Have Regard For This Vine

I preached this sermon on Psalm 80 at Dulin United Methodist Church.

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"Have Regard For This Vine"

August 18, 2019

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

If I had to name the one fact about myself that probably surprises the most amount of people, it would be this: I’m a big fan of country music. I know, I know, I’m not the typical representative of the country music target demographic. It’s not the genre that most people expect a brown classically trained vocalist from the great state of New York of all places who is an unapologetic feminist with a political framework that falls…let’s just say on the left end of the spectrum to be blasting in the car while on a long road trip or using to pump himself up in the gym.

Truth be told, I’m not entirely sure what it is about country music that keeps my radio dial tuned to 98.7 WMZQ, DC’s one stop shop for today’s best country (if anyone out there has any connections to iHeart Radio, I'll happily accept a sponsorship deal). When I was a kid, I actually hated the genre, but that didn’t stop my own father from listening to the likes of Shania Twain and Alan Jackson while my brother and I were stuck in the car with him.

But as I got older, there was something about the simplicity of the genre that drew me back in. And yeah, yeah, I know that a lot of that is probably as manufactured and authentic as the tchotchkes in a Cracker Barrel Country Store right off the interstate, but at their best, country songs tell stories. Stories about love and loss. Life and death. Joy and hardship. And the music lets those stories shine through. You know, three chords and the truth and all that.

And sure. I get that it has a reputation of being sometimes overly dramatic or melancholy. But let’s be honest. If your wife leaves you, your dog dies, and your truck breaks down, you’re not having a great day, are you?

At its best, country music is deeply relatable. Consider, if you will, Miranda Lambert’s hit 2013 single “Mama’s Broken Heart”. It’s a song about a girl who is having a rough time going through a breakup. And so her mom—who comes from, as the narrator puts it, a “softer generation”—comes along and tells her to go and fix your makeup girl, it’s just a breakup girl…start acting like a lady…I raised you better even when you fall apart, to which the narrator defiantly cries out “but this ain’t my mama’s broken heart”.

Now hold onto your seats, because this might shock you, but not once in my life have I been a young girl going through a traumatic breakup. I know, right? I’m as surprised as you are. And yet, I still really relate to this song. Throughout my life, I’ve felt all sorts of implied and explicit pressures to keep my emotions in check—to get a grip and bite my lip just to save a little face. To never let ‘em see you cry. These pressures have come from places as intimate as family members and friends to external forces from the media and culture at large. I’ve never felt the urge to cut my bangs with some rusty kitchen scissors like the girl in the song, but I have felt the need to suppress the feelings I was feeling, and so I find something really cathartic about the narrator’s clapback to the one telling her to stuff it all in.

I suspect that I’m not the only one in here who feels pressured to suppress their emotions from time to time. To build up a thick façade and present a picture of your life to the world that is perfect, all while stifling any emotional expression that might reveal the cracks. Because if the world knew the honest truth about how we were feeling, that perfect picture we spent so long and worked so hard at cultivating would fall apart and the wall would come tumbling down and we’d be left in a state of profound vulnerability that, in spite of the instinct to share everything in our networked and digital age, is a posture we just aren’t accustomed to in today’s day and age. A state of profound vulnerability with which we haven’t been comfortable for a really long time. We can thank stoicism for that.

You see, in the Greco-Roman world, in which everything about life, society, and culture was highly ordered, the goal in life—regardless of who you were or what your station was—was to be as virtuous and manly as possible. Influenced by the stoic philosophers of their time, who believed that the virtuous life was a life governed by reason and dispassionate rational thinking, being as manly as possible included not letting emotional responses dictate the way you lived your life. This kind of virtuous life is one that everyone, regardless of their gender, was to strive for. Having an emotional outburst of any sort made you more womanly, which was to be avoided at all costs.

The hold of the Patriarchy goes way back.

A couple thousand years and one boost from an Enlightenment later and this gendered line of thinking still persists. When we tell our boys to man up or that men don’t cry—usually at the sight of a quivering lip or as their eyes are starting to well up with tears—we are reinforcing this dangerous ideology: that to show your emotions or express your feelings is womanly and to appear womanly robs you of your worth as a human. And how many times have women been told, in response to emotional distress, abuse, harassment, or trauma, that if they want to survive in a man’s world, they’ll just have to suck it up? It’s the same dangerous, underlying philosophy, just remixed for a different gender.

