Liberation in the Land: A Reading of Exodus for the Ecological Crisis

I am honored to be with you on this Sunday morning. Over the last 14 years, beginning with the wake up call of what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, God has helped me to see the crucial connection between our lives and the life of the planet. And in the past few years I have become so deeply aware that the liberation of all people cannot happen without restoring the delicate balance of creation. Furthermore, we will not be able to stop the degradation of our planet without addressing the systems of injustice that not only lack respect for the sanctity of water, of plants—but of human beings. I want to thank the leadership of this house who have created the space for me to share what God is speaking to me.

The reality is that this sermon is the beginning of a sermon series which, God-willing, will someday become a book. The series looks at the first 20 chapters of Exodus as a way of understanding the times in which we find ourselves. I promise that I will not try to fit all 6 sermons into this one sermon, but I hope it will give you an overview of how I have come to see God anew in these chapters in Exodus. If our goal is to facilitate the kindom of God on Earth, I would like to suggest that we need to examine the text anew and see what it can say to us for this time.

I also want to issue a disclaimer. This sermon started with my looking at the plagues in Exodus to think about how they connected to our current environmental crisis. I started this sermon, as I do all sermons, with a deep dive into the socio-political context of that time. I did not seek to add or subtract anything from the text. However, if you see any uncanny correlations between their context and ours, well…

I grew up in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. In our tradition we don’t see any separation between our daily lives and what some people might label to be “political.” As the descendants of slaves, we know that the “political” sphere impacts every part of our lives including our freedom to worship God and to be acknowledged as children of God.

Every Biblical prophet speaks about the politics of their time as does Jesus. I say this because, while the message I am going to deliver is completely in line with the Black church tradition I grew up in, I have had the opportunity to talk to many white pastor colleagues and learned that what is considered normal in my tradition is more controversial in some Caucasian church communities. I was taught in my AME preaching class that the job of the prophet is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. So if folks feel uncomfortable please don’t blame Pastor Steve.

I know that you all have been focusing on the topic of Training in the Studio of Love. This is also Black History Month and so I have chosen a passage for this morning which is one of the central passages in the Black Christian tradition – the book of Exodus. In exploring this text I approach it from the perspective of Cornel West who says that justice is what love looks like in public. I will say that again: Justice is what love looks like in public.

This morning I invite you to meditate on the topic, Liberation in the Land: A Reading of Exodus for the Ecological Crisis.  

Please turn with me to Exodus 1:8-14

Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites

They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

‭‭Exodus‬ ‭1:8-12, 14‬ ‭NIV‬‬

This passage sets the stage for what is one of the most important stories in the Biblical tradition. This story is central to the Jewish faith, and it has also been a foundational text in the Black Christian tradition, because it speaks to a people who find liberation from the dehumanizing conditions of slavery—a people who have been told in both subtle and explicit ways that their lives do not matter. Our text starts with the rise of a new king in Egypt. It says that the king did not know Joseph, which is to say that the king did not know his history. See, Joseph was a Israelite who came to Egypt in chains and rose to be the right hand of the Pharaoh. Joseph was the Vice President, the Secretary of the Treasurer, the Secretary of Agriculture, and the Chief of Immigration rolled into one. It was because of Joseph’s attention to God that Egypt was saved from the famine that beset many surrounding kingdoms. Another sermon in this series explores how the intervention of Joseph creates the economic prosperity in Egypt that allows this new king to ascend into a prosperous nation. Maybe he imagined that he had risen by pulling himself up by his own sandal straps. We can’t be sure, but for the purposes of this morning we notice that the fact that this new King didn’t know Joseph is a clear sign that the King really didn’t know much about his history or how he got to the place he was.

So this King rises to power and he is not interested in listening to Joseph. When he looks at the Israelites he doesn’t see them as great neighbors or productive citizens, he does not recognize all the ways that have contributed to Egyptian society, but instead in Exodus 1:9 the pharaoh exclaims, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more power than we. Come let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape the land.”

What led Pharaoh to see the Israelites this way? The scriptures do not speak of some precipitating event, but we can surmise that it could have been that a slump in the economy made people start asking about whether they should have to spend their tax dollars to educate Israelite children. Or it could be that Pharaoh was just a skillful politician who realized that fear-mongering and nativism could help him to win more support from his base. I believe we can understand the motivations of the King based on a textual clue: in verse 8 he is described as a king but by verse 11 he is called a pharaoh. We often use the words interchangeably, but a king is a ruler. Whereas the term pharaoh can be loosely translated “great house”, a pharaoh does not just rule the people, he projects his power through his familial dynasty and through the building of great edifices, and to this day people go to see the amazing structures built by the pharaohs. So this slight change of description leads me to believe that this man was not just about ruling the people but he was set to make a name for himself with the biggest structures he could build; he would cover the region in his pyramids and temples—you know, the ancient version of towers. In verse 11 it mentions that Pharoah immediately set the Israelites to building the garrison cities of Pithom and Rameses.

Publicly, the Pharaoh states that his motivation for enslaving the Israelites was for reasons of national security—that the Hebrew population was dangerous. They were having so many babies and they might rise up to be a weapon of mass destruction within Egyptian borders. Yes his stated reason was to put Egypt first, and to keep Egypt safe from the invading hoards. But if I can be honest I surmise that it was really free labor, that was his motivation. I mean let’s be realistic, how was he going to complete these massive construction projects if he was constrained by paying a living wage? How could he become a great ruler with massive structures bearing his name if he didn’t cut a few corners in the labor department? Driven by his desire for fame and fortune, Pharaoh mobilizes his forces to enslave the Israelites and puts them to work building his new cities. Egyptian “progress” is built on the backs of the Israelites much like American “progress” has always been built on the backs of “foreigners”—stolen African slaves who tilled the soil producing cotton, tobacco and other cash crops, Irish, Polish, and Italian immigrants who toiled in coal mines and wove in textile mills, Chinese laborers who blasted through mountains and laid thousands of miles of railroad tracks, and even now Mexicans, Haitians, and Vietnamese workers who pick crops, catch shrimp and even lose limbs in slaughterhouses.

Even as Pharaoh subjugates and oppresses the Israelites, they continue to have hope. Their hope motivates them to maintain their traditions, their hope gives birth to children and even in the midst of back-breaking labor their numbers keep growing. So Pharaoh decides that to control the Israelites he must decrease their population. He tells the Egyptian midwives, that when they go to deliver a baby that if the baby is male that they should kill the baby. Now I want to take a moment to challenge the efficacy of this strategy. I would assert that if his goal was to have more builders it probably would have made more sense to kill the girls rather than the boys. Furthermore, if his goal was to stop the growth of the people, it makes the most sense to take out the folks who are actually able to give birth. Finally if you want to kill the hope of a people, then in my experience you want to take out the women, because it is often the women and the mothers that speak life into the next generation. It is the women who often hold the spiritual traditions even when the men have lost their faith in God. Pharaoh’s blinding patriarchy leads him to a strategy that devalues women’s lives and asks women to participate in his genocidal project and the Egyptian midwives resist this plan. And even when Pharaoh enlists the entire Egyptian population to participate in this genocide, Pharaoh’s own daughter rescues the Hebrew boy who will later lead his people out of slavery. Throughout this text, women mount a quiet resistance to Pharaoh’s imperial policies. We don’t have time to go deeper into this, but some other day I will share the sermon “The Real Midwives of Egypt – A Story of Subversive Sisters.”

Focused on “progress” and control, Pharaoh had no respect for the lives of the Israelites—the Hebrew people—and there was no limit to his oppression. And yet more than forty years after Pharaoh tried to kill all Hebrew boys, this same baby who was raised in Pharaoh’s house comes back to confront him.  Moses sees the suffering of his people and comes with a divine anointing to confront not just the king but the Pharaoh—the Great House—the system of oppression on which the wealth was created.

And in this story we see something that bears out time and time again in the scriptures and in our own history. We see that any system built on oppression is a system that God will eventually interrupt.       

So despite his many protests, Moses answers the call of God to return to Egypt, reunite with his brother Aaron, assemble the Israelite elders and tell them that he is called by God to confront Pharaoh. And the Scripture tells us in Exodus 5 that Moses says to Pharaoh – “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the wilderness.” While the ultimate goal is the freedom of the Israelites, Moses starts with a simple request that the people be free to worship God in the beauty of the creation. And Pharaoh makes it clear that he does not acknowledge the Hebrew God. Again,, Pharaoh does not remember how it was God, through Joseph, that allowed the Egyptians to survive through famine. All he can see is that if he lets the Israelites go he will have no way of maintaining his building projects. I want to give Pharoah a little bit of credit: maybe there was a piece of him that was slightly charitable, maybe he made donations to children’s organizations or maybe he was good to his top executives, but in the end he had to be clear that his lifestyle and standard of living were built on the backs of others. He saw himself as the ruler, and there really wasn’t room for a God who might put demands on him that would counteract his lifestyle.

Pharaoh would not acknowledge God, he would not turn from his wicked ways, he was more committed to his standard of living than his standard of justice and so when he would not listen to the prophetic words of Moses, God allows the message to come through the creation.

Water into blood (Exodus 7:14-24) Lead and other pollutants in the water
Frogs  (7:25-8:15) Proliferation of invasive species
Lice (Exodus 8:16-19) Lyme disease
Flies (Exodus 8:20-32) Wooly Adelgid eating Hemlocks
Diseased Livestock (Exodus 9:1-7) Mad Cow disease
Boils (Exodus 9:8-12) Zika virus
Thunderstorms of Hail + Fire (Exodus 9:13-25) Hurricanes & Wildfires
Locusts (10:1-20) Drought that swallows up crops
Darkness for Three Days (Exodus 10:21-29) Disintegrating of the Ice Shelves
Death of the Firstborn (Exodus 11:1-12:36) The Unnecessary Death of our Children

These signs give a physical manifestation to the corruption that was already in the soul of the Pharaoh and in the society he was leading. Pharaoh would not—could not—admit to his own moral bankruptcy, so God lets the truth be seen in the natural world. It is only when he loses his son that Pharaoh is finally willing to let the people go. Only when his hubris and stubbornness has caused him to lose the son that he loves. Only then is he willing to relent.

My deep fear is that we too will not get the message until it is too late. Is is possible that our love of comfort will not be broken until we have sacrificed our children on the altar of consumption.

We too have a system where oppression is too often baked into the equation. From mass incarceration to sweatshop labor to education inequity to gentrification our world is filled with so many examples of our disregard for the lives of the least of these. We care so little for those who matter most to God. We have all the resources that we need to feed everyone, to house everyone, to educate everyone—but we steal and we hoard such that people don’t get what they need. God is not pleased and God is making us face our injustice in the groaning of creation.

As each year gets hotter than the last, we have politicians who still question the science of climate. Even as we know that we must transition away from fossil fuels we continue to destroy conservation land—land that is as God made it—to secure our right to cheap oil. Even though Oklahoma had more than 800 earthquakes in 2015 as a result of fracking waste-water disposal, their governor refused to put the safety of the people above the profits of energy companies. As the cost of our lifestyle becomes more and more evident, I wonder what it will take to recognize that an economy built on the profits of the few maintained by the labor of the many that is fueled by stealing the planetary inheritance of future generations, is not an economy worth maintaining? The problem is not climate change; it is our commitment to a system that does not value all of the life that God created—a system that allows us to topple majestic mountains and depress human dignity in the name of “progress” is an unjust system in direct opposition to God’s love.

The responsibility lies not only with our elected leaders but within our communities, as we must make decisions not just for freedom of the individual but for the benefit of the whole. How much disruption has to happen before we consider the folly of our way of living? How many many forest fires will it take before we stop cutting down virgin forests to build McMansions? How many drought warnings will it take to realize that it is not natural to have golf courses in the desert? How much pollution will we breathe in before we question whether we need so many mass produced goods?

Some of us have read this story countless times or watched the movie version and undoubtedly imagined ourselves always in the role of the Israelites. Some of us became congregational leaders or activists, wanting to be like Moses or Aaron or Moses’ mother and sister who saw the vision early on. But this afternoon I want to challenge us to realize the ways that we have also been complicit with the Pharaonic order, the ways that we have aligned our thinking and our habits with “The Great House.” We call out those who are running to be in the Great White House, but are we willing to recognize the ways that we have allowed our minds and our habits to align with oppressive systems?

