to a favorite local artist of mine, Rob Gibbs – his artist name is ProBlak – who inspires and ministers to me, and who has worked this template of creation to the T.

If you’ve been around for a little bit you know that historically we have annually taken a church-wide retreat – often to a seaside location that allows you to immediately sink into beauty and retreat.

Because of the pandemic we obviously couldn’t do that. So we created a “Retreat Into Your City” in 2020- an invitation to explore the beloved community that we inhabit.  And so we created an 80-page booklet of street art/public free accessible murals that are all over greater Boston/Cambridge/Somerville, complete with Visio Divina like spiritual practices that invited you to engage the Spirit of God, the breath of God as you toured the history, the stories, the life that is in the bones of our cities and neighborhoods – and also the legacy and vision that many of these artists have brought to life and have been doing so for a very very long time. 

“ProBlak” is featured in this booklet – he’s a Roxbury native and lives in Dorchester – he’s a street artist, walls are his canvas  – as much as the communities and the people that make them up. He’s been making, creating for the past 30 years. 

The thing about public street art is that it was always meant to be transgressive, healing and accessible for all. The canvas of our day-to-day dwelling places becomes the stage by which artists speak against injustices; gentrification, poverty, racism, and failures of the modern world structure.

It reminds me of the verse in Acts that says,

“God who made the world and everything in it  – doesn’t live in temples…” 

With the spirit of God, our streets, our buildings, our landscapes – speak to us.  And street art is a vessel by which many have found their voice, in a society that silences theirs. ProBlak says,

“we were empowered as street artists to make a mark on a world that was determined to forget us. We didn’t see ourselves in museums or galleries. But we saw ourselves represented on the walls of our city.”

ProBlak’s work is a part of restoration and mending and healing – but it also is creating something new as we engage with it.

ProBlak was commissioned about five years ago to create three works of art throughout Boston that became a series called, “Breathe Life”… 

I want to share all three of these pieces of work, and tell you a little bit about them. As well as a new one that is a work in progress (that you should go see!). 

The first one, “Breathe Life, 1” (2017) is located in Dorchester

More than just a title, Breathe Life is a philosophy, meant to share energy, and positivity, and lift-up images that reflect the community back to itself. ProBlak paints little Black boys and girls larger than life with love and power. In a world where Black children are brutalized by authorities in school, overly punished, and adultified, it’s important they see themselves cherished by their communities. (www.nowandthere.org/breathelife)

It’s important they be heard.

And so this is the backdrop of this mural. 

Breathe Life, 1

ProBlak said that, “The need to place positive messaging in the community is just more than standing on a soapbox...when I did “Breathe Life”, it was a calling. It came from me wanting to talk to people and suggesting, instead of downplaying something (an idea, a change in the community, a dream), suggesting

“how about you breathe life into it?”

So here’s a young boy breathing into a tiny house… Maybe it’s a picture of what if his dreams, wild ideas, his talents, what he touches could breathe life into his home… into his community – what kind of fantastical world could it create? And the conversation this produces with us, the viewers, is not a passive one. It’s asking us how we can empower, make space, and lift up ideas – this boy – his creativity.

Breathe Life, 2
Madison Park Technical Vocational School  – ProBlak’s alma mater… (2020) – Roxbury
The subject of the mural, a little Black girl with sneakers blowing bubbles.  

This mural holistically became a backdrop for the May protests in 2020, in Roxbury that erupted in response to the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.

“It wasn’t what I did,”

Gibbs says,

“but it’s what [the Spirit of God breathed life into],  it represented how everybody felt connected to it in those moments.”

This mural is visible for miles, most notably the nearby police headquarters station.

“At a time when my people cannot breathe, I’m asking us to always ‘Breathe Life.’ Writers and artists [and makers] – are more necessary than ever because we are able to get the message of anger, pain, and healing out with art,”

Gibbs said. (https://gregcookland.com/wonderland/2020/07/05/rob-gibbs-problak/)

Breathe Life, 3 – Roxbury 2019
To Gibbs, graffiti is a contemporary form of hieroglyphics, a timeless way to connect to the world, a way in which knowledge is shared, by telling – the art of –  communal stories.
(www.nowandthere.org/blog/2019/4/26/more-art-for-roxbury-with-problak)

“Breathe Life 3” highlights a girl, sporting two cosmic Afro puffs, sitting jubilantly on the shoulders of an older boy. Both have wide and infectious smiles. Together, their hands read “Breathe Life” in American Sign Language. The children don’t represent any particular children – but they represent the vast possibilities of youth and innocence.

In street art,

“you’re told that black is a color you should stay away from,”

Gibbs said.

“I’m using it in a different context. It’s not the absence of space. It’s to open up into a different universe.” (www.wbur.org/news/2019/06/05/rob-problak-gibbs-boston-now-and-there)

And we return full circle to the beginning where God utilized darkness to create. As Lisa Sharon Harper says it’s important to note that God does not obliterate the darkness; rather, God names it”- and creates light, light that gives it shape. This allows a whole universe to open up – and be filled.

All throughout the Old Testament we see the breath/the spirit of God be regarded as life – particularly in Job and the Psalms – but I want to mention the story in Ezekiel that I think is relevant to Rob Gibb’s work. 

In the story of Ezekiel we see how the breath of God calls to life, enlivens and animates where only death looks certain.  Ezekiel is brought to a valley of dry bones… and it says he

“looked and tendons and flesh appeared on them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them” (37:8).

The full animation of the lifeless bones occurs only when the breath of God flows within.

“So, he prophesied as God commanded, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet, in extraordinarily large company.”

The Spirit of God animates and enlivens us. 

Rob ProBlak Gibbs  has been prophesying for 30 years. I refer to him as a spiritual art-ivist. He’s been calling to life neighborhoods that have been regarded as destitute – and forgotten, people that have been unseen, unheard. He’s been trying to gather bones of communities and people – putting them back together .. mural by mural . . . encouragement by encouragement. 

His work is always for the greater call. The flourishing of a people and community.  He says that

“if you define community as the thing that you have in your heart, the thing that walks around with you, then the idea – the dreams you have expand and become more real.”

This seems apparent in his most recent work called “Breathe Life Together” – it’s a prophetic title. One not realized, yet. 

Breathe Life Together | Rose Kennedy Greenway

In the center of Boston – just outside of South Station, in the center of the financial district, the seaport, chinatown and Ink Block there is a square, called Dewey Square – it’s part of the Rose Kennedy Greenway…and there’s this large 76-foot tall Department of Transportation building right in the middle, that has over the last many years had a rotation, every 18 months of a new mural.
All of them have been international based artists. World-renowned, big artists.

Rob Gibbs is the first Black Boston-native artist to be commissioned and his new work is presently being made. 

I went down to the Greenway this past week for lunch, with a friend and neighbor. Hoping to catch him in the midst of painting – watching people create is so spiritual! Luckily ProBlak also wanted to break for lunch and he came down off the crane/bucket and we ended up talking for 30 minutes or so – about this work, his vision for Boston and his dreams for his daughter (of whom this mural is a rendering of). 

The mural centers a girl rising out of the grass, naturally and with true belonging. She faces the neighborhoods which root her community, surrounded by the inspiration and culture of generations that came before her.. This girl asks us to join the conversation about the past, present and future of our communities in Boston – reminding us what we can do together. (rosekennedygreenway.org)

As I was talking to ProBlak he said, you know if you break open the word, “Together” – by  syllable – you’ll notice it’s a calling…. “to-get-her”…. He said, Boston needs to-get-her, needs to know her, value her, uplift her …. To be able to breathe life together,

“As you can see she’s crouching in this mural… Can you imagine if she were to stand up? How extraordinarily large she would be? As tall as these skyscrapers.”

“So, he prophesied as God commanded, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet, in extraordinarily large company.” (Ezekiel 37:10)

How can we breathe life? How can we breathe life to empower our communities, enliven ourselves, this girl? Unto her full standing stature?

ProBlak makes murals for sure… but he also makes conversations on a deep and on a wide scale.  He makes the unseen, seen…  he makes an invisible force – like breath become visible.   Powerful. Animating. And healing. 

KINTSUGI ART’

Ok – let’s go back to my friend, Sadon in our pool.

When I finally went out to see Sadon the other day at the pool, I said “hey there – whatcha doing, how’s the water?” And he slowly opened his eyes – not startled at all – and he took a deep breath and said, “I’m making peace with my day.”

He wasn’t just floating – he was making.


Making peace with all that had occurred, acknowledging the parts that weren’t amazing. His overall disdain for school, his own sense of being unseen… the yucky school lunch…. And he just needed a moment to attend to the parts of him that were cracked, before he moved on with whatever was ahead.

How wise!  I mean really – think of all the things that are leaving you with cracks these days…

You know about six Sundays ago – we started off this series – with a participatory liturgy that bridged our Lenten season with this new one. 

And we offer these multi-sensory, participatory services twice a year to allow the artistry of who we are as makers to be the mode by which we experience any learning or  healing .

In these services there is a noticeable value on the economy of words and an emphasis on a multitude of inroads to encounter and experience the Spirit of God. We had gutters, loads of water, hundreds of pieces of tissue paper, gold strips, and Ruby Sales’ voice asking us “where does it hurt?” and “what is the balm you need and can offer?”  And we put out these components to see what could be created. So much of a participatory liturgy is ART –  is a risk, a guess, an experiment.  

 What we created were these six canvases on the walls of our Sanctuary. 

The blue shades of tissue paper named our cracks/ our pain/ our hurts… 

And the gold strips were inscribed with “words of balm”, that we had intuited by the Spirit of God. 

It hadn’t been in the intentional design of the framework of the liturgy but it was clear that these canvases represented the art tradition of Kintsugi.   

I want to end by talking about the artist Makoto Fujimura and this Japanese Kintsugi method. (author of Theology of Making, Art & Faith).

“In Japan one of the many honored cultural traditions is the tea ceremony. For centuries, there have been tea masters who perform them to visualize the invisible, as a spiritual and artistic practice. When precious tea bowls break, the families of tea masters will often keep the broken bowls for generations and later have them mended by artisans who use this lavish technique known as Kintsugi. Kintsugi masters mend tea bowls with Japanese lacquer and gold. A bowl mended with gold is more valuable than the original tea bowl was before it broke. The Kintsugi tradition ancient it goes back to the 16th-century — but Kintsugi also offers us a vision for our times in America.

By asking – what does it look like in a culture that’s actually just really broken?

The Japanese word Kin means “gold,” and Tsugi means “mend,” but Tsugi also means “to link the generations together.” (So much of ProBlak’s work does this as well.)

 I watched at the participatory liturgy as people scooped piles of wet tissue paper from the streams of water in the center of the room… Tissue paper that named all of the hurt, the broken pieces in us  – and carried them to these canvases… and tenderly placed the gold strips directly over the hurts.   I hadn’t imagined it – enacted like that – I thought people would lay the gold stripes side by side or a little haphazard – but it was as if “you,” as makers –  knew that attention to these sufferings, might somehow create something new – that was more tender, and more healing by going right to those hurts… 

Following his resurrection, Jesus came and stood among the fearful disciples. He said,

“Peace be with you.”

After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side -And Jesus said to them again,

“Peace be with you.”

And then he breathed on them and said,

“Receive the Holy Spirit.”

The Spirit of God breathes and creates new life. 

This feels unimaginable (in times of where we are so wounded)… the disciples earnest thoughts at that time could have been…

“BUT OUR GOD IS DEAD.” 