Of course, when we name it like that and put it in those terms, it sounds absurd to us. I’m sure that there is no one in here that consciously thinks that womanly expressions make a person inherently less worthy. And if there does happen to be anyone in here who does think that, I would like to kindly direct your attention to our two United Methodist Women groups who are, in all of their womanly glory, doing amazing work in the Falls Church community and beyond to keep our church’s mission and vision alive and well.

Nevertheless, even though we recognize that the underlying reason behind our discomfort when it comes to expressing our emotions is sexist and dangerous, the fact remains that we still have difficulty giving those who we interact with—even those who we are most close with, our friends and our family—an honest and authentic picture of our emotional state of minds. Who among us, when asked “how are you doing?” have never responded with “fine” when we knew, deep down, that things were not fine. That the world was not fine. That we were not fine.

Image Description: A two panel comic strip. The first panel has a brown dog wearing a hat nonchalantly sitting at a dining room table with a cup of coffee on it. The room around the dog is engulfed in flames and thick smoke fills the air. The second panel is a closer look at the dog, now smiling, in the room that's on fire. A speech bubble is above the dog, signifying that the dog is saying "This is fine."
Credit: KC Green

And I’ll be the first to admit that the church isn’t blameless when it comes to this. I grew up in a church that was very—let’s just say, prim and proper. Everything had to be perfect. Our choirs had to be the best choirs. Our preachers had to be the best, most qualified preachers. Our sanctuary had to be the prettiest, most beautifully ornate sanctuary. And don’t get me wrong, I really did love it. I loved listening to our world-renowned organist-in-residence wail away at magnificent preludes and postludes. I wouldn’t trade the crash course on theological discourse that my young mind tried to absorb in the form of dense sermons for anything in the world. Both experiences laid the foundation for my love of music and theology that I carry with me to this day. But as I look back on those formative years, I have to confess that I rarely, if ever, received the message that it’s okay to not be okay.

How many times, when we have gathered for worship throughout our lives, have we received that message?

How often does it appear in our hymns?

How often does it appear in our prayers?

In our fellowship together?

My guess is that for many of us, the answer would be not enough.

And that’s a real shame, because when we look at our scriptural witness, we see a profoundly different picture. Our lesson from the Psalms is just one example among many.

Like the Isaiah text, The Psalm uses imagery of a vineyard destroyed. However, unlike the Isaiah text, the destruction of the vineyard in the Psalm is not seen as an act of righteous judgement but rather carries the perception that God failed to be faithful to the covenant.

You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it.
You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land.
The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches;
It sent out its branches to the sea, and its shoots to the River.
Why then have you broken down its walls, so that all who pass along the way pluck at its fruit? 

Why then have you broken down its walls?

Why then have you broken down its walls?

This isn’t a prayer of confession. The psalmist doesn’t say that they did anything wrong, nor are they pleading for forgiveness.

It’s not the result of an act of repentance. The psalmist even makes a point of later saying then we will never turn back from you—then we will never turn back from you. Not “we know that we turned away from you and have seen the error of our ways and have reoriented our lives back to you”. No. It’s let your hand be upon us again and then we will never turn back from you.

This prayer is something else entirely. It’s called a lament. And guess what. The book of Psalms is full of them. As many as one third of the Psalms are Psalms of lament. It’s why sixteenth century Swiss reformer, John Calvin, called them “an anatomy of all parts of the soul” since they represent all the emotions we could ever know we have like a mirror.

Or, as a chaplain of mine was fond of saying, “Your wife left you, your dog died, and your truck broke down? There’s a Psalm for that.”

These Psalms of lament encourage us to look at the fire raging all around us and say this isn’t fine. Things are not fine. The world is not fine. We are not fine.

And what’s more, these Psalms also encourage us to adopt that same posture in our relationship with God. The book of Psalms is our common scriptural prayer book, after all. Each of the one hundred and fifty Psalms teach us how to pray in ways that are authentic to our lived experiences and faithful to God. And the Psalms of lament have a special place in that scriptural liturgy. Denise Dombkowski Hopkins, author of Journey Through the Psalms and my Hebrew Bible professor while I was at Wesley, identifies the Psalms of lament as being the most faithful prayers a believer can pray. It’s really easy to pray a prayer of thanksgiving, she says, but to be in a place of deep despair and to cry out “show yourself…come save us!” shows that you, 1) still acknowledge that God exists and cares about your cries and 2) believe that God has the capacity to do something about them and relieve them.

Laments come from a place of deep hope. Hope in a world more perfect than the world we find ourselves in. Hope that that more perfect world is possible.