We denounce the government for going to war but happily fill up our tanks with oil. We call for action on climate change but will not divest our pensions or university endowments from fossil fuel companies. We decry unjust wages but continue to fill our closets with unnecessary cheap goods. Yeah, we cannot speak about Pharaoh without recognizing that as Americans we are often lieutenants in the Pharaonic order even when we don’t mean to be. 

So when the call goes out to pray, to hear from God and to turn from our wicked ways so that God can heal our land – that call is not just to someone else, but to us as Christians and to the church particularly the church in the developed world. We need to examine the ways that we have linked “God’s House” to the “Great House.” How we have cozied up to political figures in ways that stop us from speaking the truth to power. How is our lifestyle in direct contradiction to God’s love of every human being and also every living organism including ones that we can’t even see with our eyes.

We must consider the way that our division along lines of race, class, sexual orientation, and many other fault lines has prevented us from being a prophetic voice for change in the world.

We must challenge our theologies of “blessing” that are really an excuse for over-consuming in ways that are killing our planet and that have us thinking of cheap goods as our “birthright” even when those goods are produced by underpaid and overworked human beings that are supposed to be our brothers and sisters. Or that have us overeating and under-exercising in ways that are causing us to have terrible health outcomes in our community.

Only if we are willing to ask tough questions and take bold moves, if we are willing to consider the lilies of the field, the sparrows, the Lazarus’ at our gate and the needs of future generations, then our loving and forgiving God will create a way of escape for us.

This message is not just for someone else but for me. It was not until I saw the deaths of my people in Hurricane Katrina that I started to realize that it was time to address the ecological crisis. It was when I could imagine my own neighborhood in peril that I started to take up this call. But as I have grown in my love for God’s people and all of God’s creation, I have come to a greater love for my God.

More and more, I have come to see how there is a deep connection between so many of the things that God has called me to work on in the world. Hurricane Katrina really helped me to see this, but the connections have continued to be made clearer to me. One Thursday in October 2016 I was going to the meeting of an interfaith climate group when I got the call that one of my mentees, John Peterson Cesar, had been shot in the head. John I met when he joined the non-profit, Project HIP-HOP, for which I used to be the Executive Director. He was a gifted thinker, speaker and leader and I knew that God had placed me in his life to help him walk away from his street life and into his calling. When I went into the hospital room I could feel that his spirit had left his body and so over the weekend I helped the family through the process of taking him off of life support. The next Monday I flew to Baltimore for the Green the Church conference—a gathering of Black churches concerned about ecology. It was a space where I could see God working to raise up our congregations as a voice for justice, and it lifted my Spirit. Then I flew home to deliver the eulogy at John’s funeral, my first-ever eulogy. The following week, while still working through the pain of his death, I was on a plane to Standing Rock, North Dakota to join a clergy delegation in solidarity with the Oceti Tribe who was standing against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

I was honored to give an address on behalf of the African-Americans who were there in solidarity. At Standing Rock I was reminded how this battle for the sanctity of water is really about a battle for the sanctity of life—All the forms of life that God has created. God created them and said that they were good and the question is, who are we to go against the word of God? Who are we to decide that some human lives are expendable? Who are we to exterminate a species of bird or reptile because their habitat is the most convenient place to build a strip mall?

It was the lack of love and respect for a great God, the belief that we can be gods that was at the foundation of the Egyptian system. The Pharaonic order then and now is killing our children—sometimes with guns and sometimes with pollution, but the root is the same in a system which lacks respect for God and sees lives as expendable.

Oh Lord my God – The God of Moses and Miriam, of Esau and Esther, of Harriet Tubman and Henry McNeil Turner, the God of my grandmother and the God who watches over me—Oh Lord My God.

When I in awesome wonder Consider all the worlds Thy hands have made – When I recognize that in your infinite wisdom you created this planet, and many others.

I see the stars – I look up and can’t even fathom how you imagine the solar system. In the light and air pollution of the city I forget that you created millions of stars and you know each of their properties.

I hear the rolling thunder – your sign to us that the great rains are coming to nourish the earth, the reminder that you are awesome.

Thy power throughout, The universe displayed – not just in the loud manifestations like thunder but the fact that you created microscopic phytoplankton in the ocean and even though I can’t see them they are producing half of the world’s oxygen. You had the power to create them and me and pull this all together.

Then sings my soul my Savior, God, to Thee – My soul worships you because you deserve all of my praise.

How great thou art – in my life.
How great thou art – in the earth.

Then sings my soul
My Savior, God, to Thee

How great Thou art
How great Thou art

I am so glad that I serve a great God

A great God who can do new things—who makes a makes a way in the wilderness and brings streams in the wasteland. When we let got of the systems of our own devising then we can make space to truly love God, to love each other and to love all of the creation.

There’s No Wrong Way to Have a Body

Good morning!  What a gorgeous day, thanks for popping in here today, I’m thankful to be together … And I”m thankful that  get this unique perspective up here – to look out at all of you and see this fully gorgeous array of bodies.  A representation of what I could imagine as the closest thing to the kin-dom of God here on earth. A myriad of races, of  identities, of able bodied and disabled bodies, of gay, straight, trans and queer bodies, old and young, bodies of all sizes, hairy – not-hairy, strong and just toddling…  

And my heart skips a beat at this sight.

And what makes the kin-dom of God a powerful reality – not just a lovely sentiment,  – is the attention to taking in the fullness of what this beautiful tapestries of bodies in the room bring with them….    Your bodies tell a story of WHO YOU ARE, of where you’ve been – your life…..

We’ve all  traversed this life, encountering joys and traumas and pain and shame and fears and love.   And yet – we are slow to speak on the terms of these experiences beginning with our physical bodies… our bodies are the nexus of every experience, of every feeling, struggle and triumph.  We are quick to mention our bodies – when we feel good about our bodies… when we’ve realized our passions are birthed out of our bodies..- where we have the opportunity to love with our whole selves the world and the people around us with fullness of relationship and love…   and yet  it’s harder to speak of the reality of how our bodies are regarded in our everyday spaces – where we work, study, in our families.  That often in these spaces our bodies are a battleground, that tell a story of a quest for acceptance, for value and for wholeness in this world.

To build the kin-dom, IS WORK.  What makes the kin-dom so rich, is not just a push for all of us to do a really good job at this faith “thing”, individually …   it’s to come together and hold space for one another –from all our different vantage points, with our lens of living in unique bodies..   and this takes work – and it’s the work of the holy – because it’s exhausting and uncomfortable.    To talk of our bodies – to share with each other vulnerably, to imagine that someone on the other end is truly hearing us and “believing us”… is WORK. It is the work of our day, and it is the work that I think Jesus  – who came in human form, in flesh and bone – calls us to… andhe teaches just how to do that, how to be fully in our bodies – as human beings.

Mariama White-Hammond spoke last week so powerfully  – of Jesus our Savior. Jesus, – THE ONE who is a powerful , transformative force of love and His prime location for that work, it seems is in OUR very bodies.  And Jesus  saves us from the threat of any messages about our bodies that would come against this powerful force of love in us.

 

This is why it’s important to keep talking about our bodies today, because it keeps a/live the message of Jesus.

 

We are in a series that I’ve been particularly helped by and thankful for these last few weeks, called “Embodied Faith”.   Sometimes we plan our sermon series months in advance – I think we batted around this idea of “what would it look like to talk about our bodies?” 2-3 months ago. And I’m thankful for how the Spirit moves – even when those initial ideas aren’t fully framed… how the Spirit fills out our ideas and makes them impactful, nonetheless.

 

So, I want to talk today a bit more about how we honor and value our own bodies impacts how we value and honor the bodies of others.

 

In Genesis we see the origins of our bodies – our cells, and our muscles and our  bones – in the 2nd chapter it says that “GOD fashioned an earth creature out of the clay of the earth, and blew into its nostrils the breath of life.  And the earth creature became a living being”.

 

If we can wrap our heads around the baseline of what these verses offer us  – it’s a message that our bodies come from the earth that we all share, that we all walk upon – AND breathed into our beings, is the goodness, the perfection, the strength and the love of God.  That is our makeup – our DNA…. It is what powers our bodies to be, and move in this world, and it is utterly divine.

 

If you’ve ever watched a toddler – you likely see the fullness of this message in action.  As toddlers we loved our bodies fully. Toddlers don’t have a negative relationship with their bodies.  Never did I witness any of my kids demonstrating self-consciousness of their squishy bellies – or counting their double chins in the mirror – in fact wonder and awe were usually in full display as they discovered – that they had hands and feet – and what they were capable of ….

 

And I think we can kind of dismiss this notion that toddlers are a picture of health in relationship to our bodies.. They haven’t taken in messages of critique, they haven’t been restricted from involvement with life or school or jobs  – or felt levels of discrimination because of their bodies yet…

 

*and yet – I read a book by Sonya Renee Taylor , recently called “Your Body is Not an Apology” “Connecting to a memory like that might feel really distant – and maybe one that you can’t access at all – but just knowing that there was a point in your history when you once loved your body can be a reminder that body shame (as it enters in – through a myriad of messages), is a fantastically crappy inheritance..  We didn’t give it to ourselves and we are not obligated to keep those messages”.

 

And still- it is startling to realize how quickly messages about our bodies – come in and take up residence….      Messages that combat right away our extra-ordinarieness… and suggest instead a message of “disbelief” – a deep disbelief of who we were made to be.   . Messages that say you are not good enough – or – you are too much… messages that say at their baseline , “I do not believe you”, “I do not believe that you came from Divine love and goodness”.  

 

One of my earliest memories of my body was when I was little, I remember standing in my bathroom – naked, infront a full-length mirror.  Absolutely unashamed and happy. And my mom walked in and said to me, “Ivy – you shouldn’t look at your body like that”.

And just like that – at age 4 I took in a message that my body was something to hide and be ashamed of.

 

That window of birth to toddlerhood is likely the free-est we will have ever felt in our  bodies…. Because studies show that nearly ½ of 3-6 year old girls say that they worry about their bodies and becoming fat…   Young boys receive messages this early as well that to be a “real boy”, they should assert power and control, and limit their emotions –  and be muscular and big” in their bodies.

 

And these messages come in from all over – when we are young – they come from those closest in proximity to us ….and soon we take in influences from larger society, particularly via media…

 

I’ve taken time with my girls and my boy, in particular as they get older to sit with them and tell them how loved they are – how their bodies are immensely perfect just as they are, how they don’t need to conform to society’s gender scripts.  And let me tell you  – I feel pretty good about myself after these intentional conversations.  I’m hopeful to be correcting messaging that they might be taking in consciously or otherwise… BUT therapist, Hillary McBride says – “ok, you can stop patting yourself on the back about this”…  WHAT really matters is the thousands of moments throughout the day when you make what you think are subtle gestures about your bodies and others.. like walking by a mirror and poking at your double chin – or sucking in your belly…  or mentioning how your shirt is showing your muffin top” .. THESE are the messages that developing minds soak up…. . “We are relational beings and we develop our identity in relationship to people around us”(McBride),  and a big part of that relationship is our relationship to our bodies.

 

In middle school, I was informed by my history teacher that watching girls basketball games was like watching “paint dry”.  I had just made the varsity basketball team.

And At age 12 I learned that my body wasn’t AS powerful or AS strong or AS good as a boys.

Now, I think it’s helpful to remember here – that mind and body are both equally us.  This is why when we don’t like our bodies, we feel badly about our whole selves.  Or, when we feel really powerful in our bodies, we feel really powerful in ourselves, like we have value.  If our identity is just as much our bodies as it is our minds and thoughts, then when we hear how our bodies are not “good enough” or our bodies aren’t powerful – it’s not surprising that we take 1) match whatever the external expectation is, 2) to function in the world – and 3) for many of us – we take on these masks as a survival technique, because the experiences we’ve had, tell us that the outside world hates what our bodies represent.

 

So by the age of 12 I’ve already taken on 2 masks:

  1. One to make sure I’m hiding myself, make sure I’m not too exposed.  That I’m not gathering too much attention.
  2. And the other mask to placate those that felt threatened or discomfort by my strength and power.