And today, we look around and see so much fracturing – division, threat, death… 

As makers we know that there will also be many who tell us that something is impossible, or something is impractical, or that we ought to do something pragmatic. But Makoto says,

“artists are border-stalkers — they imagine the world beyond, and invoke abundance in their midst, even when their resources look barren,”

even when our greatest resource – God – feels far, far away. (www.makotofujimura.com/writings/kintsugi-generation)

Makoto offered a 17th-century Kintsugi bowl to the students of Columbine — at the 20th anniversary of the tragedy… remembering also Nickel Mines, Virginia Tech and Newtown, and now I would imagine the 27 school shootings of this year, including Uvalde, TX.

He calls this generation at Columbine – a Kintsugi generation that had come together in their trauma and pain…where a new era formed –  a river of gold flowing out of the fissures. (www.abc.net.au/religion/kintsugi-and-columbines-makoto-fujimura/13286394)

Where these young survivors became leading voices of love and action and voice. Not “fixed”, not removed of grief  – but the wounds being a part of the new creation… 

 Jesus’s post-resurrection body has the nail marks which means that the fractures and and the trauma is carried into the new creation, where we are offered breath and light – and a way forward for healing.

Let us not forget that we are pinched of clay, that God’s breath enlivens us, animates us, and shines like gold through us to create new. So as we go about our days, may we remember that our lives are a work of art – a work in progress – but oh so powerful.

May you greet those who mourn, those who are persecuted and those who are poor in spirit  – and let the light shine through your cracks unto something new. Let your lives, your making – say,

“let there be….something more than what is seen,”

“let there be light…”

“let there be peace…”

An offering of something new in a divided time — a gesture of hope for those in despair.

God does not hold God’s breath.

God constantly breathes, constantly moves… guiding the spray can up the wall, your voice in conversation, the slight wiggle of the fingers just enough to stay afloat and find peace in a pool. 

Scripture begins with Creation and ends with a New Creation. Everywhere in between God has given us – the ones who have broken hearts, fissures of grief and fractures – our broken vessels – God’s given us the breath to create and make. May we do the Kintsugi work,  the art of resurrection each and every day. .. as we move about the walls and streets of our neighborhoods. 

Healing the World | Humility

About a year ago I came across a grass roots movement called “Healing Our City” – it is centered in Minneapolis, and had begun actually the summer before in May of 2020, as a response to the traumatic death and murder of George Floyd. 

In that year – this movement provided 30 Days of Silent Prayer in a physical tent in North Minneapolis. A month-long, African-American-led collaborative… conceived to add this vital spiritual element – to all the strategic thinking, policy proposals, and investments that were being considered at the time to address the multi-layers of trauma that were being experienced in this city. www.healingourcity.org/about2020prayertent

It was a shared public ritual where people of all faiths and good will came together throughout the day for 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silent prayer/meditation.  Over the course of 30 days, this prayer tent became a place to collectively grieve, to remain somehow – open to change, and pray for a new future.  

Last year – in 2021 (when I came across this),  this space evolved into a virtual space – where there was intentional daily prayer and meditation during the trial of Derek Chauvin. The city was humbly learning how not just to consider responding to tragedy, but how they might proactively create wholeness and live together in beloved community as people of goodwill… wherever they are and whoever they are.  They were pressing in to discover together how to heal.

The reflections and prayers were offered by leaders – mostly in the Minneapolis area – and some by folks who have given their lives to this fight of justice, like Ruby Sales and Don & Sondra Samuels, and others who are fresh, young powerful voices. Cole Arthur Riley (black liturgies), Krista Tippett – as well as Rabbis and Muslims and Buddhists, Hmong speakers, and Reverends, community organizers, teachers, writers, poets…  of all faiths, denominations, races, and orientations were part of this movement. Expansive and inclusive… and hinged on this notion of being together, not alone.

Led by the spirit to be alongside one another and “stay with it.”

There are over 90 of these daily prayers/reflections that you can view if you subscribe to their youtube channel, “Healing our city.” And what’s been most meaningful to me, as I’ve watched and rewatched so many of these only the thoughtfulness of each person’s presence and words – but it is the collective leaning to come together with humility and say, “where is God in all of this?” and “who is God to us?”. . .and “how does that help us mend our way forward?”  

How do we grow the Beloved Community?

How do we create the kin-dom of God? 

How do we whole-heartedly proclaim “all shall be well?”   

How do these sentiments not just hang out as abstractions, but become tangible/practical ways by which we live, ways to keep healing? And how do we keep that at the forefront of our minds and in our hearts… as we move about our world, in our communities, and love Jesus? 

That’s exactly what we have been talking about in this spring mini-series, called How to Heal the World. It’s in some part a daunting title, and an inspiring title – and an all together TIMELY and timeless title. As you may have noticed… this title doesn’t have a question mark at the end. It’s not “How to Heal the World?” It’s How to Heal the World .. Period. It’s a statement – a prophetic statement perhaps – and a given at the center of our faith – at the center of our lives, as followers of Jesus.

It is the work we are called to be part of.

Healing.

Mending.

Repair.

Therein lies a lot of questions… 

How will we create these tents of healing? Whether they are physical like Minneapolis. .. or metaphorical in some way?

How will we participate and partner with God for the healing of the world?
How will we humbly come alongside one another to learn, to unlearn, to change, to believe for that which we can not see – but only imagine? 

How will we allow our faith to do what faith is intended to do – to expand, adapt, flex and be the force that it can be … of good and repair.

The author and feminist, bell hooks said in her book All About Love – that

“rarely any of us are healed in isolation. Healing is an act of communion.” (215) 

I think these folks in Minneapolis know what they are doing.. To talk to one another , regard it as prayer. To hold the one whose voices, lives, and beings are most oppressed – in view, with love…. Because love that participates in justice is the way to wholeness and healing.

Today we are going to talk about the value of humility and the reality of  power. And these questions,

“Who is God to us? Where is God ?”

.. as we take a look at the story of Philip and the Eunuch from Acts and see how it might help expand how we find our way into the ongoing call to Heal the World. 

 PRAYER

Thank you Jesus for this day. Let us be glad for the opportunity to be “more today ….than we were yesterday.” Thank you for the spirit of God that nudges us into greater spaces of learning – inside of ourselves and for the wellness of the world around us.  For those of us who are tired today, who are grieving today – give us rest, let our souls find comfort in your presence – that asks of us nothing, and yet provides us everything.

SCRIPTURE:

*Credit fnor this translation and many of the thoughts to follow to Pádraig o’Tuama. May 2, 2021, YouTube.

Oe of the reflections that was offered last year by this “Healing Our City” movement was by Padraig O’Tuama – an Irish poet-theologian, a scholar,  who has spent years working at the intersection of power, conflict and healing.

He also presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios, which is situated in Minneapolis.  I consider Padraig a friend, we shared a bit of whisky in a pub in Ballyvaughan, Ireland (which seems as good friend-making material as any). Padraig hasn’t officially weighed in on the status of our relationship – but we talked a little bit about liturgy, story and leadership  – which I hope in his view is the stuff of friendship as well… 

Anyway – he offered some thoughts on the passage we are going to read together, some thoughts about healing particularly.  And some thoughts about the “healing” of Philip – as much as I have ascribed to the eunuch.

Let’s read together.

Acts 8:26 – 40 (Common English Bible)

26 An angel from the Lord spoke to Philip, “At noon, take[a] the road that leads from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a desert road.)

27 So he did. Meanwhile, an Ethiopian man was on his way home from Jerusalem, where he had come to worship. He was a eunuch and an official responsible for the entire treasury of Candace. (Candace is the title given to the Ethiopian queen.)

28 He was reading the prophet Isaiah while sitting in his carriage.

29 The Spirit told Philip, “Approach this carriage and stay with it.”

30 Running up to the carriage, Philip heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you really understand what you are reading?”

31 The man replied, “Without someone to guide me, how could I?” Then he invited Philip to climb up and sit with him.

32 This was the passage of scripture he was reading:

Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter

    and like a lamb before its shearer is silent

    so he didn’t open his mouth.

33 In his humiliation justice was taken away from him.

    Who can tell the story of his descendants

        because his life was taken from the earth?[b]

34 The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, about whom does the prophet say this? Is he talking about himself or someone else?”

35 Starting with that passage, Philip proclaimed the good news about Jesus to him.

36 As they went down the road, they came to some water.

37 The eunuch said, “Look! Water! What would keep me from being baptized?”[c]

38 He ordered that the carriage halt. Both Philip and the eunuch went down to the water, where Philip baptized him. 

Now Philip is a follower of Jesus. He, like many followers of Jesus, has left Jerusalem as the early church is taking shape in Acts.


There is much persecution that is happening in and around Jerusalem – and the “good news of Jesus” is meant to be taken beyond Jerusalem, to Judea, and to Samaria, and to all the ends of the earth.

So Philip ends up traveling north  to Samaria.  Home to the Samaritans. He moves in and lives there – despite historical deep lines of division and hate between Samaritans and Jewish people. Philip shares the love and goodness of Jesus, and with the Holy Spirit the people of Samaria listen and many of them get baptized.

He loves God and loves others, even his enemies, and he brings the good news of Jesus wherever he goes.

And so most of these stories go. The spread of the “Good news,” you move into an area where no one has heard such a Jesus message.. And you spread it, you deliver this important message.

It’s how the stories went for me as a kid – a young one learning about God.  I absorbed that one of the primary duties – as a follower of Jesus –  was to bring the “message” of God to other people. We had missionaries that would come to our church and share slideshows and stories about the travels that they had taken.

Converting, saving, the wayward from a life of certain demise.  Our church’s name was Wayside Church – so we really went for the “wayward” language a lot to differentiate ourselves .. “us”, the sure/the certain/the right/ the powerful (on the inside).. From “them” –  the ones (on the outside) who were lost.

Padraig says, that’s often as far as an interpretation of a scripture like this story of the eunuch and Philip would go… Philip is out for a walk, comes alongside a carriage – hears a man reading from the scriptures.  Philip is the one with a message that can help…

“Do you know what you are reading?” “Oh you don’t – let me hop in and tell you.”

And the conversation that ensues – Padraig says – is on the grounds of a “converting conversation”.  

And it is no more original than the missionary stories I heard growing up – the ones that were heroic and doing the real work of Jesus –  saving lives, counting them – “one, two, three, ten , a whole family, a village… “  I’d pray and pray – and cry in secret, “God please don’t send me anywhere I don’t want to do this … 

Somewhere I knew that this way of “messaging” the good news – was one that offered no humility, no freedom, no choice… it was a message meant to convert (with power over – not a transformation of the heart), heavy with an agenda – it had an end goal.  And the tenor was, “You need to accept this message- by force or friendship – and this of course as Padraig says, over time has  affected “culture, language, politics, land, families, relationships, livelihoods…”

So Padraig offers that perhaps this is not what this story is about. It’s not about Philip going and saving the eunuch, this Ethiopian man… Perhaps instead, this story is about healing – he says –  a kind of healing that goes to the roots.

When Philip gets into the carriage – and as the standard story would go – the eunuch is the one that is healed. Philip is praised for his effective discipleship, his messaging of the good news. .. a good student of Jesus.

And it makes sense to think the Ethiopian man is the one that needs the saving/ the help/ the good news – he’s a,eunuch, he was likely castrated at a young age, likely against his will.. and made “other” in gender, and body and regarded as a sexual minority.

He’s also a high up official in Candace’s – the queen of Ethiopia’s court. He’s come to Jerusalem (likely a two month ordeal) to worship, and yet he arrives at the temple and is not permitted to enter. 