I remember a romantic heartbreak that I went through a few years ago during my time at seminary. And to make matters worse, the heartbreak carried with it a shake to my sense of call. I knew that I had lost the relationship, but I desperately wanted that strong sense of call back.

I tried praying like I was typically taught—hands folded, head down. I tried reaching out to friends and pastors for support. But in the end, what brought me the most peace was sneaking into the chapel late one night after class.

It was dark.

I was the only one there.

And I just let God have it.

If you remember that one scene from the West Wing where Jed Bartlett is in the National Cathedral after his secretary and long-time friend’s funeral, it was kind of like that, only louder and with less Latin.

I screamed at God.

I cussed God out using just about every word in the book.

I questioned what more God wanted from me.

And when I ran out of words and my voice gave out, I collapsed onto the floor and wept like I hadn’t wept in a long time.

And as the walls of that sacred space echoed with the sounds of my cries and my profanities, I felt a calming presence wash over me. That night, I had the best night’s sleep that I had had since the breakup.

God doesn’t want us to stifle our emotions in the ways we interact with and relate to anyone.

God doesn’t tell us to fix our makeup.

God doesn’t tell us to get over it.

God doesn’t tell us to keep it together even when we fall apart.

Each and every one of our emotions is a God-given gift that we are meant to honestly and faithfully express in our lives and in our relationships, especially our relationship with God. Because guess what. God already knows the full extent of our emotional well-being.

When we lament, we honor our realities—our actual, messy realities; not the pristine and perfect ones we try to convince the world and ourselves are real.

And naming that things aren’t fine is the first step we need to take on the road to making a world that is.

Sacrificing to the Baals

I preached this sermon on Hosea 11:1-11 at Dulin United Methodist Church. If this sermon drives you to action, consider making a donation to Everytown for Gun Safety.

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"Sacrificing to the Baals"

August 4, 2019

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost, Year C

“Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies,

“Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Ladies and Gentlemen,

“Today, in Afghanistan, a girl will be born. Her mother will hold her and feed her, comfort her and care for her – just as any mother would anywhere in the world. In these most basic acts of human nature, humanity knows no divisions. But to be born a girl in today’s Afghanistan is to begin life centuries away from the prosperity that one small part of humanity has achieved. It is to live under conditions that many of us in this hall would consider inhuman.”

So begins the lecture former United Nations Security General, Kofi Annan, gave to the Nobel Committee upon receiving the centennial Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, nearly twenty years ago. Though, if we’re being honest, not much has changed in twenty years. That Afghan girl could very well have been born today. “We have entered the third millennium through a gate of fire,” Annan said three months after the events of September 11th.

Looking around now, maybe it wasn’t just the gate that was on fire.

It seems as though we have not learned our lesson. That hate begets hate and violence begets more violence and division begets more division.

Today, on the heels of yet another—I hate that word; another—mass shooting within our borders at the hands of homegrown white nationalist terrorism, that reality feels all too true. And sure, I could stand up here and say something like “God’s still on the throne,” but if I’m being honest with myself, that theological proclamation is starting to ring a little hollow. Because this—all of this—has been going on for a long time. A long time. Much longer than twenty years even. It goes all the way back to those pesky Baals.

Now, those of you unfamiliar with the intricacies of the foreign and domestic policies of the ancient divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah and who are following along in the bulletin are probably wondering what the heck is going on with that sermon title. Sacrificing to the Baals. Well, you all are in luck because the intricacies of the foreign and domestic policies of the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah are just the kinds of things that I kind of like to nerd out over.

I’m a real hoot at dinner parties.

The long and short of it is that all of their troubles boiled town to an economic system wherein wealthy landowners who lived in urban centers bought up and rented out land out in rural areas. Those who rented and worked the land could never afford to own it themselves, in part because the fruits of their labor went back to their landlords. It created a vicious and endless cycle of indebtedness and poverty and the land being overworked and stripped of its nutrients, becoming less and less fertile with each passing year. And what, might you ask, were those wealthy and elite landowners doing with the fruits of their tenants’ labor? Everything in their power to secure their own power and status. They would pay massive tributes to foreign empires in the hopes that they would deal peacefully with them, massive tributes that more often than not, came in the form of sacrifices to the gods and idols, also known as Baals, of the Assyrians and Babylonians (named after the Assyrian fertility god, Baal). The very empires that would eventually swallow them up and destroy their way of life.

So to recap, the ancient Israelite elite exploited their own people and used the results of their exploitation not to lift up the marginalized but to secure their own status by making lavish sacrifices to a foreign fertility god whose empire would one day totally conquer their land and spread them throughout the Levant.