Both masks, in my case were my body’s SOS. A body that was being morphed out of fear.  Who I was… wasn’t… who I should be… couldn’t be… ect…. Fear that I was learning – as I walked through more of my life –  was not just found in individual voices – but messaging throughout systems and structures where I would go to school, work and live.

 

Not only has the very air we breathe become laced with messaging about what bodies are acceptable and valued and what bodies are not … but this messaging has become the backing of most of the systems and frameworks of our society:  

“Consider that the right to marry the person you love regardless of gender was only legally sanctioned in the US in 2015.

 

Consider that people with disabilities have higher rates of unemployment regardless of educational attainment.” (SRT)

 

Consider that a study done this decade – showed that resumes with traditionally European names like Greg, Ann or Emily – would get far more callbacks  than individuals with traditional African American names – DESPITE the fact that in this study the resumes submitted were identical.  IT took 50% more applications from the latter group to get a call back.

 

These are big issues folks!  These are issues – economic and social issues that are about our bodies.  They intersect with our race, age, gender and sexual orientation and a multitude of other ways..

 

Sonya Renee Taylor, this author I mentioned says that:  “Racism, sexism, ableism, age-ism,m class-ism, homo- and transphobia, fatphobia are algorithms created by our struggle to make peace with the body.”

 

All of these “-isms”, send out a deep, hurtful and hateful message that “we don’t believe each other”, we don’t believe that we have the powerful image of God in our bodies.

 

After working at my first college internship for a few months, I was called into a meeting with 3 supervisors – who talked in detail about my attire,  – humiliatingly so- and deemed it as inappropriate, suggestive and troubling. I apologized profusely.

At age 18 I learned that my body is an apology.  

 

For so many of us, “sorry” has become how we translate the word “body”(Sonya Renee Taylor). And it is an exhausting work.  It is hard because we talk about how much we value and honor the diversity of each other. And yet the messages we receive throughout our days and over our lifetimes seem to offer up the contrary. It seems like we infact value lines that dictate “sameness” and  lines that are clear to draw what is “normal” and not normal”- and this is helpful to us because we can all be free of the discomfort of difference…I think we all play into this to some degree we are all drinking the kool-aid, that says “oh, actually…..there is a right way to have a body”.

 

And if we don’t find ourselves on the right side of these lines – these body lines that we’ve drawn –  we might find ourselves offering up apology after apology….

 

And we take in the message that our bodies are wrong.

 

Serena Williams – who may be one of the greatest athlete of all times, has a short 30 second video.  In this video we see simple clips of her playing tennis – and we hear her voice saying:

“ I’ve never been the right kind of woman”….

“Too oversized and too over confident

Too mean, if I don’t smile

Too black for my tennis whites

Too motivated for motherhood…”

 

I can gather quite a few memories of where I offered apologies throughout my life, “for not speaking up, or for speaking up too much…..  I have apologized again and again for the presumed discomfort my body has caused in others”. It’s too controversial not to apologize.   Maybe that’s why this ad, of Serena’s caught my eye – she is offering no apology for the ways that systems have placed the word “TOO” in front of her body.   This tiny word “too”, insinuates that we, who make up systems – demand her to apologize for not fitting our mode of what is “acceptable” and “comfortable for us”.   (that we haven’t actually taken in the story of her body – and how she’s experienced life, how many apologies she’s had to usher out)… We, expect accommodation and when we don’t get that  – we are (panicky) & confronted by the ways , we ourselves have played into, become complicit in the very systems that have oppressed us.

 

It was easier for me –  to be invisible – to wear the masks and to accommodate whatever the outside message of who I should be was..  MUCH easier than ripping off those masks and fielding the stones that said “you are too much” – or “your not enough”.

 

Serena, is living in a female body, a Black body, an aging body, a body that’s too big, and YET a body that is continually, unashamedly –  visible to all of us.  

Serena’s message and other brave messages like hers – disrupt my complacency to accommodate.  It allows me to feel , even with masks on- and get in touch with dissonance I feel in my body.  Of how I present to the world – and yet how I know , deep down in my DNA – how I was formed to be…   Her message shakes and challenges me -it even highlights messages that I’ve been taking in for so long and didn’t realize……   Her message says to me, follow this homing device within your soul – the HOly Spirit – and navigate back to yourself, your origins of love.

And this message is full of power and permission to be my unapologetic, believable self.

 

To follow this homing device within us – gets us to what is buried ever so-covertly, in our bodies.   It gets us to what has held these messages, “it’s better to be hidden” , “you aren’t really powerful”,  “offer an apology to keep the peace”… in place for so long. .. It’s what took up residence from the first blush of standing in that mirror, when I was 4 – it’s’ this root of shame.

 

The work here, to uncover this shame is one that I believe is the work of Jesus.  One that he sets before us in this well known passage – that we’ll read together, of the woman caught in adultery:

 

John 8:1-11, 15 (NRSV)

1while Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2 Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. 3 The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, 4 they said to him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. 5 Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground.[a] 9 When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. 10 Jesus straightened up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.”

15 “You judge by human standards; I judge no one”.

 

The Pharisees & scribes interrupt this teaching – they represent the powerful and dominant patriarchal and religious system of the day – and they are eager to uphold and carry out “justice”…

 

Justice it seems in their eyes – is to remove anything that is coming to threaten their authority and position.  Attacking and trapping anyone that disrupts their sense of comfort.

 

And to attain their goal of upholding justice they seek to bring down Jesus – with the pawn in their midst – this body of a woman who was caught in adultery.

 

“Rabbi – this woman was caught in an adulterous act.  Will you uphold the law of Moses which says that this woman should be stoned? Or will you uphold the Roman law?”.

 

“Come on Jesus,  Pick a side. Where’s the line? Help us draw the line!”

Jesus is silent.

 

And instead of talking, he bends down in the dirt (and there are many interpretations of what Jesus writes), John our author doesn’t give us much insight – however, I offer you another possibility, a simple picture.

 

Perhaps Jesus is drawing just what they asked.  Perhaps he is drawing a line in the sand.  A line that will give the Pharisees what they want – to separate out those bodies that are worthy and those bodies that are not.  

 

Jesus I can imagine as he’s dragging his finger through the dirt is communicating to this woman… “you see here, this line – is the way to judge and condemn, this line is the way to maintain power, this line is the way to uphold “a Pharisitical version of justice”, this line is how one ensures that shame will take root in another.  This line creates a system of religion – that will draw lines unto death”.

 

“But this line, dear woman,  does not make way for me.”

 

SO as Jesus stood again, to his feet – standing on the side of the line with this woman – I can imagine him saying to the Pharisees “perhaps you missed my teaching in the temple earlier today.  The lines you desire – to uphold the moral code you care so deeply about, these lines you desire to mark hierarchy, power and status at the expense of other bodies, those lines don’t actually exist in the kin-dom I invite you to build.”

 

Jesus is not choosing a side of the law to come down on – he’s choosing this human being in his midst.  He doesn’t jeer at this woman, he doesn’t use this woman as a pawn, or a trap, or mock her or incite anyone else to do the same – he simply turns to this woman, with his body and bends to be closer to her…   

This woman’s body matters to Jesus – even despite her sin – she is not just a violation of the Law.   

 

The Pharisees plan to trap Jesus – in fact traps themselves – in their own humanity.  Jesus in this simple question , “Which one of you is sinless – go ahead and cast the first stone” – reminds them – that they themselves are in violation of the law too.  Moses Law said that both people involved in adultery should be brought forward.

 

THe job of condemning and judging if for anyone -would be reserved for Jesus.  

 

However, Jesus desists this.

 

“You judge by human standards – which only creates lines against bodies and me…. I judge no one”.

 

And as the Pharisees and scribes exit the scene… Jesus bends down again – Here he is, going back to that line of the Pharisees and erasing it. He’s making clear that nobody and no body will be limited in their access to Jesus.  That his body too, is free and available to all.

 

This is my way:

“The erasure of this line – is the way to liberation,

the erasure of this line is the way to access the power of me – within and beside you always,

the erasure of this line is the way to uphold “justice” – to value a physical, human being in front of you,

The erasure of this line is how one ensures that shame will not take root.
The erasure of this line – makes way for life, with compassion and humbleness bent in a posture that comes close to this women’s face – where she can hear Jesus say, “I believe you”. I believe you are made from love.

 

A year  ago my teenage daughter came to me and said that the boy she was spending time with, “had put his arm around her without asking, and it made her feel uncomfortable and unsafe”.  

My reply to her was:  “Could you not over react – it’s not really that big of a deal….I’m sure he didn’t mean to make you feel discomfort….”

At age 38 I learned that ingesting enough messages of body shame over my life – allows these declarations to become the narrative through which I speak to the bodies around me – even without noticing or intending to…  bodies that I am here to believe in and nurture.

 

THis is the work of Shame – is a thief and a liar,  and it’s toxin laces our tongues – and keeps us a prisoner under our masks.

 

Jesus says to this woman,  “where are they? Has no one condemned you?” 11 She said, “No one, sir.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you”

 

Perhaps when we judge others and their bodies- We lay the same traps that the Pharisees do – … we set traps of shame, we force masks on people… AND we trap jesus too.  If we see flickers in our systems that oppress and hate, that are eager to sanction, ignore and criminalize – we can’t deny that there is misuse of the bodies in our midst.

 

I choked on my words as they came out of my mouth to my daughter.  Realizing I was judging her! Judging her feelings in her body – asking her to feel less – it would be more comfortable for everyone…    Jesus encourages us – as he did with this adulterous woman – to catch the stones… and be more aware of the ones we might throw ourselves  – of shame, of humiliation, control and of hate and arrogance.

 

When we can do this for ourselves and each other – Jesus I think does the great work of crushing those messages down to the Earth, freeing us all to return to what we’ve always come from – dust and love.

 

Shame only lives and survives where there is a judge.

 

And Jesus says to this woman “I’m not going to be your judge” – “go and sin no more” – and not because you are afraid of getting zapped at the line drawn in the sand (drawn by some person or system)…but because you have met me, where there are no lines……..  

And not because you were rescued by the law, but because you were rescued by me, who fills out the Law with love and compassion.

 

Jesus isn’t worried about how much we get right or wrong when it comes to Him  – or how much or How little we believe of HIM…..   HIS hope, is that we would feel HOW MUCH HE BELIEVES IN US.  And my friends, it’s a struggle to get there – it’s a struggle to sift through the messages and the masks… but it’s our work for each other.

 

A year and a half ago – I got caught in a riptide in Nicaragua with my 3 kids…  I’ve told a portion of this story before – of how my kids were resilient and spurred me on to wonder and away from fear in the aftermath.  BUT what I didn’t share was that at one point in the riptide, I realized I had to let go of my son’s hand. I was struggling and I thought I would bring him down with me. .as I let go of him, I submerged under the current and waves – and found myself suspended underwater – unable to reach the surface and unable to touch the ground.

This moment has chilled me for many months since then – not only for the obvious reasons – but because in looking back I realized that I felt no presence of God, no calming, encouraging whispers  – no bright light of hope.

 

I’ve been processing this a lot – and I went through the scene with a friend a few months ago – and she said so matter of factly – “Oh you know, I often think in moments like these we are Jesus”..  And I could then remember that I came to the surface of that roaring ocean – and I grabbed my sons hand back, and I looked at him in the eyes and I said “You are going to be ok, we are going to ride this next wave in” – and we did.

At age 39 I experienced for the first time, what embodiment really means.  ANd this was a deep knowing that Jesus and my body – were one – with power and agency.

 

Embodied faith isn’t just a concept to talk about – it is a force of the Holy Spirit and nature to experience.  When Jesus says to His friends, (on your program) that “they will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon them – and it is then that they will be His witnesses to the ends of the earth,” I realized –  ah, yes they will be able to tell other people about God, once they have experienced and felt her in their bodies.

 

I learned that the Holy Spirit might be silent in separation, when there are lines and messages all over the place about who I am and who I’m not –  – BUT she IS LOUD and glorious and Strong IN my body. The Holy Spirit – is not just soft wind and breath – but she is FIRE AND STRENGTH… And I fully embody her. Fully human. Fully alive. As one.