  • In the law of Moses – Deuteronomy 23:1 – it says

  • “no one emasculated by crushing or cutting can enter the assembly of the Lord.”

  • He’s rejected, excluded – the message that has greeted him is that

  • “he is forbidden to join the family of God.”

  • And it seems kind, and obvious – to offer a different message – one about Jesus.

And yet, the scripture that this Ethiopian man is reading is about a Lamb – who also has had a blade held to its body… 

And the Ethiopian man asks Philip,

“about whom is this text speaking?” Is the prophet talking about himself or someone else?”

He asks, “Is the prophet talking about someone like me?”

Padraig says it’s

“all well and good to talk about sacrificial lambs when you are thinking abstractly.”

Here though Philip is being converted as he is brought face to face with a person – who when in their own body has been brought close to a weapon. Where a weapon has been pressed against their body.

Philip here – is being invited to rethink what he thinks he’s talking about.

When I met my *now* husband Scott – I had been away from the church of my youth for a bit.. But the way of thinking about God, and faith that my church had defined for me – was not far from me.

This would become evident in our endless conversations about faith and spirituality. Scott, an agnostic at the time, would press me on my “positions” and issues and “platforms” that I backed always by some great zinger as it related to truth. He was always bringing in a story or a name of a person and would ask,

“well how does this person’s story fit into your thinking? Or what would you say to this person if they were here?”

Bringing my beliefs from the abstract into the concrete.. human lives.  And again and again I would be invited by Scott’s inquiry to rethink what I thought I was talking about.  And he’d always say,

“and who is God to you, Ivy?”

The eunuch here is attempting to infuse faith with encounter. With a face. Asking Philip how does this scripture that you’ve read, that you know – translate as you see it in the flesh? In human form?  Here I am:

“a sheep led to slaughter” 

“A person humiliated and mocked for being different”  

 “a person with no descendants”

“Where is God?” “Who is God to you, Philip?” “What do you think about who God should be to me?”

He invites Philip to go back and look at his faith before it becomes reduced to a system of abstractions and beliefs. Maybe asking Philip, “How can you stretch your faith to be a series of stories and as a series of encounters. How can you value me, my story  – this encounter with me… as much as being “right” about what you’ve learned about God or faith or scripture.  

“This Ethiopian man is not in need of any conversion. But Philip – this early missionary, most definitely is.” (PO’T)

Padraig says,

“The Ethiopian man was not the one that was saved that day. He was fine as he was – reading, thinking, asking questions – pursuing his own curiosity and intelligence and interests..”

The person that was saved – was the person who’s imagination was in need of expansion – Philip – the follower of Jesus – perhaps the one that thought he had the message – or even more dangerously thought that he “was the message.”

Philip goes back with a message – the message wasn’t about this Ethiopian man – the message was about his understanding about what POWER was – b/c he had been converted and healed into a better understanding of power, justice, inclusion, equality , equity.” (PO’T)

So here we can witness that Philip – the person who thought that they had the message to give, was the one that most needed the message themselves.

It can seem mostly harmless to tell this story as Philip is being praised for engaging with this Ethiopian man.  But when we nestle our understanding of scripture through the lens of a colonialist mindset  – one that values power, control, domination, conversion as a sign of spiritual status, or holiness… We injure, we harm, we erase story, people. . . lives.  

Healthy faith is always humble about its own holiness and knowledge. It knows that it does not know. 

It knows that Jesus sat with people at tables, in storms, in fields, at their feet, in temples and streets, at gates and in grief, in birth and unto death..Jesus’ message is to be with, to share , to be alongside – not OVER. 

A healthy faith is what the eunuch saves Philip u/into – into a non-conquering, non-fearful faith – a humble faith.  A faith that reminds us that power is demonstrated in the capacity to learn and to adapt and to see and take in WHO is in front of you.  To enter the prayer tent, or chariot of another… (upon invitation)… especially those that we have othered.. And listen, “repent,” act differently … this is the healing here in this scripture. 

A healing of the arrogance of entitled posture – and an invitation to a posture of humility and repentance and awareness of your own limitations… of how much we have to learn (and unlearn) – and how much harm has been done in imagining and ACTING as though we are right.

How much we have to learn even when we think we’ve gotten scripture “right”

How much we have to learn, even when we think we know all there is to know about another’s story – where we think we’ve gotten individual people and groups of people “right.” Knowing what’s good for them. Defining who God is for them.

How much we have to learn when we think we’ve gotten God right. 

If we try to claim it. If we say we understand it. If we try to own it. Control it. If we declare “Power” because of it… Then IT. IS. NOT. GOD. (riff on St. Augustine of Hippo). 

And this is the importance I think of imagining that Philip is the one healed here. Because it gives all of us followers of Jesus a chance to see that humility is a way forward, humility is a way to heal the disrepair that has been rippling through Christianity, our society, our world. It is not a value by which we become doormats, or silent, or apathetic – but it is an essential component by which we keep the face of the other, and thereby the face of God in view.

We’ve got to constantly remind ourselves what we do not know. 

Instead of clinging to certitudes on every side of every question – could we enter into conversations with humbleness, curiosity, an openness to unlearn – to listen. We don’t know exactly how Philip responded to the Eunuch’s question of “who is this scripture about a lamb being slaughtered?” But we can imagine that it provoked an  internal movement for Philip from,  “oh wait -this could be you.. To this IS you.” The word became flesh indeed. 

And maybe then Philip explains some of how he’s understood scripture, of who God has been to him… speaks of his own experience of faith, of what he’s challenged by or inspired by…

We can gather that something stirred in Philip because the Ethiopian man says – here’s some water – “what’s to stop me from being baptized?”

And if Philip had stuck to the law – much like the Ethiopian man’s temple experience – there would have been a lot that would have prevented him from being baptized.   

But perhaps Philip knew then the power of being more loving than “more right.”

Perhaps the law he had also read many times, came to life in him – where it says, “to the eunuchs I will give a name that will not be cut off… a name that will last from generation to generation.” (Isaiah 56:4)  Maybe Philip wanted to be part of that healing, that mending a way forward… the naming of a nameless man… as a child of God, as he comes up from the water.

The good news of God embodied, and carried onward-  living in generations to come.

“The message of the Hebrew scriptures has always been about the evolution of a more just world. The dismantling of power – where power has defined what law/order looks like – and as Padraig says, “what “right” and rights looks like.” 

Here at Reservoir humility is one of our core values. .. . we not only acknowledge but we are wholeheartedly committed to pursuing the truth of Jesus through multiple sources, including scripture, reason, culture, and experience, and we take the posture of learners, recognizing that our understanding of God’s truth continues to unfold. .. as we evolve, change and grow.

Recognizing that our “knowing” of God is only that we can not fully “know” God. 

And our best shot at knowing anything of God is by staying in connection with one another. It is by running alongside the chariot, the honored space of another’s story… and as the Holy Spirit says to Philip in this text, “STAYING WITH IT”….running for as long as we have to… listening as best we can – and maybe somewhere along that journey being invited in… 

A world without humility is rife with arrogance, inflated pride, ego, unchecked power, uninspected motives, hearts that harden… law that becomes stone. 

Scripture that becomes weapons… 

Scripture that is held against people’s bodies, cutting off their rights to be fully human.

This is the history of whiteness – in our country.

Twisted and wrapped around faith.. 

Obsessed with “rightness” – over right relationships with one another & God.

Obsessed with domination over humanity.

It doesn’t just wound.

It harms.

It destroys.

It erases all that makes us human – our stories, our voice, our hearts, our face – 

Without humility – we continue to live in a world of abstraction.

Without humility –  our world does not heal.

And this is frustrating and dangerous. 

Just in the last couple of weeks I have heard two stories of people being excommunicated from their communities of faith… over gender equality and LGBTQIA inclusion … here and now. 

In greater Boston.

Their rejection. 

Their grief.

Their disorientations are not abstractions.

It is here  – in the absence of humility – where the breeding ground of violence really takes off, if power is threatened. And maybe that’s why Padraig’s take on this scripture and Philip being the one that is healed is so moving to me – because it calls into view the work so many of us as white Christians, still have to do – and continues to showcase how violence can overtake and become extreme when the roots of our faith, our country, ourselves are not uprooted and examined – and untwisted from the legacy of white supremacy.

On Friday of last week, in Dallas – three Korean women were shot in a hate-motivated gun shooting.

Those three human beings are not abstractions.

On Sunday last week one person was shot and killed, and five were injured – at a Presbyterian Church in Orange County.

Those six people are not abstractions.

On Saturday of last week, in Buffalo – 10 Black people were shot and killed in a racist hate-motivated gun shooting.

Aaron Salter

Katherine Massey

Celestine Chaney

Roberta Drury

Pearly Young

Ruth Whitfield

Heyward Patterson

Margus D. Morrison

Andrew Mackneil

Geraldine Talley

Were not abstractions.

Humility is a way to digest the message of God – it is a way to embody God, it will take our constant conversion (moment by moment heart transformation), but may be a potent way forward in healing our world.  These folks in Minneapolis, “Healing Our City”, inspire me to keep the faces of those in our midst in view – the ones who have weapons drawn against their bodies, the ones who have for centuries been led like sheep to the slaughter –  and erect wherever we can tents for grief, change and action. 

And may our faith be this tent too – held up by humility, and an unwavering commitment to collective healing.

In Proverbs 22:4 it says,

‘The reward for humility and loving God, is riches and honor and LIFE’ 

may it be so. 

An effort to mend and heal:

In what areas of either learning/or unlearning do you feel like the spirit is calling you to “stay with it?”  What does this look like on a practical level for you? Whose companionship might you need? What resources could you use?

 Amen.

The Role of Church in Healing the World

I was listening to Ken Fong’s podcast, Asian America, last week and the interview that grabbed me the most was with Scott Okamoto. He’s a writer, a fly fisher, English professor, charming, articulate guy, and an ex-Christian, a former churchgoer.

He wrote this essay once called “The Road Taken – Sex and Waffles Triumph Over Church.” Because he’d been part of a church scene that seemed kind of rigid and controlling and self-indulgent, and then another that was powerful but where he felt like he’d never belong and then another that was nice but kind of boring.

And eventually, he was like: What I am doing going to church on Sunday, when I could spend my morning eating waffles and having sex instead?

Fair question? 

He admitted later that the notion he had about his new Sunday mornings was more aspirational than reality. I mean take church out of life, and you’re still left with obligations, debts, chores, anxieties that occupy most people, most days. 

But he was like keeping church didn’t really add any value, so why bother? 

For decades, of course, more and more people have felt this way. For lots of reasons, church engagement peaked in the 1950s in this country, and it’s been on the decline ever since, more and more rapidly in recent years. And then a global pandemic comes our way and radically changes our instincts and our habits for how we gather with others, especially outside our immediate circles, which has always been at the heart of churchgoing. 

So what’s next? Why be part of church? What’s the value proposition? 

And for a church like ours, founded for people who might not otherwise choose church, called we feel to innovate in our tradition to adapt to the times we live in, how do we hold a hopeful vision of the future of our church and future of our faith when so many expressions of Christianity are driving people away from the faith, and so many forces make churchgoing less and less appealing?

OK, that’s a lot of questions. We might not get to all of them today, but I figured as part of our How to Heal the World series, we ought to talk about the role that the church still has in healing our lives and offering help and repair to our world. I think if we focus on those things, we can even help heal the institution of church a little bit too, at least in the parts of it we touch. 

Let’s listen to some words from Jesus that take us there. These are from the fourth chapter of Mark’s memoirs of Jesus’ life, when Jesus is explaining why he teaches the way he does and what he’s up to in general. It goes like this:

Mark 4:26-32 (New Revised Standard Version)

26 He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground

27 and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

28 The earth produces of itself first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head.

29 But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle because the harvest has come.”

30 He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?

31 It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth,

32 yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

Jesus is talking about what he called the Kingdom of God, that place of love and equity and justice, that beloved community of right relationships with God and one another that Jesus envisions for us. 

Now Jesus’ beloved community is of course more than just the church. But if church can’t seek to embody more of Jesus’ vision of this community, we don’t have much to offer. Put another way, churches have rarely gone wrong when we’ve sought to be a beautiful expression of beloved community, of Kingdom of God. Jesus’ vision is still compelling, even if it’s couched in pretty earthy, old stories about seeds and plants.

I want to use the word remember today to talk about the healing proposition of church. I’ll use it in two senses, which I know I’ve done before here.

Remember in the usual sense of calling to mind things that we could too easily forget but need to know.

But also remember as in re-member, putting back together what is detached, disconnected, or scattered.

Because I think Jesus points us to remembering and re-membering as beautiful purposes of the beloved community. 

First, the remembering. 

Something I love about Jesus, which goes beyond today’s passage I read, is how much he really saw people. I love the times when Jesus meets a stranger and calls them son or daughter. It happens several times in the gospels. It makes me think it was kind of a habit of Jesus, to look into the face of a friend or a distant acquaintance or even a stranger, and see a relative of the human family, and not be shy to say that. 

Now and then I’ve made this habit my own. You’ve probably noticed that I call you all friends, no matter how much we know each other, because that’s how I see you. And in an aspirational way, it’s how I see the human family, like the Quakers do, as friends or at least potential friends. 

I’ve found myself doing this with strangers some over the years too, although for whatever reason only with other men. It hasn’t been a real thought out thing, but now and then and a little bit more over the years, when I’ve spoken with a man who’s a stranger to me, I’ll call him brother. 

Like: hey, brother, how’s it going? Or: take it easy, brother, that kind of thing. This has caused some heated debate with one person in my household, who’s been like Dad, knock it off, stop trying to sound like you’re Black. 

And when I first heard that, I was kind of shocked. But I guess with my slight Boston accent, sometimes the Brother comes out more like brothah, and now I have a kid who accuses me of cultural appropriation.

So maybe you can help me decide here? Steve calling stranger men “brother” – sharing friendship with all humanity, or obnoxious cultural appropriation?

Anyway, that’s been a thing that’s been going on with me. It’s felt good, or at least it used to. 

Apart from this little bit of language, though, Jesus just really saw people’s real selves. He loved kids, famously so, encouraging their ease and comfort around him, enjoying everything that is curious and energetic and heartfelt about kids. He had an eye for people who were sick and injured, and time and curiosity and gentleness about how and why that might be so.

Sometimes he saw people so well that he seemed strangely insightful about their lives, such that some in our tradition think he pulled out these cosmic god-powers now and then to know secrets that were humanly impossible to know.

But I’m not so sure. I think mostly Jesus was incredibly present and observant. He really saw people, because he believed so much in the meaning and mattering of every life. 

I’ve been getting to know a retired pastor recently who’s been a great picture of this to me. Time kind of slows down when I’m around him, because he’s just never in a hurry. It’s pretty great. He doesn’t call me “brother,” I guess that’s my schtick.

But he tells me things like: I’m so honored to see you, when I’m thinking, I don’t know, I thought the honor was mine, but he shows me that he means it too. I always leave my time talking to him feeling seen, known, connected, like a sibling, like a friend. And that feels incredibly good.

Jesus even shows a lot of insight into the ordinary drama and toils of our working lives. Most of his parables, the little stories he tells like today, take place at work, or amidst family relationships and ordinary household tasks – farming, baking, construction sites, sibling dramas, and all. 

Like today’s story about the farmer casting seeds, and about the mystery of all that we can’t control in agriculture, or in any kind of growth, and the kind of persistence and patience and care it takes to grow things.

Yesterday I preached a different version of this sermon at another church, where their senior minister was being officially installed, and I took the farmer spreading seed here to be the work of a pastor and the work of a church to share the good news word of God with others. That’s how the first half of today’s scripture is often read. 

But today I read the farmer as Jesus, as Jesus spreading seeds of good news with everyone he meets, just scattering his greetings of “son” and “daughter” with anyone that has time for him, sharing his attention and insight with whoever will listen, knowing that sometimes that will do profound good for people and sometimes they’ll blow him off and move on. 

Because I think we stay in church friends, because it’s the best place to have Jesus call us “son”, “daughter,” “sister”, “brother,” friend. It’s just about the best place to keep hearing Jesus speak to us, to have habits of worship and practice that make it more likely we’ll hear God calling our name, and showing us how much we matter to God. 

This is after all something that is a core organizing principle of Jesus’ vision of Beloved Community – the meaning and mattering of all people, that we are all image bearers of God. 

I’ve shared with you before that of all the Christian creeds out there, one of my favorites is one developed by a church that used to meet in Atlanta that would say every week when they worshiped,

“God matters to me; I matter to me; you matter to me; and we all matter to God.” 

“God matters to me; I matter to me; you matter to me; and we all matter to God.” 

You don’t have to, of course, but if you want, you can say that along with me, see what it feels like. Try if you want. 

“God matters to me; I matter to me; you matter to me; and we all matter to God.” 

I don’t know about you, but that still surprised me a little when I say it, but it feels good. It rings true. 

When church goes right, there are so many ways it helps us remember this. We read and teach scripture that reminds us how much we matter to God. We take communion, which tells us that God has shared God’s whole life with us – we matter to God – and that we are now called the Body of Christ – we matter to God, and we matter to each other. We are connected to each other. 

We proclaim and encourage the practice of the faith built upon the two great commands – love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

God, and not just any God, but a vision of a loving, beautiful, wise, and kind God, calls out for our attention and love. God matters to us.

And right along with that, love your neighbor as yourself. Without exception. Friend, neighbor, stranger, enemy, young, old, like to you, different – we matter to God, and we matter to each other. And we are worthy of one another’s love. 

In a transient, commodified world, we need more places where we’ll be called son, daughter, child, sister, brother, friend, where the sacred mattering of our lives will again and again be affirmed. 

And we need more places where we’ll be called, encouraged, invited to treat each other that way as well.

So that’s the seed that Jesus is sewing, the constant listening to invitations from Jesus, as we call it in our church membership covenant, including the invitation Jesus is always giving to remembering just how much all our lives and world matter.

But let’s go the re-membering, the connecting and putting together again for good used. And that has to do with the mustard seed. 

I used to think that these parables were about big things that start small. Big trees from little seeds, big harvests from scattered seeds. And so big churches, big works of justice, big stories of redemption are possible for us, even if today, we seem small. After all, in my memory, the parable of the mustard seed was always about the smallest of seeds becoming the largest of plants. 

But then once I tried Googling what a mustard tree actually looks like and, oh, the truth is sometimes a disappointing thing. I thought: oh, it’s not a tree at all. It’s a shrubbery, a bush. And it’s not that big either. 

In fact, these mustard plants are kind of scraggly, homely. I read too that mustard shrubs have kind of a slow or sluggish growth rate. It’s not like they’ll be enormous and beautiful if you just wait long enough. Not going to happen. How disappointing.

If Jesus wanted to talk about big and beautiful things, he had other options, like the famed cedars of Lebanon. Now those are big and beautiful trees. But he didn’t. He asked: with what can I compare the beloved community of God? I know, it’s like the mustard seed, that becomes that funky looking mustard shrubbery. That’s what it’s like.

Our church was kind of obsessed with “big” in our early days. In our early days, our church dreamed of being one of those cedars of Lebanon. We had attracted a ton of people in the late 90s, grown just really fast, doubling in size every year for a while. And our vision was that we’d have many different sites for our church across greater Boston, attracting thousands and thousands of people every week, basically being the biggest church in Greater Boston. And our dreams were to be the greatest church for this and the greatest church for that. 

Very early in my time as pastor, though, I felt like we should let that go, that maybe that was fine for a season in our giddy, early start up days, but that it was more important to be some other kind of beautiful than big and beautiful. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant back then, but maybe now I think: oh, all churches are called to a mustard shrub kind of beautiful. 

Not dominant or imposing, for sure. Churches always go down a really bad track when we try to be dominant or imposing or impressive, whether that be American Chrisitans obsessed with political control and power or whether that be churches that are always making it their business to be a kind of moral cop for their community, telling everyone exactly how to live their lives, like God has appointed the churches or maybe at least their pastors to be moral judge over one another. 

None of that has ever made the church or the good news of God more beautiful. It’s driven people out to their Sunday mornings of sex and waffles, or at least their lives without church, instead. 

I think Jesus points us toward a different relationship with our surroundings, not one of power and control, but one of blessing, help, and renewal.

Look at the mustard bush after all.

I love that in Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed, he doesn’t even focus on the fruit of the mustard at all. Maybe because they didn’t have hot dogs yet, I don’t know.

But the fruit of this shrubbery that Jesus prizes and encourages here isn’t the fruit at all, it’s the shade. 

Jesus says that when the mustard seed grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs and puts forth large branches, then the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

Grace and I, and my kids and mother-in-law, all live on this tiny urban lot across the river from here. And Grace with the micro-bit of land we’re on, Grace has shown all this care over the years as a gardener, spreading seed and growing beautiful things.

And last summer, in this tiny rectangular patch of dirt and bushes, and mulch and flowers, two birds made their home for the season. Yeah, a pair of doves made it their home base. I don’t know if they were mating or not – we never found a nest or any eggs, but morning after morning, they were sitting around that little patch of earth, waddling here and there a bit, cooing for one another and anyone else who’d listen, before they’d fly around or do whatever else it was they did during the day.

And friends, it was the most beautiful and sweet feeling to see them day after day and think, will you look at that? We’ve made – well, 98% Grace really – has made a home for them in the shade.

Jesus is like: this is what it means to be my followers, to live in this experience he calls the family, or the kingdom, or the commonwealth of God, what we’ve been calling the Beloved Community.

It’s to live and grow in ways that make home for others in your shade. To live and grow together, re-membered to one another, in ways that provide blessing and help and encouragement and renewal to the broader world. 

I’ve loved the ways I’ve been seeing you all doing this, friends. It brings me no greater joy or pride as a pastor than when I hear about the ways your church involvement is shaping you for good and blessing and renewal in the world.

Just this past week, one of you was able to share excerpts of the sermon on anger and contempt with your team at work, because the themes were so resonant with the work you are doing. Reservoir longs to empower us all toward joyful, purposeful living in our work, whatever it is, and we hope that our teaching and your life in our community encourage you in your vocation and profession.

Another one of you heard last week’s sermon on the good news of reparations and told me about the important work around race, equity, and repair and that the sermon was timely and helpful. 

Another one of you reached out to me for prayer about the racism in the division you work in, asking for help to not be dehumanized or crushed by that, for prayer that God would change these dynamics, and for strength and wisdom to be part of that change.

I hear stories about how Jesus’ vision of the beloved community is helping some of you be kinder, more engaged parents, friends, and neighbors, how for others of you, it encourages you to try to disrupt whole industries of our economy for greater justice and flourishing.

For all these stories, my heart always sings out: Yes! This is so good.

Because this is us partnering with God in growing the mustard bushes of the beloved community. Often modest, slow growing, but in their own way beautiful offerings of mercy and justice to a broken world in need of repair. 