 

May the embodiment of God that resides in your physical body – in your skin, in your bones, in your cells – be the power that thrusts you out of the paralysis you might feel under your masks – and  the sense of suspension you experience – when you are neither fully touching ground nor breaking through the ceilings that society casts on you – And may your bodies and the STORIES they tell –  propel you into the faith we have in a JESUS who hears your bodies SOS’s and rescues you and helps you again and again BE human.

 

We would be remiss in this series about our bodies  – to only talk from this stage – so today, I’ve invited my friend Miriam who is an exceptional dancer – and I  invite you into an experience of God that goes beyond words. She’ll be moving to a song by Lauren Daigle, called, “Rescue”.

 

**

Jesus rescues this adulterous woman from death.  Physical death, but also death-by-shame. Jesus rescued me in the ocean – physically, but also from the belief that my body was to be hidden, an apology, unequal , devalued, defenseless ….  Every storyline – every narrative of Jesus with us – is for your rescue from death.  This was His own story and our story too. I believe that JEsus wants a world where our bodies can be reclaimed as love”..   WHere we can say to each other, “There is no wrong way to have a body”.

 

Whole life flourishing: In what ways have you believed that your body is “not enough” or “too much”?  Imagine that God, at every turn, celebrates your body and says to you that there is “no wrong way to have a body”. How does this impact the way you show up in the world and the way you witness others show up in the world?

 

(What messages have you taken in about your body? Such as you are “not enough” or you are “too much?”….. etc..)

 

Spiritual Practice of the week:

“Tear off the mask. Your face is glorious.” – Rumi

When you look in the mirror this week, imagine Jesus’ reflection looking back at you – with your eyes, your hair, your skin, your blood, your bones, your body. Fully glorious.

 

Prayer:

Imagine that you could go stand beside your 3,4,5 year old self – as you look at yourself in the mirror… What message, what words would you want yourself to hear.?  What would you want your small child self to know – above all else.

The Jesus Movement We’re Looking For

Next week, we start summer at Reservoir. Soccer Nights starts a week from tomorrow, and it’s not too late to sign up to volunteer. Next week, we’ll also shift to our single 10:30 AM service, and rather than a series, our pastoral staff will preach however we’re led from the passages in our Read the Bible Together program, drawn from a Bible reading program used in all kinds of churches.

Today, though, on this final Sunday of spring, I’m wrapping up our five-week series The Jesus Model for Everyday Interactions. We’ve been inspired by a book by our friend Carl Medearis that looks at the kindness and presence and bravery Jesus had in his short interactions with friends, enemies, and strangers, and asks: what if we were to try to see and interact with people that same way?

So our past three weeks have invited us to Be Kind, to Be Present, and to Be Brave. And I drew the book’s final topic to speak on today, which is to Be Jesus. And my first thought was: this is ridiculous.

One, it’s repetitive. We’ve already been talking about Jesus being with people as a model for our own relationships with friends and strangers, so what more is there to say?

Two, it’s presumptive. Like if you ask someone their name, and they tell you, I’m Jesus Christ, what do you think of that? Or if you ask someone about their life goals and they tell you to be Jesus Christ for their whole world – well – we call that delusional, or a Messiah complex. It’s not a good thing.

But still, I couldn’t shake this topic, because I wonder, what if for many of us – each in our own way – being Jesus isn’t our life’s deepest aspiration, the path to our own greatest fulfillment and freedom, and the very thing our crazy, violent world needs?

I was sitting on my porch last week, reading news on my phone and I came across an editorial in The New York Times. It was called “I Want to Hate,” and it calls to mind the time that our president took out a full-page ad in New York papers after a rape in Central Park in 1989.

Now, to be clear, all crimes of sexual violence, rape included, are horrible, shattering events. We partnered earlier this year with the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center to hold a Speak Out Sunday, where we spoke about how sexual violence has no place in our future. We’re committed to be a truth-telling and a healing church around sexual violence.

But the circumstances of this crime and the punishments meted out for it were particular. Five boys – 14 to 16 years old – were arrested for this crime. They were deprived of food and sleep and drink for 24-hour hours before they gave confessions. They were then tried and found guilty, only to be exonerated 12 years later. Their confessions were false, given under enormous stress, and there was DNA and other evidence of another man’s guilt by that point.

Here, though, is what our president paid money to say to his city after their initial false arrest. He wrote:

“Our mayor has stated that hate and rancor should be removed from our hearts. I do not think so. I want to hate these muggers and murderers. They should be forced to suffer, and when they kill, they should be executed…. Yes, I want to hate these murderers and I always will.”

What do you think about this repeated phrase, “I want to hate.” As I read it, I thought, there it is – the politics of fear and resentment and division and yes, hatred, that fuels our current presidency. And maybe broader, the spirit of fear and resentment and division and yes, hatred, that fuels much of our public life and discourse, from many directions.

I’m probably naïve, but when I was a teenager, back when these words I read were first printed, I think if I had gone around my community and asked people: who do you hate? Most people I think would have been surprised by the question more than anything else, and I like to think many wouldn’t have answered. But if you go around the communities we live and work in today, heck, if you go around the world and ask people at random: who do you hate?

I think most people will have a ready answer to the question. Do you?

But while I was sitting on the porch, I saw something else someone had brought to my attention as well. I saw this video of the pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber talking about forgiveness, about the antidote to hate, about separating ourselves from a cycle of evil and violence, being unchained to resentment.

It’s just two minutes long. This is the bit that I warned you would have some saucy language in it. I think it’s worth it, though, but fair warning.

So I found myself, there on my porch, thinking, which do we want?

Do we want to go, unthinkingly, wherever our hates or resentments take us? Do we want a narrower, more punitive, more violent way of life? Or do we want profound freedom, radical love, impossibly bold forgiveness?

All this good is at the heart of the Jesus movement we’re looking for.

The first book of the New Testament, the good news of Matthew, frames the life of Jesus as a new Moses, come to liberate God’s children. Jesus, like Moses, is rescued from possible death after his birth and comes out of Egypt into Israel. And then, like Moses, Matthew has Jesus head up a mountaintop and tell us all how to live.

It’s the first big segment of the life of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew, these teachings gathered into the collection in Chapters 5-7 that we call the Sermon on the Mount.

In the late 90s, I read a provocative book by a philosophy professor named Dallas Willard who asked what if we could all become students of the way of Jesus? And what if Jesus taught us much of what we need to get started on moving forward with the Spirit of God into a new and beautiful life with God and others in this world.

This seems to be Jesus’ own intention, as he closes this teaching with the words:

Matthew 7:24-25 (NRSV)

24“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. 25The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. 

A good life on a solid foundation, ordinary people apprenticed to the way of Jesus.

What does that look like?

Well, that’s in a way what we talk about every Sunday at Reservoir – how to flourish by following Jesus. But for the sake of wrapping up this series on the Jesus way of everyday interactions, let me highlight three major themes of the Sermon on the Mount that show up in our everyday interactions.

The first is profound freedom.

I was out on a bike ride with my boys the other day and as we were crossing a street, a noticed this scene playing out just ahead of us. A kid, pre-teen, maybe 10 or 11 or 12 years old, was tearing down the sidewalk on his own bike, I mean really cruising. And too late to stop, he saw a pedestrian, a middle aged man in front of him, and he jammed on his brakes, but as I said, it was too late, so he slowed down but still hit the gentleman.

Thankfully, the guy seemed OK. He was a full-grown man, and the kid wasn’t that big and had managed to slow down before hitting him, but what the man did was start tearing into the kid. He was using foul, aggressive, violent language – full of curses. And I was shocked, so I went over, got of my bike and stood near him while the kid biked away in shock, and my own kids biked on. And then the man turned to me and starting to lay into me, wondering why I was looking at him. To be honest, I was too startled by the whole scene to be as helpful as I wanted to be. I think I said something like, I’m just making sure everyone gets away OK. And after he cursed and threatened me one more time, he walked away himself.

But I thought afterwards, Dang, to be so imprisoned by your own rage, that you can’t help express it. That’s sad.

The late priest Henri Nouwen suggests that we all tend to be imprisoned, though, in our own ways. He writes:

“… we all have our obsessions. An idea, a plan, a hobby can obsess us to such a degree that we become its slave. These addictions, compulsions, and obsessions reveal our entrapments. They show our sinfulness because they take away our freedom as children of God and thus enslave us in a cramped, shrunken world. Sin makes us want to create our own lives according to our desires and wishes, ignoring the cup that is given to us.”

Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, suggests three things that commonly keep us from freedom – hostile anger and resentment, lust for people and bodies that aren’t ours to desire, and a mix of love of money and anxiety over not having enough. Does anger, lust, or anxiety reduce your freedom?

I’ve had plenty of bouts with all of these.

To all of us, Jesus says things like this

Matthew 6:22 (NRSV)

22“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light;

And

Matthew 6:33-34 (NRSV)

33 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

Cultivate health and righteousness – right ways of relating to everything and everyone – from the heart. Focus on and turn your longings toward the good that is available to you. Make peace with the people around you. Accept the terms of your life today, and don’t be troubled about what you don’t have now or what you might have to do tomorrow.

Jesus is inviting us into a profound freedom. Freedom that God and what God gives us is enough in this world. Freedom from compulsive, greedy, clutching ways of living, wanting what we don’t have. And freedom to contentment and joy in our lives.

It’s an expansive freedom to, with implications for our relational and public world of systems and structures.

I’ve been reading Professor Frederick Ware’s really excellent introduction to African-American Theology this month. And in it, Ware argues that freedom as a central category of African-American experience, and freedom as an important concept in all of American culture, is at the center of the contributions of African-American thought and talk about God. He defines freedom broadly, as “the ability and condition necessary for human fulfillment and flourishing in the cosmos.”

Jesus wants to lead all people into freedom.

Freedom not just from personal moral failure or compulsion, but freedom from “systemic evils rooted in social structures” too – freedom to full human flourishing.

This takes being aware of not just the inner things but the outer things that bind our freedom and flourishing, or the outer things – the systems and structures and sins that hamper the flourishing of other people.

To paraphrase what Jesus was saying, take the log out of your own eye, to be sure, but if you see someone jamming logs into other people’s eyes, well, do something about that too.

This is one way we practice the second of the three hallmarks we’re looking at today, which is radical love.

Jesus taught,

Matthew 7:12 (NRSV)

12“In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.

And

Matthew 5:44 (NRSV)

44But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

We’ve tried in this series to dial down the intensity and make this really simple and everyday. Talk to people who are strangers to you, give other people your full and undivided attention and kindness for at least 42 seconds. As often as possible.

If there’s nothing else you remember from this series, that’s good enough.

But I want to dial things back up a minute and remind us that Jesus did all this in super memorable and intriguing and high impact ways by really going for it. Letting whatever holy impulse gripped him when he was with someone else and running with it.

Someone I know that does this, that seeks this everyday life of radical love is a person whose work our church supports through our Reservoir partnerships team. Nate Bacon is a long-time friend of our founding senior pastor Dave, and has worked with his wife Jenny in organizing and leadership development among gang members in the Bay Area of California and for a decade of so they’ve been in Central America. They live in Guatemala as members of what’s called a Christian order among the poor. Basically, they’re trying to live out the way of Jesus we’re talking about today in the particular context of some of the world’s most marginalized peoples.

And Nate is someone whose presence and Jesus-like love, and his really gracious but also truthful advocacy as well, have moved me over the years.

So it my huge delight when I was thinking about this talk, and Nate emailed me out of the blue, on short notice, saying he’d be in town with us this weekend. So I’m going to take a moment and invite Nate to join me and share a story of love in the way of Jesus with us all.

Let’s give Nate a warm welcome.

[In audio: Nate shares his story, Reservoir prays for Nate and his family, Nate prays for Reservoir.]

Well, I’m going to move toward wrapping up here, but I just want to bring things full circle and mention a third and final hallmark of this way of Jesus, of becoming our fullest, freest selves as become more like Jesus as well.

And that is deep and persistent forgiveness.

We watched that video from Rev. Bolz-Weber at the top, where she talks about forgiveness as a way of combating evil, of disconnecting ourselves from evil, of refusing to be chained to the worst actions of our enemies.

At the heart of Jesus’ model prayer, he encouraged us to pray in this forgiveness and added a little coda to it, praying:

Matthew 6:12-14 (NRSV)

And forgive us our debts,
        as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13And do not bring us to the time of trial,
but rescue us from the evil one.