Friends, this I believe, is the future of church in our times. It’s not about how big we are. It’s not about how many people show up on any particular Sunday in any particular sanctuary either. 

Nope, it’s about a community, a collective of people having seed scattered in our minds and hearts, about remembering again and again that we matter to God, we matter to one another, we matter to ourselves, and God matters to us.

And it’s about a collective of people living in Jesus’ vision of Beloved Community, inspired, renewed, and strengthened to offer our time and talents to the world in the service of its blessing, mending, repair, and healing.

Friends at Reservoir, this is happening already in your midst. Be encouraged. Stay on the journey together. 

Because sex and waffles and all the other glories of life are awesome, but this magic thing that Jesus is growing in church, we need this too.

The Good News Opportunity of Reparations

The other day I was at my kids’ high school and I went into the office of a program director where I saw some calligraphy on the wall that was made by my old mentor, Bak Fun Wong. It was a reminder of what an influential educator he was locally, certainly very influential to me. I see signs of him everywhere.

Bak Fun was my boss for nine years. He gave me the opportunity to teach and helped shape a really unique, beautiful school in which to learn that craft and to learn about leadership too. 

A few years into my work with Bak Fun, when I was taking on some new responsibilities in the school and starting my path toward becoming a principal, I took a road trip with him and a couple other members of our team to a school in New York City we were observing and learning from.

And on the ride home, as we cruised along the highway, I asked Bak Fun:

You’ve had a profound influence on so many people. What is your leadership secret?

Bak Fun thought for a moment, and then he said-

Sure. I can tell you. Leaders don’t make a mess. That’s level one leadership. And level two is that leaders clean up the mess they make.

And then he stopped.

And I thought: That’s it? Don’t make a mess. Clean up your mess. There’s some tension there. And it sounds like etiquette in the lunchroom, not leadership wisdom. When it comes to talking, I’m kind of a maximalist. I’m trying to learn how to preach like 20 minute sermons rather than half hour ones or more, for instance, and it’s not easy for me.

Bak Fun, though, was more of a minimalist. He’d choose his words carefully, but say things you’d keep thinking and wondering about later, not unlike Jesus actually. 

So I was used to these moments like this, but still, I asked:

Is that all? 

And after a minute, Bak Fun said,

No, there’s a level three leadership too, which is that leaders clean up other people’s messes.

And he turned away. That was it. 

Don’t make a mess.

Clean up your mess.

And clean up other people’s messes.

That’s leadership. Or maybe that’s responsible moral living in the world. Or maybe that’s part of the point of being a spiritual or religious person in the world.

The faith tradition that Reservoir is part of, the Christian tradition, is known for a lot of other things. When people have been polled in recent years about what comes to mind when they think of Christians, they often answer: judgemental, and hypocritical. 

And I get it. A lot of Christians have tried to take what they see as the moral high ground on a few issues, without any curiosity about how other people, even other Christians, might have good reason to see things differently. And this happens without backing up that  aggressive moralism with loving, kind action that makes communities better, that cleans up messes rather than making them. 

Well, we at Reservoir and others are trying to center the very opposite approach. To grow lives of faith in inclusive, diverse communities where we are humble and open about our dogma, but where we are deeply committed to healing and repair in the world. 

Part of Reservoir’s beloved community vision is to empower wholeness, love, and justice in our lives and in the communities where we live and work, so that our expression of the Christian faith will be beautiful, and so that it will promote genuine flourishing.

We want to be people that try not to make messes, and that clean up our own mess when we make them. And maybe we can even go level three and try to clean up other people’s messes a little too.

One of the words in our cultural and political discourse for this cleaning up of messes is the word reparations.

And that’s the topic of today’s sermon: the good news opportunity of reparations.

We’re going to read a gospel text from the life of Jesus through the lens of reparations. 

And then we’re going to try to paint a picture of reparations on a personal, an institutional, and a national level. Then we’ll close with a couple really practical ways we can live the teaching, if we’re so compelled.

Here’s the text. It’s called the story of the rich young ruler, from the gospel of Luke. It goes like this:

Luke 18:18-27 (Common English Bible)

18 A certain ruler asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to obtain eternal life?”

19 Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except the one God.

20 You know the commandments: Don’t commit adultery. Don’t murder. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Honor your father and mother.”

21 Then the ruler said, “I’ve kept all of these things since I was a boy.”

22 When Jesus heard this, he said, “There’s one more thing. Sell everything you own and distribute the money to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven. And come, follow me.”

23 When he heard these words, the man became sad because he was extremely rich.

24 When Jesus saw this, he said, “It’s very hard for the wealthy to enter God’s kingdom!

25 It’s easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s kingdom.”

26 Those who heard this said, “Then who can be saved?”

27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible for humans is possible for God.”

I’ve struggled with this passage over the years. One person I used to study the Bible with in my 20s talked about the wiggle room we all try to create with Jesus. Because Jesus says and does so many provocative things, and it’s easy to try to wiggle out of our discomfort with him. 

Like here. Jesus asks this potential student if he’s been living God’s commands because to do what God says is to have life. It’s good to say yes to God. And this young adult is like, yes, since I was a kid, I have been doing all these things. And Jesus doesn’t dispute that. That’s interesting. 

But Jesus had been very specific with his words. He quoted the second half of the 10 commandments, the ones that in other places he summed up by saying:

God’s command is to love your neighbor as yourself.

And he left out the first half entirely, the first half which he summarized:

Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

So, if you’re following me here, when Jesus is like, you still lack one thing, he’s saying:

You may love your neighbor, but your path to loving God is to sell all your stuff and give it to those who are poor. 

And you can see what the guy is like: Seriously? What kind of rabbi, pastor, imam whatever is like: I’ll know you really love God when you sell all your stuff.

Maybe a cult leader? 

It’s hard to hear from Jesus.

So we wiggle. 

The most common interpretation of this passage I’ve heard is that:

Oh, well, if you love your money, if you put too much trust in your own wealth and resources so that you can’t trust God, then God’s going to want you to let go of your stuff so you can love God. And Jesus must have known that this young executive, or bureaucrat, or whoever he was, was one of these people. 

Which is ridiculous. 

Because one, what wealthy person – and by wealthy I mean me and most of us in this room who live in America at nowhere near the poverty line – how many of us hear this story and are like:

Fine, Jesus, you’ve got me, I’m the greedy, money-loving, too-attached-to-my-possessions person you’re speaking to. I’ll sell it all. You’ve got me. 

With some beautiful exceptions, people don’t do that. We wiggle. We’re like, whoever Jesus is talking to, it’s not me. He’s talking about the millionaires, or if you’re a millionaire, which many people are these days, you think, oh, he’s talking about the billionaires, or if you’re a billionaire, you think Jesus is just talking to the greedy, obnoxious, godless ones who are out trying to be Twitter.

Also, Jesus generalizes with his disciples right after the guy walks away. Jesus looks at his students and he’s like:

I get it, it’s next to impossible for the wealthy to follow me. Wealthy people have a hard time living in the beloved community, like as hard as getting a camel through the eye of a needle.

I’ve heard some weirdo wiggle room theories about Jesus couldn’t have possibly meant what he said here too. But he said it. Elsewhere he said

You cannot love God and money. 

Spoiler alert. I can’t tell you exactly what Jesus meant, either here or anywhere else. Not my place. After all, Jesus said he wasn’t trying to be understood so much as followed. Jesus wasn’t looking for anyone to fully get him, he wants to get under our skin, to delight and intrigue and to spook and to woo and to compel us out of our slumber into connection with a living God and out of our death into abundant life! 

So when Jesus seems hard to you, don’t make up some easy way to close the book. Sit with the discomfort, trust that a loving God has life for you in Jesus’ words, hang in and don’t just walk away.

Alright back to this teaching. This winter, I heard the best teaching I ever heard on this passage, so simple and obvious and true to my mind that I can’t believe I’d never heard it before. 

It was a reflection by Chris Hoklotubbe, who’s a professor of religion and who is also a Chocktaw. And Hoklotubbe, reading this passage through Native American eyes, is like: Oh, this is a passage about land and about reparations. He points out that all wealth comes from land, but that this was especially direct in the ancient world.

In Jesus’ culture, if you were rich – especially if you were young and rich like this person – then you were either an emperor or something, or you’d inherited a bunch of land. And with that land, you could collect rents, and trade olive oil, and stuff like that. And the way people collected a bunch of land was usually that people with capital would make high interest loans to poor farmers, and when they couldn’t pay back their loans, you’d take their land. 

So Jesus, and everyone around him, would look at this young guy, rich in land, and know that he’d inherited land that was gotten at other’s expense. 

It’s not his fault, he’s young, he didn’t do it, his daddy did, or his grandparents, or the generation before them, but Jesus looks at him and says:

You can love God by making things whole.

It’s not just about this one person’s heart, it’s about a whole community in disrepair, a community where most people don’t own land and resources, and this one owns a lot, and the injustice of previous generations made that possible. 

And Jesus doesn’t blame him, but he invites him into love. Jesus doesn’t say it’s his fault, but he does invite him to consider his responsibility to do justice. Jesus says: love God, by making things whole. 

And on that day, it’s too much for him. He walks away. 

How do we not walk away, friends, when Jesus comes calling for us to walk in the ways of love and justice? How do we be people who know that it’s right to clean up the messes we’ve made, and it’s loving and just and right to clean up other people’s messes, especially when we’ve inherited them?

Or hey, let’s say the mess has been made on us and our ancestors. How do we be people who know that we deserve repair, that we are worthy of being made whole? 

How can we all embrace reparations as part of the good news of Jesus? 

I’ve read experts on this, I’ve talked to experts on this. But I am not an expert.We also don’t have a lot of time, so I can’t answer the question entirely, but let me share a couple bits of what I’m learning.

Personally. 

Years ago, when I was a principal, I started looking at the data at the time on the risks and hardships some LGBTQ youth were experiencing – rates of depression and bullying and other harm. And I was sobered and sad, but not shocked because I remembered my own youth and how brutal we all were about sometimes about difference, and how unsafe it was to be different in your sexual identity or orientation. And I thought, along with members of our faculty and student leaders and other administrators, we have got to make our school safer, less homophobic, a better place for the flourishing of our LGBTQ youth. 

And it was clear to me that this was a must and that if anyone objected, we were just going to say your personal viewpoints are not what is at stake here, but the health and welfare of our youth. 

And this was probably especially important to me because of the time and place I grew up in, where we called all kinds of people and things gay, and we were all utterly homophobic. The only childhood friends I knew who came out did so after they had grown up and moved on, because there was no way that environment, the one I was part of, was safe for that.

And in my early years as a Christian following Jesus, in my teens through my 20s, the form of the faith I knew taught that you could love LGBTQ folks like anyone else, but the expectation was they would keep that locked up inside, because the expression of their love and sexuality was disordered, not God’s best, all that. Now I’ve moved beyond those ways of thinking, those ways of reading the scriptures. But I was once part of them, and they’ve been dominant in the past, and in many places still in the present. So it may not be my fault, but I have a responsibility. 

So for me, being part of work to make a school safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ people, or being part of work to make the church safer and more affirming for the experiences of LGBTQ people isn’t some special kindness, it’s a form of reparations, of cleaning up of messes made. 

Which effects how you do things, by the way. 

At my school, for instance, it was suggested that a particular organization, led by LGBTQ people, conduct training for our faculty and workshops for our students. And to be honest, I didn’t agree with all of the views or tactics of this organization, but I’ve been taught that when you’re making reparations, part of what is required is giving up control. You don’t get to call the shots anymore for the person or group that has been harmed and deserving of repair. It’s their hour of agency.