14For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

 

I don’t think that last bit is meant to be threatening or anything. It’s just that closed, bitter hearts bound by evil, even bound by the evil done to us, can’t receive grace and love. Jesus wants us free.

Forgiveness to someone who has done us harm is not saying that harm is OK; it is breaking its ongoing power over us by refusing to be defined by it anymore. I have repeatedly forgiven people that each week nearly kill me through their bad driving and I have repeatedly forgiven the broken and sick young man that sexually abused me when I was growing up. None of that calls those things OK, but it says I’m not going to be bound by reactions to it. And I’ve been forgiven by people I’ve casually an inadvertently done wrong to and by others who I’ve deeply wounded. And when that’s happened, I haven’t ever felt excused. But I’ve seen someone fighting for their own freedom even as they fight for mine as well. And that has profoundly changed the trajectory of my life as well.

The way of Jesus is deeper and harder and better and more impossibly beautiful than any other way I can imagine trying to live.

In seeing if we can be Jesus to our world, to embody in our own unique selves the tremendous freedom and radical love and deep forgiveness of Jesus, we’re giving ourselves and the people and systems around us a shot at beauty, a shot at laughter, a shot at flourishing.

The tips to try today are in your program – embrace profound freedom, and practice radical love. There are some more detailed suggestions on the front and back of the cards our pastor Ivy has again created for us in the dome. Please take one of those on your way out and wrestle with the invitations there. There’s a lot of power in them for us all and for our times.

You’re Not Dead Yet

Facing Death

I was a teenager in the late 80s, when cable TV and VHS machines were all the rage, and when each town’s video rental store was one of the hubs of commercial activity. And being a teenage in this time and living in the suburbs meant a lot of weekend evenings hanging out at my friends’ houses and watching movies. One of the movies I watched most was Monty Python and the Holy Grail. My wife and kids still don’t understand what’s so funny about it, but I’ll keep praying for them.

Anyway, as I thought about this week’s talk, a short scene from this movie came to mind. It’s a spoof on a moment in village life in the Middle Ages, when the Black Plague was sweeping through Europe, and undertakers pushed carts through towns, collecting the bodies of the dead.

Let’s watch, OK?

[Content Warning, there is a swear word used at 1:53, which we edited out for our in-service video.] “Bring out Your Dead” from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Do you ever feel like that guy, the one lying on the cart – “I’m not dead yet!” People around us, our life circumstances, are like that other guy with the club in his hands, telling us this opportunity is lost, that time is over, that it’s too late for something else we once dreamed would be so.

A couple of us on the church staff were talking about this the other day: about the various deaths we experience at different stages of our lives. When we’re younger, we have to face the death of perfection. We learn we’re just not good as some things that we like. We discover that even the things that we are good at, there’s always someone better. We learn that rejection, sometimes serial rejection, is part of what it means to try anything. We have problems and flaws and so does everybody else, and we lose sometimes, and life’s not fair.

And then when we’re in mid-life, we experience a deeper level of this death, what I think of as the death of our dreams. We find out that some things we assumed would happen in life, or dearly hopes would happen, just aren’t going to happen. And we find out that even the good things of life – having a steady job, or raising kids, or owning a home, or getting married – these things have their downsides too. Sometimes they’re great, but sometimes they just suck. Maybe life, or at least maybe our life, isn’t all that we hoped it would be.

And then as we age, we inevitably face the death of our bodies. We get aches and pains, our parents die, someday we have to get ready to die ourselves. We’ll get tossed onto that cart and won’t have anything to say about it.

And then all along, in every one of these life stages, we experience the death of certainty. We realize we don’t know what we’re doing, and maybe nobody else does, and nobody’s coming to rescue us.

Bleak, huh?

The other week I must have said something about feeling alone in this world to my therapist, but instead of offering comfort, she said something like — well, get used to it, because we all come into this world alone and we go out of it alone too.

And I didn’t say this, but I thought to myself: you’re fired. That’s the gloomiest thing to say.

Is Death all there is to Life?

So is this it?

Is life an ongoing story of increasing death, suffered alone? Or is there something more — something that can help us say wait, I’m not dead yet! And have it be true.

This spring we’ve been talking about passion and courage, and today we’re going to talk about the passion and courage it takes to look for resurrection — to look to God to find life growing out of death, both literally and metaphorically.

We’ve been looking at some Old Testament narratives and asking what people find in God that gives them passion and courage. And without planning it this way, much of these series has been a look at some courageous women of the Old Testament — as Ivy and Lydia and I have each told the story of one of the Bible’s less famous women of passion and courage.

Today, I want to revisit the story of the one of the most famous — maybe the most famous women — of the Old Testament: a woman who had the courage to hope for resurrection, to trust God that life could grow where only loss and the death of dreams seemed realistic.

We’ll read one story from the life of Sarah and then a brief reflection from the New Testament on what was going on here. Here we go. Our first story comes from the Bible’s first book of Genesis, in the account of Abraham and Sarah, this couple that wander across the Ancient Near East because of a promise they believed God had given them and their descendants – a promise of land, and legacy, and blessing to them and through them to the whole world.

The only problem was there were no actual descendants. They were getting on in years and still had no child.

God had given Abraham and Sarah hope for a child, but years and years have passed, and that hope was slowly dying a long and complicated death. When one day, three visitors stop by Abraham and Sarah’s house, or their tent, really:

Genesis 18:9-15 (NRSV)

They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” 10 Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. 11 Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. 12 So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” 13 The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ 14 Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” 15 But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.”

The visitors – strangers to Abraham and Sarah – reiterate what they believe God had promised them: that in due season, they will have a baby boy who will carry God’s promises on to the next generation and beyond.

And I don’t know what Abraham’s reaction is, we don’t get it because Sarah’s is so strong. And I love it, she’s like, Ha! That “due season” you’re talking about has come and gone. Maybe it’s a bitter day for her, and she laughs that cynical laugh of resentment in the face of the naïve. Or maybe it’s a good day, and she’s not especially upset, but she just chuckles at how ridiculous this hope sounds. Maybe she’s thinking of the pleasure of raising a baby, a hope she’s long let die in her. Or maybe – scholars wonder – she’s thinking even of sexual pleasure, chuckling that the baby ain’t happening when they’re not even motivated to be intimate anymore.

Either way, though, the messengers catch it. They see or hear the laugh, even when Sarah’s embarrassed and doesn’t want to admit it.

Some people have wondered if they’re angry, the way they point out — oh no, you sure did laugh — or they wonder if God would be angry at Sarah for laughing, for not believing God would have power to do this thing God has promised.

But that doesn’t make sense to me. The messengers don’t criticize Sarah, and God’s not cursing her or anything. She’s hearing a reiteration of God’s impossible, unlikely blessing for her.

It’s like the messengers – which by tradition are angels, or even the presence of God personified – are saying: no, really, we saw you laugh, and that’s OK, it seems ridiculous, but this is what God does.

God is a God worthy of ridiculous hope

Hundreds of years after Genesis was written, an earlier follower of Jesus writes a Midrash, an ancient Jewish style of commentary on the Hebrew scriptures, which seeks to elucidate the original texts but sometimes add a new point of view or insight as well.

The 11th chapter of this book of Midrash, called Hebrews, is a meditation on faith, looking at these ancient people of passion and courage, Abraham and Sarah included.

And the bit on Sarah says that God is a God worthy of ridiculous hope, because God is a God of resurrection.

Read with me:

Hebrews 11:11-12 (NRSV)

11 By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised. 12 Therefore from one person, and this one as good as dead, descendants were born, “as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.”

Where we are as good as dead, God sees possibility. Where we experience barrenness, God sees the potential for new life. And not just scrappy, just eking out an existence kind of life, but teeming life. Descendants as many as the stars are coming from this barren womb.

Infertile couples having babies, is something of a motif in the Bible. It’s not just Sarah, but Rachel, and Hannah, and Elizabeth, and more. These stories get a spotlight on them, not just because of what they meant to the people involved but because of what they say about God, and about the logic of ridiculous hope. This is where the poetry about rivers in the desert comes from. And this story of a powerful God making the impossible possible comes to a climax in the Bible’s story of Jesus’ life after death — in that resurrection that centers the New Testament and becomes the more important moment in the prayer life and in the good news celebration of the early church communities.

Jesus is alive. God is a God of resurrection. In the face of our dying lives in a dying world, there are grounds for ridiculous hope.

We’ve seen this in our own church community, over just our twenty years. Just last week, someone told me another story of hearing our announcement for prayer we give after the sermon every week, and she said, they named my issue, and I went for prayer, and I was better. Oh, my God, it worked kind of miraculously! I hear those stories a lot. We’ve had our share of what seem like miraculous pregnancy stories. In many ways, the existence of this community as what we are today is a whole series of unlikely dreams coming true.

We’ve appreciated the stunning surprises of living with a God of resurrection around here.

But of course, our own experience in this community, your own as well, I’m sure is that most of the time dying things do in fact die. People that can’t have kids most often continue to not be able to have kids. Deserts usually stay dry. That’s just the way it is.

Even in Hebrews, the text goes on – just after what we read – to say that most of the heroes of faith being discussed don’t quite see the fulfillment of what they’d hoped for in God. It says, “These died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them.” They saw God work enough to know a living God – look there, off in the horizon, if you squint a bit, there’s God. But not enough to have all their dreams come true.

So faith, paradoxically, calls for both ridiculous hope, but also radical acceptance: Hope that God can bring life out of death, and acceptance that even in death, God can be there as well with something good.

I know, this might seem hard to get your mind around at first. Like I’m encouraging two opposites and calling them both faith. How can we practice radical acceptance and ridiculous hope at the same time? Let me tell you a story.

Radical Acceptance of Death

This story is about an 80-year old woman who thought she had found love again.

Allene had been widowed just after 70, and she says by the time she hit 80, her life was pretty desolate, until she met a man who just lit up her world. It was at a senior center on the West Coast. She spent time at the center on her annual visit to her son who lived nearby, met a man there that she really liked and got his phone number. After she went home, they began speaking over the phone every night. Their calls got more and more intimate, more romantic. Allene had been married for 51 years until her husband’s death, had only ever loved one man in her life, but now she was falling in love again.

She and Larry began writing stories together, and in one of the stories featured a man who was a retired long-haul truck driver. In the story, he impulsively drives across the country to meet a woman he’d fallen in love with. Larry had himself been a long-haul truck driver, so when the nightly phone calls stopped for a couple of days, Allene was certain that in her real life, Larry was about to show up at her door, having driven across the whole country to see her.

Problem was, more days and weeks went by without a word from Larry, until eventually he sent a note that he had met somebody else, and that he and Allene should just be friendly like a brother and a sister. And in case she wondered if he’d change his mind, he told her he was marrying the other woman.

This second chance at falling in love was over.

Just when Allene felt she had found a new lease on life through finding love again, her hopes were crushed. This dream, like her first marriage, died.

What was Allene to do? Hope against hope that things with Larry would turn around? Pray that this woman he was marrying would die, like his first wife? That wouldn’t seem likely, or kind, or right, really.

In this case, Allene had to accept the death of this particular dream.

But interestingly enough, in this case, radical acceptance of one death opened her up for a different kind of resurrection. See, in falling in love again, Allene put herself at risk for rejection and loss and disappointment, as we all do when we fall in love. And the worst had happened here.

But it wasn’t all bad, because it also stirred a broader hope in her that at 80, her life was not over. There could be a next and better chapter left in her.

In her case, she met the folks behind this project called Change Agent, who told her about a simple tool for finding your next chapter in your life. They told her about this tool of making three lists. Make a list of what you love, and what you love about your life. Then make a list of what you hate in life – again generally, and in your life in particular. And Allene made these lists, and she – like most of us – had lots to say. Then finally, she was told to make a list of what she really wanted. Turns out the “what you love” and “what you hate” lists are really just kind of warm-ups to ground you before making this third list of what you want.

And this third list was full of discovery for Allene because she realized that falling in love again was really just one path toward the deeper want that she had, which was to experience joy and connection, and to find that in part by making other people’s lives light up, and through physical connection.