This has continued in my life in this area, in looking at where our family giving goes, at how we make our church a better place, and in other areas, and for me, healing and repair in my relationships and the church’s relationship to LGBTQ people has consistently meant listening to and learning from the voices of LGBTQ people and seeking to make a holy yes to using my life to try to do make repair, to love God by making things a little more whole. 

OK, that’s very personal. And I focused on this for a reason, because most of the repair we do is personal. It’s about making amends and repairing when we’ve hurt someone, and about doing things in our finances and jobs and communities to see legacies and dynamics that are broken, and to act to make things whole. 

But when it comes to reparations, this isn’t mostly what we talk about. Reparations mostly comes up because of growing movements in our times to ask how it is our country can repair the damage done by centuries of race-based discrimination and violence, particularly toward Black Americans. 

And to be honest, I used to think – like most Americans – this was impossible. I’m a citizen of a nation built on injustice, built with the hands and bodies of unpaid Black Americans, built literally on top of the blood of Native Americans.

How could any of this ever be made whole? How can there ever be repair? Maybe it’s best to forget and move on.

But one, that’s a super-white thing to say and two, didn’t Jesus say what is impossible for humans is possible for God.

Why bother worshiping God, why bother following Jesus if we’re not going to invest our time and hope and love in impossible things.

You know, swing big with God or go home.

What is impossible for humans is possible with God.

And there are some exciting things going on in the arena or reparations and repair.

There was just the release of the big Harvard report, about their wealth and their ties to slavery and to centuries of discrimination, and about what they’re going to do about it. And sure, the $100 million involved might not be nearly enough, but it’s a $100 million dollars more than yesterday, right? It’s a move forward.  

And there are some exciting national conversations going on about what reparations can look like for the centuries of violence and inequities toward Black Americans in our country. Inch by inch, we’re getting closer to serious proposals being considered. And those conversations are happening locally too. Looking at Boston’s present day segregation and wealth inequities, and how we got here, and what we’re going to do about it. 

A good friend of mine has been working for King Boston, who’s been taking the lead on local conversations about reparations and becoming a more racially just and inclusive, and equitable city. There’s a great series of conversations and events happening next month on this front called Embrace Ideas Festival.

I don’t know how we’ll be made whole in this country, friends. The violence and the wrong are all so old and deep and persistent. But what’s impossible with humans is possible with God. We live in hope. So it’s worth our time to invest in hope too. 

So what do we do? 

Well, first the institutional. Leaders don’t walk away from messes. They clean them up, whether they personally made them or not. And followers of Jesus, when we here talk about reparations, ought to lead with love and curiosity, not defensiveness or dismissiveness. 

So whether it be in national politics or with a company or institution you’re part of, when reparations come up, or questions about discrimination or inequity, past or presnet, and how to make things right, I strongly encourage you to not start with questions like “who deserves what?” and “what will it cost?” Those are common questions people start with, and common ways of zero sum thinking where we assume that if one person wins, someone else has got to lose, and why should I lose if it’s not my fault?

And maybe that’s where the rich young ruler started too – like why should I have to give up my wealth based off something my ancestors did? Doesn’t Jesus know how hard I’ve worked in my life to treat people right? 

But when it comes to communities that are in disrepair, who deserves what? And what will it cost? Are bad starting questions. Better starting questions would be:

How do I enter the kingdom of God?

What does love look like?

What will bring about beloved community?

What will make us whole?

We may or may not be at fault for the inequities – many of the race-based – in our country, but we all bear a responsibility, and if we’re part of historically privileged, and historically oppressing communities, we bear extra responsibility, just as if we’re part of historically underprivileged and historically oppressed communities, we deserve repair. We deserve amends. 

And personally, when we realize we’ve done wrong, whenever we have occasion to say sorry, let’s do two other things, every time. 

  1. Let’s tell the truth about what happened. Because without the truth, it’s hard for us to be set free – either the person who hurt or the person who was hurt. So tell the truth. 
  2. And two, when you say sorry, offer a way to make things right, to make amends. Or if you really can’t think of any way at all, ask the other person if there is anything you can do to make things better because they deserve that and that is the least you can do. 

When we do that, we don’t need to hang our heads and go away sad anymore. We can be made whole with our neighbors, and we can know that Jesus is proud of the love he sees in our hearts as well.

What to Do with People You Can’t Stand

So, I was talking with a friend of mine a while back and he said, “So, you’re a pastor, can I ask you for advice about this thing going on?” and I said: Sure. I can’t promise I’ll have any great advice, but sure.

And he says: Well, I have a brother, and we’re very different. We don’t live too far away but we don’t see each other often either. Anyway, we had this really hard conversation the other week, and I’m not sure what to do about it. So I asked: What happened?

And he told me that his brother believes in a lot of conspiracy theories, mostly about politics but lots of other things too, and one of the things was that his brother had a lot of theories about the government and the COVID vaccines and the whole pandemic too. And they had kind of mocked him the past couple of years whenever he took any COVID precautions.

But his brother had reached out because his wife and him had both gotten COVID and one of them actually got very sick. And they missed some work and had some medical bills and were in a bind, and they were asking my friend for some favors to help them out. 

And my friend told me he was really torn, because he helps his brother out all the time, but part of him felt that his brother and sister in law got what they deserved this time, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to come to their rescue. Maybe they had to learn a lesson or something.

So he told his brother: Listen, I’m sorry, I can’t help you out this time.

And his brother got really angry with him. He yelled at him, told him he was an awful person, swore at him, including one bit I’m not going to quote here but just say that it was hate speech, totally degrading. And then my friend’s brother hung up on him.

And my friend asked me: So, did I do the right thing in not helping him out? And what should I do next?

And I thought to myself as I usually do: I have no idea. I mean: who am I to know?

So I just said: Did your brother really call you those things? And he said: Yeah, it’s OK, though, I’m used to it. And I said: No, it’s not OK. I’m so sorry you heard your brother speak to you that way. I’m so sorry you had to hear that from your own family.

And my friend said thanks and then said these words that really struck me. He said,

You know, Steve, I’m just so angry with my brother, not just for how he acted in that phone call, but for the person he’s become. I’m so angry. And I feel kind of disgusted by him too, like I just have contempt for the kind of person he is. 

And so I said:

Well, I don’t know if you’re right or not to not help him out. It certainly sounds fair that you didn’t. I mean you’re not obligated to. And I don’t know what you should do next either, but is it OK if I make an observation?

And my friend said:

Yeah, of course.

So I said to him:

If I were you, I’d stick with the anger you feel. I’d be angry too. And maybe the anger will teach you something, or the anger will give you some energy for whatever you want to do next. I’d roll with that anger for now. But the part of you that feels disgust or contempt, like it’s hard to even see your brother like a person anymore, I’d be careful with that. I’d try to kind of separate that from the anger, and see if you can let that part go.

And we talked a little more about what that might look like, and as we did so, I learned, or relearned, so much from that distinction. My friend, with all his emotional intelligence, had noticed that he felt anger for his brother, but he also felt this other thing on top of the anger. He felt disgust or contempt, like he wasn’t just mad at this brother but looked down on him as worthless, as detestable, scum, trash, whatever. 

And those aren’t the same thing. One of those – anger – has the chance to be productive – to teach us about our fears or the harm we’re facing, or to help us make changes or make boundaries to protect ourselves. But the other – contempt – doesn’t add anything good to us or our relationships. Contempt is a kind of armor that doesn’t protect or heal. It just makes us proud and smug and rather than building boundaries that protect, it just estranges and eliminates, and it brings shame – none of which heal anything in us or them or really do any good at all.

Today we’re talking about people we can’t stand and about the difference between anger and contempt, and how to lean into one and not the other.

It’s part of a little spring mini-series we’ve called How to Heal the World about mending and repair, about leaning into the Christian notion of salvation for ourselves and our world in really practical ways. 

I want to go next to some really famous words from Jesus on this subject. These words are often read or quoted, but still rarely applied. They’re from this famous collection of teachings of Jesus on how to live, called the Sermon on the Mount.

They go like this.

Matthew 7:1-5 (Common English Bible)

1 “Don’t judge, so that you won’t be judged.

2 You’ll receive the same judgment you give. Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.

3 Why do you see the splinter that’s in your brother’s or sister’s eye, but don’t notice the log in your own eye?

4 How can you say to your brother or sister, ‘Let me take the splinter out of your eye,’ when there’s a log in your eye?

5 You deceive yourself! First take the log out of your eye, and then you’ll see clearly to take the splinter out of your brother’s or sister’s eye.

Jesus says that in general,

What you put out into the world tends to be what comes back to you.

If you’re friendly, cheerful, kind in your disposition to others, you are more likely to draw that kind of attitude back toward yourself.

Treat people with judgment, criticism, and contempt, and you are likely to elicit that kind of thing in them as well. Look at my friend’s brother – in his frustration and shame, he wasn’t just angry, he yelled and swore and hurled hate speech at my friend. And the first thing my friend felt back was contempt and judgment of his own. 

We can live by grace, or we can live by judgment. 

We can cut people down, or we can be healers. But we can’t be both.

You know, I think our resistance to this teaching of Jesus, our troubles with contempt, are most obvious in our public life. 

SNL had this sketch a couple months back about three couples out for dinner trying to talk about the COVID pandemic. And even though broadly speaking they had similar views, took similar precautions, the joke of the sketch was that they just couldn’t have the conversation. It was just too tense, there were too many landmines.

Say the wrong thing, even wonder out loud with the wrong question, and you’ll be held in contempt like you’re a science-hating, pandemic causing fool. I remember feeling this contempt in myself once inside this Dunkin Donuts. There was an indoor mask mandate in my community, and I went into Dunkin, and I was paying attention to who was wearing their mask, and who wasn’t, and was wearing it kind of hanging down below the nose, or below the mouth, or you know, below the chin.

And at the time, I was feeling tense, like I don’t want to be in this store, I think I’ll wait outside while they make my coffee. But honestly, I was thinking about who was doing what with their masks and writing stories in my head about why some of them were as thoughtless or careless or ignorant as I felt they were. And I thought: these are bad people here. In just a few seconds, my fear had metastasized in me into judgment and contempt. 

Toward the end of the skit on SNL, when people are sharing their true feelings, there’s this laugh line when someone says: To be honest, when an anti-vaxxer gets Covid, I feel happy! 

And someone’s like: No you don’t. But the joke’s there because the feeling is. 

We’ve seen this kind of contempt writ large in our politics. Our last president seemed to hold everyone but himself and his fans in contempt. His words sometimes were just a stream of mocking takedowns, schoolyard bullying kinds of lies and mean, cheap insults again and again. 

He’d realized early in his campaign that fear and contempt can rally people to action. One of the most effective ways to mobilize and aggressive “us” is to find a set of enemies we can call “them” and make them out to be as scary and stupid and contemptable as possible. 

But it wasn’t just him, right? His opponent in 2016 had that fundraising speech that went viral where she said you could put Trump’s supporters in two baskets, one basket of people who are worthy of compassion or pity maybe, and another basket of people she called the “basket of deplorables.” The homophobes, the xenophobes, the misogynists, and the racists. 

And I mean, at some level, I get it. Homophobic behavior, racist action and all that are cancers. 

But how many people have been shamed into changing? Who has ever said to their judge:

Thank you for showing me how contemptible I am. Now I’ll do better. 

No one wants to be put in a basket. 

Whatever you deal out will be dealt out to you.

Contempt is the curse that keeps on cursing. It only pushes more shame and more contempt into the world.

This gets us in our private lives too. 

The past couple years I’ve had a couple important relationships in my life that have really gone south, that have just gotten much, much harder. They were perfect before, but they’re damaged now. For various reasons, though, these are people I don’t want to just walk away from. I want to stay in their lives, and they in mine. 

But it’s been hard work. 

With one of these people, I endured just a string of criticisms from them, in interaction after interaction. And most of them seemed baseless to me, really unfair. But one of them struck home, spoke to a way I’d really hurt them. And I thought: it’d be fair for me to apologize for that, it’d be right to do so. 

So I wrote this apology letter, and I showed it to a person I trust for feedback before I sent it. And they were like 80% of the letter is really great.

But that bit in the beginning where you say you have a lot of reason to be angry with them, and they’ve really done you wrong, but there’s this one thing you want to apologize for, so here we go… Why do you need to keep that bit in there? What’s that doing for you?

And I was like, well, it’s the truth. I want to apologize but I want them to know they’re wrong too, that really, they’re mostly wrong. 

And my friend said maybe so, but if you leave that in, what do you think they’ll remember about this letter, what will be their takeaway. And I thought: oh, it won’t be the apology anymore, it’ll be my contempt for them. Like you’re awful, by the way, but oh, yeah, I have this one thing to apologize for. And I thought: that’s not the kind of person I want to be.

So I cut that part out. It hurt my pride a little bit to do so. But I cut it out. And I’m glad I did. 

The Bible’s got this other line that I think builds on Jesus’ teaching on judgment and contempt. It’s from this little letter to the Ephesians, where the author is talking to a community of faith about how to follow Jesus, how to be people of grace, people who can love each other and get along together, even amongst differences. And at one point it says:

Ephesians 4:26-27 (Common English Bible)

26 Be angry without sinning. Don’t let the sun set on your anger.

27 Don’t provide an opportunity for the devil.

So anger is not sin, because you can be angry without sinning. But in our anger, dangers can arise. We can make room for the devil, the satan, the accuser.  

Early in our marriage, Grace and I tried to take this teaching very rigidly. Like most of the too rigid ideas we had together, I’m pretty sure this was my fault. But we had this idea, or I had this idea I foisted on to us, that it was critical that if we had any anger toward one another, if we had any unresolved conflict, we had to make peace, we had to resolve it thoroughly before we went to bed. 

After all, the scriptures say:

Don’t let the sun set on your anger. 

I never realized, come to think of it, that the words actually talk about the sunset, not going to bed. It’s weird how even our most rigid ideas we think come from the Bible aren’t actually there. I was convinced this principle – don’t go to sleep with your spouse until you’ve resolved your conflict – came from this verse, but that’s not even what it says.

Anyway, what trying to apply this principle mainly did was create a series of late night conflicts about conflict. Like how are we going to resolve this and make peace when to be honest, we just were ready to yet. Maybe one of us just needed to be angry for a bit. Or maybe one of us needed some time to think. 

Later, it became clear to me that this scripture is more about the course your anger and criticism take, not about whether or not you can eliminate before sundown, or bedtime. 

And I think it’s helped us to chill out a bit, let go of some of my rigid, silly rules. 

You know, this insight is affirmed by some of the experts in couples work. There are these folks, the Gottmans, they’re got an institute for healthy marriages and relationships called the Gottman Institute, and they’re like the premier voice on this stuff. 

And in their research with couples, they’ve identified what they call the four horsemen of relationships, the four forces that tear down marriages. They’re criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling (which means withdrawing all the time from conflict), and contempt.

And the worst of the four horsemen, the most lethal, in their experience, is contempt. 

Because contempt attacks a person’s self, with insult or abuse. Contempt says:

You are worthless. I’d be happy if you got sick. You’re a deplorable. You’re dead to me. 

It’s contempt, not anger, that leads us into sin. Contempt truly does make room for the devil. Jesus said once:

The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I come that you may have life, and life abundant. 

Friends, when I talk about the devil or the thief here, I’m not talking about an invisible boogeyman, or a pitchfork-wielding, angry, horned red devil. I’m talking about any forces inside of us, among us that steal, kill, and destroy, that rob us of connection and life, that tear down our lives and relationships, and society. 

And our persistent habits of judgment and contempt are high on the list of these thieving forces. 

Jesus is like

Don’t do it, there’s a better way.

We’ll come back to his words, but here’s how the Gottmans put it. Their antidote to contempt is to build a culture of appreciation, to remind yourself of your partner’s positive qualities and to find and express gratitude for positive actions. More reasons to build up those gratitude habits we were talking about last week. 

Ruby Sales, who we talked about on Easter and the week before, put it this way. She said:

You know, in our world, it’s easier to think about who and what we hate, then who and what we love. It’s easier to think about who and what we hate, then who and what we love. 

My friend, my colleague Ivy, reminded me of this wisdom a few weeks ago, and it was right as I was getting ready to have another hard conversation in one of those difficult relationships in my life. 

So I took it to heart, I asked God for help in remembering what I love about this person. It was easy to think of what I was angry about, what I feel critical of, what unchecked would just again and again turn to contempt in me. But I asked God for help to remember what I love and respect about this person. And things came to mind. And I spent time thinking about these things before our next conversation. And it made a big difference. It didn’t change anything in them right away, but it changed a lot in  me. 

Christena Cleveland put it this way.

When dealing with someone that makes you angry, that you might be inclined to hold in judgment or contempt, say a little prayer: May the image of God in me greet the image of God in you. It’s kind of what the Hindi word: namaste means. And it’s very much the wisdom of Jesus as well. 

May the image of God in me greet the image of God in you. May I see in my friend, my spouse, my family, and even in my enemy not just what I hate but what I love. 

This is a big way that we do what Jesus commands, that we take the splinter out of our own eye, and then seek to heal our neighbor’s sight. There are other sins, there are plenty of other splinters we’ve got my friends, but there are few that are as sharp and lethal, and as common and deep as judgment and contempt. 

If, with the help of God and friends, we can pull that contempt out of us, if we can see and treat others with the dignity that is their birthright too as a child of God, made in God’s image, then we’ll go a long way toward healing our relationships, healing ourselves, and healing the world.

I’d like us to close today with a practice on this. We’ll call this exercise Dropping The Stone.

It’s got five parts to it. We won’t just assign this one for homework, we’ll take a minute, if you’re willing to try it together.

Here’s how it’s going to work.

We’re going to take a few moments of silence now.

I invite you to close your eyes, if you’re willing, or at least turn your gaze away from me or anyone else, and think of a person that you feel anger or contempt toward.

And with a story from the life of Jesus in mind, one where he sees people wanting to throw stones at someone else and gets them to drop their stones, imagine the person at whom you wish you could throw a stone.

To whom do you feel anger or contempt? Take a minute, let the name come to mind. See their face.

Now ask yourself:

What do I feel toward this person? Why am I angry? What is the source of the contempt?

Imagine that all that anger and contempt is inside a stone in your hand. Validate that for a minute. 

OK, try the third step now.

As you imagine this person, as you call them to mind, as you see them, ask yourself:

What do I love about them?

And focus on that quality.

And if you can’t think of anything you love about them, ask yourself,

How would it be possible to love them? What is the good in them? How do they bear the image of God? 

Now, in your mind, put your stone down.

Say to God:

God, I would like to set aside the contempt. I’d like to be free of it….       I can be angry, but I will not harm. I will not seek revenge. I will not judge. I will not seek to rob my fellow human of their dignity. 

And lastly, ask yourself, ask God,

Free of my contempt, what will I do next instead? What will I say or do with this person? 

Small Steps Toward Big Salvation

One of my favorite stories this month is playing out at my local CVS pharmacy. Here’s how it started.

One day, one of my kids got a new medication called in by their doctor. And it had been my job to go pick it up. Now there’s this thing with the pharmacy in a CVS that it usually closes before the actual store does. And this is always true, but I never remember it. I keep thinking-  Oh, that CVS is really close and it’s open pretty late, so I can always go get what I need there whenever. 

So I roll into the CVS at like 7:55 and go to pick up the meds. 

And an assistant tells me that they’re not ready yet. And a couple of things happen instantly in my brain. One, I think, this was called in five or six hours ago, how can it not be ready yet? And so I ask the assistant: Are you sure? This was called in much earlier today, and she looks at me kind of peeved that I said that and just answers me by saying: We’ve been busy. So I ask: Is there any way this can be filled now? And she says: No, we’re closing, and starts to turn away from me to get her things and go home. 

And I sort of sigh because the other thing that’s happening is I’m thinking: I need this medication. 

See, the past couple of years have been really hard for a lot of teenagers and 20-somethings. I don’t fully understand it, but it has to do with losses and social isolation and coming of age amidst times of enormous fear and instability, and widespread rates of anxiety, and all kinds of other stuff. It’s a lot.

I just know that as a parent of three and as a pastor, I’m seeing this in a big way. And that day I was really feeling it, feeling like life has been too hard already for my kids and I really don’t want my showing up late to the pharmacy to set back their health by even one more day because that night, that felt like a straw that would just break this camel’s back or maybe break my kid’s back.

So I just said, please: Are there any CVS’s open later? Is there any way this can be transferred to another pharmacy? And the assistant says: I don’t know, she’s going to have to help you with that. And she looks behind her at the pharmacist on duty, the one in white coat, and she leaves the register and goes to clock out.

And at this point, I notice that the pharmacist has been busy wrapping up other prescriptions but has been looking our way and listening in on our little conversation. So I quickly turn to her and say: Ma’am, I really need this medication. Is there anything you can do? 

And she pauses for a moment, and she must have seen something of the weariness or desperation in my eyes, but she took a breath and said: I can fill it for you. Just hold on a minute.

So I thank her and I sit down in the waiting chair behind me. And one, maybe two minutes later, the pharmacist comes forward with a little package in her hand, as the closing gate automatically closes, as it does every evening at 8:00. And she kind of ducks under that gate to the register and starts checking me out. And after I put my credit card into the machine, I’m welling up with relief or gratitude, I can’t tell which. But I’m feeling like maybe things are all going to be alright, so I pause and look this pharmacist in the eye and I say to her:

You’ve never met my child, but you really helped them just now, and I want you to know that means the world to me. Thank you so very much. 

And she looked back at me, I think kind of disarmed by vulnerability, and I don’t even remember what she said. Something like: No problem, or don’t worry about it. I’m not sure. But I remember we looked into one another’s eyes for a moment, and there was a kind of authentic, human connection. A needy father and a helping healer, seeing one another, appreciating one another. 

And then I went home, feeling more hopeful, feeling more connected, I guess a little more whole. And I had a sense that in her own way, after a crazy busy, thankless day, maybe the pharmacist felt some of the same. 

The next few weeks, we’ve got a few sermons on the topic of “How to Heal the World.” It’s kind of a cheeky, overstated title, but it came out of a series of conversations and reflections I had this winter about how sick and tattered our world is, how that’s impacting us, and the opportunity for something redemptive in that for followers of Jesus.

Our world has become sick with so many things – sick with violence, sick with racism, sick with sickness, and fear, and mistrust, and division and more. And all that’s not just far off, it’s not just abstraction. It touches our lives and relationships as well. And I’ve been wondering:

What does it mean to worship and follow a loving, hopeful God who is always seeking to mend, to repair, to make things whole?

And how can we find our own good, our own healing, our own salvation through participating in the healing work of God in our times? 