She said elderly people at senior centers don’t like a lot of touch. When she’d ask for or offer hugs at her senior center, she wouldn’t get many takers. But she realized, people’s hands were sore, and people would let you touch their hands. So instead of looking for love again, Allene got training as a massager of hands.

It was pretty easy for her to learn, and in massaging the hands of elderly people, she discovered that she could keep the openness to other people she had found through falling in love again, and could experience physical touch and connection, and profound joy, as she spread her openness and connection to other people, who appreciated it.

This was a kind of earthly resurrection for Alene — a hope she didn’t know she had fulfilled, that only came after acceptance of another hope dashed.

On her next visit to her son, she even got a chance to give hand massages to Larry and his new wife, to be honest about her disappointment to them both, but to move on and enjoy their friendship.

Sarah in our Bible text laughs at the possibility of her dream of a son coming true. And when, against all odds, she gets pregnant and gives birth to a healthy baby boy, she names him Isaac, which in Hebrew means laughter. Sarah keeps laughing with wonder and delight, as God fulfills her ridiculous hope that once had died.

Allene thought the life she wanted lay in falling in love again. But in the connection of many friends, rather than one romantic partner, and in the physical touch of hand massage, she found joy, and a life in her 80s that she really loves. She laughs herself when she talks about how happy and fulfilled she is now, and about the road that got her there.

I found Allene’s story so inspiring, that even in her elder years, she dared not to just muddle through to the end. But even when life pushed her to a kind of radical acceptance of loss and limitation, she let hope stir for a life she could love.

This mix of radical acceptance and ridiculous hope isn’t just the stuff of podcasts, it’s personal to me. In the first talk in this series, I taught that self-acceptance creates the possibility for self-transcendence.

I took a couple of days off early this week to visit one of my best friends and his family out of state. This is a guy who was the best man in my wedding and who’s been a good friend for 25 years now. One of a really short list of friends I’ve known that long.

And as we caught up on some of the deeper elements of our personal journeys, the kind of stuff that’s easier to talk about in person than over the phone, I was struck by how good God has been to both of us in some of the precise places where we’ve needed to accept loss and disappointment in life.

I won’t share details, but between us, radical acceptance of significant personal shortcomings and flaws, of professional blows, of relational losses and betrayals, has opened us up to new and deeper work of God, satisfaction and new life in forms we hadn’t quite expected.

I find this again and again to be true in people’s lives. As a pastor, I hear people talk again and again about the challenges and disappointments of their life circumstances. A lot of the deeper conversations I have with people are sparked by their disappointment or confusion about some aspect of the state of the world at large or the state of their lives.

And as they map this dying life they’re describing, the ones who look like they’re finding their way toward joy are honest about it. They’re not fighting reality but are moving toward a kind of radical acceptance of the way things are. And yet the ones who are moving toward joy are also doing what Allene and Sarah both did. They’re asking what could a resurrection working God still do here? What ridiculous hope do I still dare to hold?

What could happen in my life to make me laugh again, and keep on laughing through death itself into the final resurrection, when death is no more and all things are renewed?

I’d love to close us with a chance for us to ask these questions. I have a dare for you and then two questions for meditation and reflection, to see what a resurrection-loving God might stir in us.

Can we try together?

OK, first I invite you as you look at your life, to embrace it with passion and courage.

Try This:

  • Dare not to just muddle through.

You’re not dead yet. There is still more connection, more joy, more satisfaction, more life to be found.

And now let’s take a minute to meditate on two questions.

  • Radical acceptance – Where are you called to accept your dying life?
  • Ridiculous hope – Where is God inviting you to laughter-sparking resurrection?

An Invitation to Civility and a Different Way of Public Engagement

Have you felt some anger out in public recently? Maybe even some over-the-top, crazy, mind-boggling anger?

My wife Grace was driving the other week and she passed this car on the side of the road. It was pulled over – all the way to the curb – and she passed slowly, legally, all that. A few minutes later, she sees a car racing up behind her in her rear-view mirror and thinks: That looks like the stopped car I passed back there. And she was right. Because when she pulled up to the next stop sign, the other car, pulled up to her left, in the middle of the road, rolled down its window and stared screaming at her: blaming her for passing her, even yelling that she could have killed someone’s child. Grace was speechless at first, but then she was like: you were pulled over on the side of the road, and I slowed down and then… just kept on driving. I really have no idea what you’re talking about. And the other driver – stopped right in the middle of the road now – just kept on yelling. She pulled out her cell phone, told Grace she was taking pictures of her license plate, and that she was going to report her. For what, Grace had no idea, so Grace left her with her phone out, and calmly pulled away. A little shaken, though.

Has that kind of thing happened to you this year? Have you maybe done that kind of thing? I asked over Facebook, and my friends said yes.

A lot of us are angry these days.

Ann Bauer wrote a column in the Washington Post last week about this. She titled it: “Our Anger is Poisoning Us.” It took her a while to notice, because just a few days before the presidential election, her 28-year old son died, quite suddenly and mysteriously. And for about six months, she withdrew from a number of parts of her day to day life, and the people she interacted with largely knew about her tragedy, and these folks – of a range of political persuasions and demographics and situations in life – they were uniformly kind and decent and downright sacrificially loving to her.

But as soon as she started to re-engage with day to day working and commuting and social media use and all the rest, she thought, My God, everybody is absolutely enraged. And it’s killing us. She recounts a number of stories like Grace’s and worse, and notes that while there are some things for sure that are worth being downright, livid angry about, anger alone doesn’t save anyone or anything. It rips up the angry one inside, and tears our civic life apart, without replacing it with anything better.

What do you think about that? How do you feel, I wonder, about the levels of rage in our public discourse, and maybe even in your extended family or social circles or workplace or day to day public life?

——————————————————————————————-

We, of course, are not the first people to be dissatisfied with the state of our world and the state of our public life.

Much of the New Testament is made up of the stories and letters to little house churches – little communities of Jesus-centered faith much smaller than Reservoir. And in the mid to late first century, the Kingdom of Rome had gotten bigger and stronger. Rome claimed to be an empire of peace and prosperity and victory that would last forever. But on closer look, this wasn’t at all the case. Colonies were held and exploited with high taxes, public executions, and other state-sanctioned violence. Money flowed toward the wealthy in the empire’s big cities and away from everybody else. Slaves and children were subject to rape and beatings, and women were second class citizens at best. This was a Kingdom of violence. And as the first century moved on, it was increasingly hostile to followers of Jesus.

What were they to do? Get angry and fight? Give up? Assimilate?

At their best, they made a different set of choices, which I want to explore today. I want to talk about the choice to take the person and teaching of Jesus seriously in our public engagement and to consider the civility we’ll practice as well as the power that we’ll find if we do that.

Many of us have been reading the last book of the Bible, Revelation, this past month, as part of our practice of Lent we call 40 Days of Faith. And in Revelation, we encounter some strong language about the times those faith communities are living in.

The author, named John, looks at the Roman Empire they’re living under and names it Babylon, the Jewish symbol for a city of violence and evil. He calls out greedy merchants, slave traders, business associations that push their members to moral compromise, civic celebrations that encourage spiritual selling-out. And he says the Roman government and the local collaborating kiss-ups are like ugly and aggressive beasts and dragons. Revelation speaks truth to corrupt power, it unveils the lies and manipulation of commercial and religious and civic propaganda. It does not mince words in naming what’s wrong in its times.

And yet, Revelation’s call to faith centers on a God who doesn’t play by the same rules. Specifically, it centers on a God who looks like Jesus – a Lamb, that even after resurrection, is still stained with its own blood. Jesus wields power, John says, symbolized by a sword and a rod of iron. But the sword is always coming out of his mouth, not in his hands. Jesus’ power is his words, not in violence. And the rod of iron is an old Bible quote that is transformed as the Lamb becomes a shepherd. Jesus isn’t a charismatic, narcissistic leader but a shepherd who takes care of his followers, and wipes their tears away while he leads them somewhere better.

Revelation writes a story about God and about power and leadership that is better than the civic and religious life its age had ever known.

And so the call to action for these communities is not angry venting and violence, but instead a call to come out of all that, and to be like Jesus. John’s call to action is to witness, for the faith communities to use their words and especially their actions to live like Jesus did, to engage in public life as Jesus would, even suffering and dying if necessary, because even if that happened, they like Jesus would rise again.

Revelation doesn’t get into the details of what this might look like. It’s imaginative poetry, not linear teaching. But we get some sense of what its vision for a life of public engagement might look like a generation earlier in another first century document, a letter called I Peter.

Let me read you an excerpt from the middle of the letter. It goes like this:

I Peter 3:8-17 (NRSV)

8Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. 9Do not repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse; but, on the contrary, repay with a blessing. It is for this that you were called—that you might inherit a blessing. 10For

“Those who desire life
    and desire to see good days,
let them keep their tongues from evil
    and their lips from speaking deceit;
11 let them turn away from evil and do good;
    let them seek peace and pursue it.
12For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
    and his ears are open to their prayer.
But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

13Now who will harm you if you are eager to do what is good? 14But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, 15but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; 16yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. 17For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil.

So, Peter is riffing on this Hebrew spiritual poem, this song, called Psalm 34: I Will Bless the Lord at all Times. It’s a beautiful poem that says that God meets with people who cry out to God. That people who look to God in our need will be able to not just believe God is good, not just hope God is good, but taste and see that God is good.

But, typical for earlier forms of Jesus’ religious tradition, it also says that one way people can taste and see that God is good is when he takes out your enemies.

The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous,
    and his ears are open to their cry.
16The face of the Lord is against evildoers,
    to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
17When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears,
    and rescues them from all their troubles.
18The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
    and saves the crushed in spirit.

19Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
    but the Lord rescues them from them all.
20He keeps all their bones;
    not one of them will be broken.
21Evil brings death to the wicked,
    and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.
22The Lord redeems the life of his servants;
    none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.

You all – people that have reason to be hurt and angry – God’s close to you, the text says. God’s good to you. But those evil folks that could rile you up – relax, don’t worry. God’s gonna get em!

Now, don’t get me wrong. Unpopular as it is in the 21st century, and unsophisticated as it sounds, I still believe in God’s judgment. I don’t think God is angry or arbitrary or violent about it – I think the language like that in the Bible is metaphor. But I do think that people and churches and companies and cultures and countries that do evil and do not repent are going to suffer for it – often in this life, always in the next. I don’t know what that’s going to look like exactly. I don’t think it necessarily means fiery hell forever or anything like that. But I believe in judgment. I think it’s good news that powerful evil that refuses to change is going to have to change and face the pain its made or face consequence.

Now Peter in this letter quotes the Psalm, but do you notice that when he’s looking through the lens of Jesus, he subverts this end-part of its message?

Evil, Peter says, is out to harm. It wants to get what it wants, no matter what abuse or suffering it causes. That driver Grace encountered wanted to not be embarrassed by its own bad driving, or wanted payback for an imagined slight. Other angry people we encounter in our lives want attention or want power or want revenge for the wrong they perceive was done to them, real or imagined. Companies and politicians often want profit or votes, with no concern for the public good of their communities or the flourishing of their employees or customers or their constituents.

And Peter calls that out. He names and validates the pain and anger of the community he’s writing to. But then he says, don’t play their game. Play Jesus’ game by seeking blessing – by being people that don’t try to take back for yourselves but seek everybody’s highest good, your enemies included!

He says when you do this, you’re going to get blessing. You’re going to feel joy, because this is a powerful way to live. You’re going to feel God – tasting and seeing that God is good – because God lives where people live this way. And you’re going to win sometimes, because your enemies will be shamed by how well you treat them. This was famously at the heart of the civil disobedience of Ghandi in India and of the Black Christian leaders of the civil rights movement here in this country.

And Peter says, you’re going to feel Jesus, because this is how he lived. In fact, in addition to riffing on Psalm 34, Peter is riffing on one of Jesus’ most important teachings, called the Beatitudes, which is a fancy word for blessings, because Jesus is telling his students how to find blessing in life. Where to get happiness and well-being.

He says Take joy when people go after you for doing the right thing, because you’ll know you’re in God’s land then. You’ve got the whole Kingdom of God. And – as we printed on your programs:

Matthew 5:9 (NRSV)

9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Want to experience being God’s kid? Want to be a child of God in a fractured world? Get out there in your family, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, in your politics, and be Jesus. Seek blessing, but do it Jesus’ way. Be a peace-maker, which doesn’t mean avoid conflict. Peace in ancient Jewish culture, in languages like Hebrew, and Aramaic, even in Arabic, is some version of shalom, or salaam. It means well-being, wholeness, it means peace with justice. Go after this, by engaging in your pain, but engaging with love and kindness for your enemies, and you’ll get blessing. Go after your own good but the good of your enemy too, and you’ll shine. It’ll go well for you.

This is our calling.

Could you imagine engaging in public life in a way that’s different from the resentment-driven selfish anger of our moment?

Engaging in public life with civility, with radical love that seeks your own deepest blessing, by seeking others’ blessing as well?

What might this look like?

I’d like to tell you some stories.

I.

The first is about the founder of a mosque, who showed a nominally Christian community what the way of Jesus looks like.

Hisham Yasin was born a Palestinian refugee in Syria, and came to America to join family here in 1996, with nothing. He lived in a rundown house alongside rats and roaches, while he washed dishes in a restaurant and his dad collected cans. Eventually, Hisham and his brother started a used car dealership that did well. And in this historically White and Black town, they lived with more and more Muslim immigrants like themselves who had settled in the area, some of whom founded a mosque together. They named it Al Salaam – place of peace. It was a gathering space for Hisham’s community, a place of worship and home, a blessing.

But for a 20-year old white man named Abraham Davis and his friends, it represented something else. To them it was a symbol of the growing Muslim community they resented because they were new to Arkansas and new to America but they were wealthier and more successful.

Abraham grew up dirt poor, the oldest son in a family where his dad regularly beat his mom. Abraham prayed as a kid that God would do something to protect his mom and him and his brother, and months later, his dad got sick and died. Abraham thought it was his fault. He got in a lot of trouble in school, didn’t do well, was a social outsider too, and dropped out at 18 before he could graduate.

In the days leading up to the last presidential election, he had been hanging out more and more with these two friends. All of them resented the changes in their community, all of them were white supremacists, but the most virulent of the three talked Abraham and the other guy into going out one night that October and vandalizing the local mosque.

Hisham was the first leader to arrive the next day. Someone had called him to report what had happened, and he rushed over to the mosque to see swastikas spray-painted onto the bricks, along with slogans like “Go Home” and even a Latin phrase that means “God wills it” that was a rallying cry centuries ago in the crusades.

It was devastating for them. What had they done to deserve this resentment? This damage to their mosque? This hostility?

Thing is, the community rallied to their support. Letters, flowers, phone calls flowed in, day after day.

And then four months later, Abraham Davis was picked up by the police. His family didn’t have the $1500 for bail, so he went to prison while he awaited trial. The DA said they were going to make an example of him and his friends, charge them not just with vandalism, but with a felony charge that would keep them in jail for years.

But then some unexpected things happened. Abraham wrote a letter from jail, to the leaders of the mosque. He wrote: What I did was wrong and y’all did not deserve to have that done to you. I hurt y’all and I am haunted by it. And even after all this you still forgave me. You are much better people than I.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, and that is honestly really scary. But I just wouldn’t want to keep going on without trying to make amends. I wish I could undo the pain I helped to cause. I used to walk by your mosque a lot and ask myself why I would do that. I don’t even hate Muslims. Or anyone for that matter.

“All in all,” he concluded, “I just want to say I’m sorry.”

And then leaders of the mosque went to bat for him. They pleaded for mercy. They showed up at court dates, bargained with the DA, and told him to drop the charges entirely, just let Abraham pay them his part in the cost of the damages.

The DA, though, didn’t want him to get off too easily, and so he comprised. In exchange for a guilty plea to the felony charges, he let Abraham Davis avoid jail time and enter probation, with a series of fines and fees attached to it. And that’s what happened – except Hisham Yasim through a wrench into that punishment as well when he took a donation that had been made to the mosque and used it to pay off all of Abraham’s court and probation fees.

He did it because he felt bad for Abraham Davis, despite the awful thing he had done. He also did it because it was right, because it’s what his faith directed him to do.

Yasim says the whole experience has been great for them. Through people’s sympathy, and through the press coverage of their mercy, people in Arkansas better understand and value and respect their Muslim neighbors. Yasim sees it all as a blessing in disguise.

So does Abraham Davis, whose life has been turned around.

Abraham wanted to visit the mosque and say his thanks in person, but the terms of his probation don’t allow it. So he posted a note on facebook instead. He wrote:

“Well, I’m home now. I just want to say thank you to all those who have been supporting me and a big thanks to the guys at the mosque who have been supportive and helpful and I pray blessings over them.”

The next day, he saw a response from Wasim, Hisham’s son.

“Bro move on with life we forgave you from the first time you apologized don’t let that mistake bring you down,” he had written. And then, Abraham’s favorite line: “I speak for the whole Muslim community of fort smith we love you and want you to be the best example in life we don’t hold grudges against anybody!”

Abraham said it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.

Dang. This is not what I want when someone does me wrong, to engage their wrong with as much love and blessing and forgiveness as it takes to change their life for the better and to uplift my cause as well.

I just want to vent my anger, or forget about it and move on.

This has also not been my sense of how to change the world. Which makes me normal, right, because most people don’t think this is how you bless the world.

Our lobbyists twist truth to manipulate and get their causes favorable legislation or funding. Our politicians and nations freely use coercion as part of a so-called greater good, the ends justifying the means. We all shout each other down on social media, to humiliate our foes or at least to gather our friends so they can tell us how right we are. Our leaders, leaders in the church too, have usually played these kinds of games.

The witnesses to Jesus call for a different kind of engagement, though, to look evil in the eye and to give it back blessing, to love the people we can’t stand with a tender heart, with a humble mind.

Again, this is not withdrawing from society when it gets ugly. And it’s certainly not avoiding conflict and just rolling over and sucking up ill treatment of ourselves or the people we care about. It’s just choosing a different way of engaging, one that looks like Jesus, one that disarms an evildoer and promotes peace and blessing.

We celebrate this kind of life when see it, even if it’s hard to live ourselves.

Yesterday was St. Patrick’s Day, and somewhere in the middle of today’s parade in Southie and Irish pride, green McShamrock Shakes and endlessly flowing beer, there’s Saint Patrick himself, who as a British teenager, was taken as a slave by Irish raiders. When he returned home, God gave him a vision to return to Ireland and share with them, at risk to himself, that God loved them so much, he gave his life for them, even when they were God’s enemy.

Can you imagine anything more beautiful? This risky, loving, absurd move that transformed the history of an island.

It’s the way of Jesus that we catch in surprising places.

II.

Just after Christmas last year, the actor and comedian Sarah Silverman was doing her daily, snarky thing on twitter. When a young man dropped a one word comment on her. I can’t say it here – it’s an expletive, and a nasty, misogynist one at that. But while her followers were coming to her defense, Silverman took a few minutes to read his feed and learn about him – his chronic back pain, his bitter attitude toward everyone and everything. Then she wrote back:

I believe in you. I read your timeline & I see what your doing & your rage is thinly veiled pain. But you know that. I know this feeling. P.S. My back sucks too. See what happens when you choose love. I see it in you.

She then kept up a conversation, gave him some advice, and later made sure his medical bills were paid for. All this because he swore at her.

Later, the guy was interviewed about all that happened. Here’s what he had to say: “I was once a giving and nice person, but too many things destroyed that and I became bitter and hateful,” he said. “Then Sarah showed me the way. Don’t get me wrong, I still got a long way to go, but it’s a start.”

So it is.

Friends, this stuff works. When we engage in life with peacemaking love, we’re more likely to change a bitter heart. We’re more likely to secure justice for ourselves or someone else. And we’re guaranteed to show a violent, bitter world what Jesus looks like.

Wanna try? Let’s talk about it.

How to Engage in Public Life with Power and Civility:

 

  • Embody humility and love and kindness in your pursuit of truth or justice.

Don’t be an arrogant know it all, even if you’re right. Don’t mansplain or preach back at the world. Speak your truth – be ready to speak, Peter says, but with gentleness and an open mind.

  • Display Jesus to the world – when necessary, use words.

This is an old quotation from St. Francis of Assisi – preach the gospel, tell the good news, and only when necessary, use words. Because the most powerful way to speak Jesus is to embody him. The most powerful good news is seen more than heard.

Be like Sarah Silverman when you’re taunted or slandered. Be like St. Patrick when you face hardship or adversity. Be like Hisham Yasin when your community is under threat, or you want to advocate or come alongside someone else’s community under threat. Be justice cloaked in love. Be the blessed peacemaker.

And – since this takes strength and security, good news power – if you’re not ready yet, just be silent for a bit. Sit with Jesus, who has good news for you in your pain. Meditate each day on Psalm 34, that shares the good news that God is with you, that God sees in justice and will act.

But remember that God’s most decisive action was Jesus, and shaping a community of Jesus followers on earth – who by the power of the Spirit of God will know the love of Jesus and will go out and be Jesus too.

  • Listen to – don’t judge – personal stories attached to public pain.

This is what I’m asking you of your own stories, if you’ve got them. Listen to yourself. Pay attention to your own pain and rage – ask where it comes from and engage the people and forces that have caused it when you can.

And when you encounter other people’s pain and rage – even if they’re behaving badly out of it – try and hear the stories behind them without judgment. See if you can love the person who has that story.

  • Consider participating in our house meeting campaign this year.

We have an opportunity this year to do this work together.

Reservoir is a member of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization that helps congregations in our city engage well in public life together. And this year, our biggest action will be a series of house meetings, where we get to tell and listen to the stories behind why we care about what we do in public life.

These aren’t debates or arguments and if you’re thinking about national political battles, they’re not about that either.

They’re an opportunity to share our personal story of why we’re troubled by how unaffordable housing is, or what’s not working for our kids and or what didn’t work for us in our public schools, or the story you have behind any public concern that troubles you.

And these are gatherings to listen to one another and for our church to discover how we can equip one another to take action, and for the congregations in our city to discover together the stories we most want to tell people in power.

If you’re a community group leader, you’ll have the opportunity in April or May to host one of these gatherings with one of us who’s a trained facilitator joining you. In the next few weeks, you’ll start to see announcements in our Events and Happenings about these gatherings as well. I hope many of you will be able to participate.

Sexual Violence Has No Place in Our Future

The following is a close (but not exact) transcript of Steve Watson’s sermon from 2/18/2018:

Sexual violence has been a big part of our past. I’ve been riveted this past year as woman after woman has spoken up about experience of sexual assault in the workplace. This moment where the victim’s voice of #metoo and the powerful strength of #timesup are so fresh in our consciousness is part of why we’re having this Speak Out Sunday.

I’ve also followed, as have many of you, the stories of some of the youngest survivors of sexual assault who have been speaking out in recent months. Well over a hundred women spoke at the trial of convicted sexual assaulter, Larry Nassar, about their trauma, when as teen and preteen and even younger girls they were sexually assaulted by the physician who was empowered to care for them. Judge Aquilina, in her role of overseeing a public reckoning in this case, dubbed these courageous young women the “sister survivor warriors.”

Stories and fears that women have known for years are being talked about where men hear as well. Stories that may not exactly be violent, but are certainly intrusions, violations. Women recounting the many times they have not been listened to, of being kissed or hugged or touched when they were trying to make it clear they weren’t interested. We hear the line about men going out on dates worrying if they’re going to make a good impression, and women heading going out worrying if the man will try to rape her.

Those of us who’ve paid less attention to sexual and gender based violence are learning that this is no small phenomena that we can associate only with Hollywood or college campuses or youth sports. Sexual violence impacts all of us.

Researchers estimate that in the United States, as many as one in three women have experienced sexual assault, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. The same is true for one in four men. Globally, one in three women will be raped, beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. The rates of sexual violence toward women are even higher in various regions where cultural or political or law enforcement issues exacerbate this crisis.

Estimates of the numbers of adults who were sexually abused as children are hard to come by with total accuracy, but the lowest numbers I’ve seen are that 1 in 5 women and 1 in 10 men were sexually abused as children. A CDC study says it’s more like 1 in 4 women, and 1 in 6 men. As I’ve shared with this congregation before, I am one of those men. As a preteen, a neighbor years older than me lured me into what was called a friendship, but which he used to gratify his own warped need for sexual attention and connection.