That’s what we think about, what we pray about, and I hope what we live into some in the weeks to come this spring.

Let me read you of the pivotal scriptures that inspires me in this.

It’s from the prophet Jeremiah, a public figure in ancient Israel in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Jeremiah is sometimes nicknamed the weeping prophet, because he lived and spoke and wrote during times of devastating pain and division in his culture. But Jeremiah was also a healer, a person who shared God’s best wisdom as he understood it for surviving and thriving through hard times. 

Here’s one little excerpt. 

Jeremiah 29:4-7 (Common English Bible)

4 The Lord of heavenly forces, the God of Israel, proclaims to all the exiles I have carried off from Jerusalem to Babylon:

5 Build houses and settle down; cultivate gardens and eat what they produce.

6 Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.

7 Promote the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because your future depends on its welfare.

So this is an excerpt from a letter Jeremiah sent to a group of exiles. Jeremiah himself was still in the ancient Hebrew capital of Jerusalem, but he was writing to a group of people who had been carted off into exile in Babylon, the colonial superpower to the East. 

This would be something like a pastor in Kiev, writing to Ukranians who had been kidnapped during war and taken north to Russia. Or a 19th century Native American writing to friends and relatives who’ve been driven West onto a reservation. 

And Jeremiah’s word in this letter is: Don’t take the suffering of your times as a sign that God has forgotten or abandoned you. God still sees, God still cares, and God still has hopes for you and your descendants. But, it’s going to be a while. Don’t pray for some big, magical miracle to happen tomorrow or the next day. You’re going to have to adjust your expectations and make life work in these new circumstances you didn’t choose. 

And here’s how to do that:

Settle down. Make a home for yourself where you are. Raise children. Plant a garden. Get to your neighbors. And love them. 

Here’s why. Your welfare is connected to their welfare. You may see them as other, as below you, as above you, as enemies, as threats, as disgusting. But you’re neighbors now. You’re in this together. This is now your land, these are your people, do some good. Make it work for you. 

I don’t know if you caught the line of Jeremiah saying:

God sent you here.

But that’s bracing. After all, they’d been resettled here against their will. God didn’t send them here, enemies did this. Bad circumstances, bad luck did this. 

But Jeremiah says:

Promote the welfare of this city where I have sent you.

I do not think he means this philosophically, like literally: God caused all this war and suffering and exile. That view is not worthy of a good and loving God.

No, I think he means it practically, as a mindset, like

How would I live if I could see God at work in these circumstances?

How would I live if I could hope that a creative, loving God can improvise a good plan with me here? 

So he says promote the welfare of this city and pray for its blessing. For your future depends on its welfare.

This passage helps me understand some of what was going on with me at the CVS pharmacy that day and also why I didn’t want to let it go.

See, our culture tells me that me and that pharmacist are anonymous commodities in a giant marketplace. I am a consumer, and she is a provider.

My kids and me and our doctors and health insurance all produce these computerized messages in CVS’s giant system about these various chemical compounds they should mix up into pills and capsules and creams and about how much my insurance company will pay and how much I will pay and when. And the provider has this endless list of these things that come her way every day, and her job is to rush and hustle through all these orders as fast as possible while making zero mistakes and get these consumers on their way and collect her paycheck.

But in this moment, we weren’t commodities to each other any more. We weren’t just categories or cogs in a system, whether those categories be ancient ones from Jeremiah, like exile and enemy, colonized or conqueror, or modern ones like customer and provider. Instead we were two humans – a distressed father and a harried healer. And we could see that our welfare is connected to one another. 

I do better in a world where instead of arguing with the pharmacist or giving up and getting pissed off and resentful, I can be my authentic, vulnerable self for a moment, and share my need and my gratitude. And that pharmacist does better in a world where customers aren’t just numbers but names and needs, people trying their best to get healthy and appreciating her part in making that happen. 

I found this experience really compelling, so much so that I told Grace and the kids whose meds I brought home all about it, and I found myself wondering how I could live in this relationally connected, healing way more and more often. 

Because in a small way, we each left that store more connected in a lonely world. In a world of commodities, we experienced being human together. And there was some repair in that. We made our lives a little more whole. And maybe, we made our anonymous, capitalist, consumer society a little more whole too. 

I like to think of this small story on these grand terms because of a Jewish concept I’ve learned about called tikkun olam (tee-KOON, o-LAM), which is Hebrew for repair of the world. 

This concept of tikkun olam, repair of the world, dates back to really early Judaism, about the time of Christ. The idea is that our beautiful world is also broken and disordered, but that each time we follow God’s law, we say yes to God’s ways in the world, we participate in the world’s repair. 

Over the centuries, this phrase has been embraced more and more alongside scriptures like Micah 6:8 that say:

Do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

The thinking being when we strive for social justice, for the creation of a more just, verdant, and peaceful world as the saying goes, that we participate with God in the repair of a broken world.

Just before this pandemic hit, back in 2019, we had our last churchwide retreat. Side note here: we’re early in conversations with our staff about what to make of that. For a few years, we had these 150-200 person day and a half retreats each fall, almost always on a seaside location. And we’re trying to figure out if this is the fall we return to that or not. So if you have hopes or passions on that, you can always let one of us pastors know what you think and if you’d be up for helping us make this happen again.

Anyway, at the last retreat, our guest speaker was Laura Everett, the head of the Mass Council of Churches. She’s like a pastor to pastors, someone that helps churches connect and support one another across the various traditions and divisions within the body of Christ. And I’m grateful to count her as a friend.

And Laura likes to knit and sew, but not just casually. She’s studied the craft and culture of people who use their hands to repair old clothing and quilts, to take things that are old and worn and instead of throwing them out, to mend them and make them new. And Laura seeings in mending the deep but neglected wisdom of working class women, often women of color. And Laura sees in their work practices and metaphors of what the Chrisitan faith calls salvation. 

Because salvation after all is not fundamentally about throwing something away and getting something new. God always works good from what is here, what God has made. God doesn’t throw away and start from scratch. And salvation is also not trying to rescue a couple of treasured possessions out of a burning building, while watching the rest go up in smoke.

Some Chrisitans have thought of salvation that way, like much of this world is on its way to hell, and what it means to be saved is to be snatched by God out of the flames and prepared for heaven.

But that’s a distortion of the Christian idea of salvation. Salvation has to do with taking something that is in disrepair and mending it. It has to do with a person who is not well healing and becoming whole and well again. 

So menders save scraps of discarded fabric by knitting them into quilts. And they save holey sweaters and pants by knitting patches for them. And menders engage institutions that are out of date or dysfunctional and help them renew and work again. 

People who mend and heal usually start small, and often end small too. When you mend a blanket, you don’t overhaul consumer capitalism’s obsession with cheap, throw away fabrics, and all the ways that are dehumanizing workers and polluting our world and harming our climate. Nope, you make a tiny difference in all that, and you get to keep your blanket.

And when you and your pharmacist change the nature of your interaction, you don’t end teenage suffering or all the dysfunction you both experience in America’s wasteful, impersonal medical system. Nope, you make that system better for you that day, and you walk away feeling more grateful and more alive. 

So it’s small. 

But what if small is mostly what we’ve got. And what if small, in the hands of an everlasting God, is the holy stuff of which big is made of. 

When I talk about my heart and my troubles and my relationships with my therapist, she likes to encourage me with how much this work matters. Like when I get more curious or compassionate, or when I show up more courageous for a hard conversation, or more loving in a strained relationship, she’ll encourage me that this is how we save the world.

This is how things are made whole.

And when she does this, whether she realized this or not, she’s referencing some ancient wisdom in this tikkun olam tradition. There’s a line in the Mishnah, this collection of ancient rabbinic teachings in the Bible, that goes something like this. It says:

“Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world.”

And this line is repeated in the Quran, as the prophet Muhammad gives credit to Jews for the wisdom of their faith and cutlure. 

“Whoever destroys a single life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed the whole world, and whoever saves a single life is considered by Scripture to have saved the whole world.”

I love this. It goes beyond logic, to be sure, the idea that person-sized acts of gratitude and compassion and mending and repair really make a difference. Partly, I think, it’s daring to take a God-sized perspective on ourselves for a moment, a perspective of faith. 

That from God’s vantage point, we are so beautiful and beloved, but also so small, so transitory. Our lives are really little and really short on the scope of things. And on this one tiny planet, there are billions of us, sharing space with all the other plants and animals, and matter.

So who are we to save the world? We can’t.

But who are we to not heal and mend either? Who are we not to do our part to increase our welfare by improving the welfare of the people and place we call home? 

We’re fools if we don’t. Because one, it makes a difference. And two, it’s all we’ve got.

Small things matter. Jesus after all said to his students once:

Mark 9:40-41(Common English Bible)

40 Whoever isn’t against us is for us.

41 I assure you that whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ will certainly be rewarded.

He’s like:

Don’t think of people as your allies or enemies.

I mean maybe sometimes, for protection, for tactical reasons, sure. But in general, people are not first a label, for you or against you. People are people. And people that give you a cup of water are doing something good, something God loves and is proud of, something God rewards, something that matters.

Everytime we heal and mend and repair, every time we take a relationship with land or place or people and make it more humane, more flourishing, more good, we do something that matters, we do something that makes God proud. We do something that increases our welfare. We participate in the saving of the world.

I’m finding this so compelling now, I can’t let it go. 

With that pharmacist, for instance, I wrote her a letter, and I went back to CVS looking for her to give the letter to her, and hopefully to read it aloud to her. I learned this practice from my friends in Asha, the urban public health initiative in New Delhi, India, that our church supports.

My friend Kiran, the founder and leader, likes to promote contagious gratitude initiatives that send thanks and wellness out into communities. One of the ways she does this is by asking people to write a thank you letter to someone and then read it out loud to the recipient. 

So this is what I did for that pharmacist. I don’t have time to tell you the whole story today. But I’ll just say that it didn’t go down according to script. I wasn’t able to read the letter out loud to her, for instance. It was way too busy there the next time I saw her. But I did get her the letter, and I did learn her name.

And I did have the chance later to hear her thank me for that letter, with the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on the face of someone working at CVS, and we did learn each other’s names. And now, I look forward to going to CVS, because I know she’ll treat me great, and I know I’ll be happy to see her and to thank her for her part in my family’s welfare, and I’m enjoying praying for this person by name now, praying for God’s blessing in her life, and that feels good to me too.

Something is happening there that is saving us, that is making us more whole. 

Friends, we’re going to continue with this theme of How to Heal the World the next few weeks, from some different angles. 

But let me close with two quick invitations.

I encourage you to try to treat particular people and parcels of land like they are the whole world, like they matter that much, because to God, I believe they do. Whoever saves one person saves the world entirely. 

One way you can do this is through this practice of gratitude letters. Write a letter this week to someone you’re grateful for and send it to them. Or even better, if you are able, find a way to see that person and read them the letter, then give it to them. 

And secondly, take up a practice that we haven’t talked about for a while at Reservoir, but has been important to the church over the years, ever since our founding 25 years ago. It’s called praying for your 6, and it refers to have six people who are local and whose names you know but who don’t share your church or your faith in God, and praying regularly for their blessings. It’s a way of spiritual generosity, of living out this Jeremiah passage of seeking the welfare of those around us, since we’re connected. 

For now at least, this pharmacist is one of the people whose blessing I’m praying for, and I think God loves that and I think that makes a difference in making whole our broken world as well. 

But the invitation here is to make this a delight more than a duty. See what kind of adventure we can find in seeing our welfare by being people of blessing and repair and kindness in the communities where we work and live, and see just what God does in that.