When women are oppressed in these ways, these women and entire communities suffer. When children are abused, some in turn afflict abuse on others. Others of us suffer relational or sexual or psychological and spiritual harm that shatters parts of our souls and lives.

No sector of society, churches included, has been immune to these problems. And churches have often been complicit in particular ways in covering up abuse, failing to listen to or trust victims, and siding with perpetrators. This was well-documented in the worldwide clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church, which our city played a unique role in exposing. But it’s not a Catholic-specific problem.

Rachel Denhollander is one of the women who testified about Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of her when she was in the US Gymnastics program. And in her testimony, she specifically spoke about her faith in Jesus and its role in her healing, including the freedom to forgive. Church leaders picked up the story and talked about how wonderful it was that this Christian woman was forgiving her abuser. It had kind of a self-congratulatory spin, like how great are the Christians on this. Denhollander said, no, no, no, you’re not getting the whole story here.

She said – For one, I spoke about forgiveness at this man’s sentencing hearing. Forgiveness and justice are both of God, she said. Sexual assaulters need to experience the consequences and the guilt of their crimes.

And Denhollander also highlighted that many churches have been some of the very worst places for victims of sexual abuse and assault. Because they’ve counseled victims to stay quiet or simply to forgive the abusers that did them harm. Denhollander was part of a church network that was part of covering up sexual abuse allegations and that made it clear to her and her husband that they weren’t welcome, when she spoke out against her abuser.

Search #churchtoo on twitter for harrowing tales of sexual abuse and violence and cover-up within churches of all stripes. It’s horrible.

Sexual violence and abuse has been an enormously painful and common feature of our collective human past.

Even our scriptures bear witness to this. Right in the middle of the Genesis narrative we’ve been discussing this month, in the midst of these stories of the founding fathers and mothers of the nation of Israel, there is chapter that tells a story of sexual violence that leads to a large outbreak of community violence and shattered lives.

Genesis 34 is often subtitled by Bible editors as “the rape of Dinah.” There’s a little excerpt in your program, but the basic outline of the story is that one of Jacob’s daughters named Dinah is travelling alone for a short distance in a field. A patriarchal misogynist would say, Ah, she put herself in a dangerous situation. A normal human being would notice that she was taking a walk and going about her regular public life, when a man without self-control didn’t respect her person or dignity.

The pain of Genesis 34 that begins with this life-shattering rape of Dinah by Shechem continues on at least four fronts.
Shechem thinks he can make it right by marrying Dinah, and so he and his dad go to Dinah’s father, Jacob, to get permission for this marriage. All this is playing by the rulebook of a patriarchal society, but it doesn’t mean we have to find any part of that rulebook fair. I spoke last week about our need to dismantle patriarchy, certainly in its crude and ancient forms like this, but also any system or way or relating that says a man could somehow make up for sexual violence – or domestic violence, for that matter – by being kind or loyal at some other time. That does not balance out the scales, and does not make women safe. No matter what the circumstances, there’s never any time or setting in which sexual violence is acceptable or defensible.

Secondly, Dinah’s father Jacob keeps silent on the offense against his daughter. He doesn’t speak up or do anything.

A third pain comes when Dinah’s older brothers are angry, but rather than find some kind of constructive or legal or restorative path for justice, they engineer the mass murder of Shechem’s whole family.

And then finally, for us, there is the pain of this story sitting there in our Bibles without any commentary on what God might have thought of the whole thing.

What does it mean that sexual violence sits there in Genesis with the only editorial comment being that the victim’s family’s vengeance went way over-board?

How’s that supposed to speak to us?

Well, I’m going to come at this from the angle of another scripture in a moment, but I’d like to start by saying that wherever we’ve seen sexual violence, it’s always been an offense to God, and a shattering of God’s good, redemptive hopes for the human story.

As a kid, I didn’t understand much about what the guy who abused me was doing or why, but as he sought to spend more and more time with me, and expose his body and his sexual fantasies to me, it became clear that he had nothing to give me, that he was there only to take from me. He violated my trust, he shattered my innocence, and put a trauma into my life that’s made it harder to live in love and peace with both people and God. Sexual abuse is so clearly a shattering of God’s good intentions for our childhood.

We heard so articulately from Kaylie, just now, about her own experience, and what a breach of trust and a violation of relationships sexual violence was to her. Stealing years of her life that she can barely remember, as she had to focus in on this trauma week after week after week.

This is so clearly not how God meant for our young adult lives or for our first loves to go.

Even in Genesis, there is a hint that everything about Shechem’s crime and Dinah’s suffering in not how things are meant to be. Centuries ago, rabbis noticed that the name of God is never mentioned in Chapter 34, not once, which is unusual in Genesis. But the very last word of Chapter 33 and the very first of Chapter 35 are both the name of God. This rape of Dinah and subsequent blood bath are tales of God-not-with-us.

In a God-soaked tale of a God-soaked world, Shechem’s rape of Dinah, and the mix of neglect and violence that follow, is a picture of a world where God’s ways are absent.

Sexual and gender based violence, indeed violence and human diminishment of any form, is an affront to the God who made people in God’s image. And it’s an experience that leaves us with the opposite of what God wants for our encounters with God and our encounters with every other person as well.

Where God’s ways are honored, there is love, because love – the scriptures tell us – is the very nature and character of God.

The Bible famously riffs on love as being like this:

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
I Corinthians 13:4-7 (NRSV)

When you think about it, sexual violence does all the opposite of this.

A man who doesn’t wait for consent or listen to “no” is impatient and unkind.

An adult who uses a child for sexual gratification is insisting on his own way – envious and rude don’t begin to describe the offense.

The abuser never wants the truth to be told, but threatens and lies about their wrongdoing.

And a person who does harm to their partner or stranger or enemy in war bears and believes nothing, hopes nothing, endures nothing, but takes and scars and walks away.

All this is the opposite of love. This taking and using of another for our own gratification of power, this is never how God meant you to treat another human being. And it is never how God wants for you to be treated as well.

God wants us to experience love. For all our encounters with others to mirror a growing connection with God as well, in which we discover that God is also patient and kind. That God is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. That even God does not insist on God’s own way; that God is not irritable or resentful; God does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This is the God who is with us today, for our healing, for our reckoning, to give us courage to speak out, and the power to know that we are loved, and that we can move forward and find redemption.

If you’ve experienced sexual abuse or violence, or in any way known in your body the consequence of your voice and dignity not being honored, God is here for your healing and restoration. God has nothing to take from you. God has no shame for you. This is not your fault.

We’ll talk in a minute about some resources for moving forward. But know that however long the journey away is toward trust and peace, God will hold your hand. I suffered a relatively less severe childhood sexual abuse, and had a few years in my late teens and early 20s of dealing with that more pointedly. Talking to lots of people, including a licensed counselor, lots of reading and reflection and prayer, and that was enough to help launch me into a good life and a good marriage and a pretty healthy, self-controlled, flourishing sexuality. But this past year – 20 years later – I found myself getting stressed out and blue, and it was clear this needed my intention again.

Healing processes can take time, they can have more than one step or cycle – usually that’s the case.

But now, more than ever, know that there are great resources available for you, there are good people, including in this church community, who will listen to you. And God knows what you’ve been through and loves you and is patient and kind to heal and restore you.

I’ll say just briefly if you’re here today and your conscience is pricked, because you’ve done someone harm or even wonder if that thing you thought was okay was in fact using or harming someone, don’t ignore that unease. Talk to God about it. Perhaps confess it to a pastor or someone you trust.

This is a serious thing. If you’ve harmed a child, you’ll be reported. That’s the right thing to do and it’s the law. But that reckoning is necessary. And even if you’ve done something – as so many of us, particularly so many of us men have – that isn’t illegal or is maybe in the distant past at this point, that doesn’t mean it’s OK. And a confession can be the beginning of figuring out what restitution and justice and forgiveness and freedom might look like as well.

I’d like to wrap up with four final thoughts – steps that might helps us walk toward a future free of sexual violence.

The first is this:

Speak out about sexual violence – help create a world where there are no bystanders.

I’m so grateful to be here at Reservoir, doing this together. I’ve learned recently how rare it for churches to say this for some reason, so the clarity is important. Sexual violence has no place in our future.

And that means there is no place for silent bystanders on this topic. Men, in particular, if you hear people talking or joking about sexual violence, interrupt – say that’s not OK. If someone tells you about their experience with sexual abuse or violence, believe them, tell them you’re so sorry, ask them if you can help in any way. We’ll be hosting a training here from BARCC in a couple of weeks about helpfully responding to someone else’s disclosure, if you’d like more on this. But if someone discloses their experience to you and you’re not sure what to do, relax, the burden is not on you to give them advice or fix things for them. The best thing you can do for now is to listen, and believe. And if they are a child, reach out for help immediately.

Secondly:

Endeavor to make your speech and sexuality reflect Jesus’ vision of love.

Certainly commit to have no violence attached to your sexuality. From my perspective, this would also include not consuming images of sexuality from the internet porn industry that has a lot of violence in it, on and off screen.

But more than this, ask how your words and your sexuality can be patient and kind and generous, not insisting on your own way. The talk about consent in our times is good. Consent for any sexual activity is certainly a legal and ethical minimum, but given what God teaches us about love, it is also way too low a bar.

We want our speech and our sexual behavior to not violate but also to reflect the love of Jesus, to seek the other’s highest good. Commitment, generosity, and respect are all part of this picture.

Men in particular, can we be people who never take anything sexually that isn’t being joyfully given to us by a loving partner?

And all of us, in our sexuality and in our speech, can we learn the sweet and kind ways of the love of God?

Thirdly:

Pursue the recovery of your voice and your healing.

We’ve invited BARCC to partner with us on this service and we’ve given you resources in your programs because we know that today’s topic is as sensitive and complicated as things get. And we want you to know about some of the many resources that are available to you. We’ve given our community group leaders even more, and our pastors here at Reservoir have these resources as well, if you talk with any of us.

There’s no magic, instant pill to get your voice back when you’ve been silenced or not listened to, and there is no instant balm for our healing, friends. But it’s also true that there’s no need to stay silent, and there’s no doom over anyone’s future in this room. Sexual assault and violence and abuse, the disregard for our voices and joy and dignity, can shatter us, but it can’t rob us of our future. It can’t take away our mind and our body’s capacity to move forward and heal. And it can’t stop us from reaching out our hand for the love of God and the help of friends, even when just holding out our hand and saying, “I have to tell you something. I need some help.” Is all we can do.

If that’s all you’ve got today, that’s enough. God is patient and kind and generous and rejoices in the truth, and loves you enough to walk the long road of healing with you.

So we invite you today to:

Hear God’s hopeful invitation to a connected, colorful future.

For everyone here who’s had personal experience with the shattering pain of sexual violence, there is the experience of how that can disconnect us and turn our life bleak and lonely and grim. But God has more for you than that.

When I step off the stage in a moment, our prayer ministry team is available in the back right to pray for anyone here for the rest of service. They’re not trained counselors or anything, so I encourage you if you want prayer, don’t try to disclose a story to them, just say please pray for me, and they’d be glad to do so.

We’ll also have our usual music, a place where we can sing to and about a good and loving God who is with us and has our back today. You can sing along or just listen.

But before that, we’re going to move straight into communion today, into this physical reminder that Jesus isn’t just watching from afar, but that in Jesus, God has joined us in the whole human experience, including in any suffering. That God has been subject to violence and abuse and injustice, and has used that experience to know all of our pain, and to make a way forward toward new life and connection and redemption.

As our band comes to the stage and as we prepare for communion, I’ll let you know as well that today’s communion song will be a performed one for us to listen to, not a worship song. It’s a pop song, in fact, but the singer Kesha, who’s shared her own experience of sexual assault as an adult. And in the song Kaiti is going to cover for us, “Rainbow,” she shares of her story of moving toward healing, out of a bleak and silent suffering into a life of color and freedom again.

We believe that Jesus is doing that for all us as Jesus reconnects us with God and ourselves. So we’ll play “Rainbow” for you, as we take communion.

Resources | Speak Out Sunday