We all on the same page? Exploitation. Sacrifice. Destruction.

The fall of the two kingdoms posed a major problem of theology for the people of God at that time. Though we now understand the Abrahamic religions to be what we call radically monotheistic—that is, there is one God and only one God—this wasn’t always the case. When we look at the texts written before the exile, we don’t find an outright denial of the existence of other Gods. Take the first commandment: “I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before me” you shall have no other gods before me; before me. It doesn’t say “I am the Lord your God and I’m the only God”. No, it says you shall have no other gods before me. As in, “yeah, sure there might be other gods out there, but I am your God and I come first in your lives.” It’s what religious scholars call henotheism, the worship of one God while not denying the existence or even possible existence of other, lesser deities.

And that lesser is an important distinction. In those times, gods were intimately linked with a nation’s identity, and the strength of a nation’s god was directly proportional to the strength of the nation itself. If two nations went to war with each other, the nation that won had a god who was stronger than the other nation’s god. And well, if your country lost the war or, heaven forbid, was conquered, then your god wasn’t all that great anyways so might as well start worshipping something else.

So yeah, when Israel and Judah fell to the Assyrians and the Babylonians respectively, they had a bit of a religious crisis on their hands. If Israel and Judah fell and their land was occupied and their people dispersed throughout the Ancient Near East and the Temple, God’s very own dwelling place, was destroyed, that must have meant that the God they worshipped—the God of Abraham and their ancestors—was weaker than the gods of the Assyrians and Babylonians and therefore less deserving of their worship and adoration. The loss of their land and power and status brought with it a loss of their religion too.

And yet, it’s also right around this time that we see a shift in the texts to a profession of that radical monotheism we’re familiar with today. Adonai, the God of Abraham and their ancestors was no longer seen as one God among many or even the strongest God among many, but rather the one and only God. The gods of the Assyrians and Babylonians, the Baals, were false gods. Their statues and idols were merely wood and stone. You didn’t take us over because our God is weaker than you; we’re the ones who fell away from our God.

We disobeyed the commandments.

We neglected to care for the most marginalized people. The orphan. The widow. The immigrant.

We stole their land and resources to pay tribute to foreign empires—to make sacrifices to their Baals.

Tribute and sacrifice that we thought would protect us.

Protect our status.

Protect our power.

Protect our privilege.

And if protecting ourselves meant stealing from our children and our elderly and our impoverished citizens—the very people our God commanded us to protect—so be it.

Your gods didn’t defeat our God! Our God used you to punish us for our transgressions.

And you know, I have to say. As far as theological Judo goes, that’s an outstanding move.

It’s the kind of move that allows a religion to not only survive, but flourish while the community is in the wilderness of exile, waiting for the day when God will settle them in their homes.

Now, before I continue, there’s a quick pastoral distinction I need to make. Note the conditions and context from whence that theology emerged. The community from which it comes is living through and reflecting on their own experiences. It’s not coming from a place of comfort and ease towards another person. They’re trying to make sense of their own trauma. The challenge with this kind of theological reasoning—that suffering is the result of God punishing us for our transgressions—is that it’s really easy to, with even the best of intentions in the world, externalize and push that theology on others living though their own traumatic experiences.

It’s one thing for me, myself, to say “the Lord is testing me” or “I screwed up”.

It’s quite another altogether for me to say to someone else “the Lord is testing you” or “you know, this is really your fault”, especially when I have more power and privilege than that someone else. 

And, to be perfectly clear, that line of thought isn’t universal in the prophetic texts either. In some places, sure, the prophets paint a picture of a God whose justice is swift. A God who is leading the armies of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But in other places, like our text this morning, we see a more nuanced approached. In this chapter, Hosea doesn’t paint a picture of God who is destroying Israel Godself. On the contrary. In this chapter, Hosea paints a picture of God who laments. Who grieves. Who mourns God’s children’s infidelity. The more I called them, the further they went from me. How can I hand you over Israel? How can I make you like Admah or treat you like Zeboiim; those two cities in the plain of Sodom and Gomorrah?

Hosea tells us that none of this—absolutely none of this—is what God desires. None of this brings God any joy. My heart winces within me.

My heart winces within me.

It’s a cry that reverberates through time and space.

Because, if we’re being honest, those Baals haven’t gone away, have they?

Oh sure, Assyria was eventually destroyed, and for that matter, so was Babylon. Their Baals and other idols reduced to rubble or, if they were lucky, sitting in a museum somewhere. But their lure has persisted through the ages and persists still today using different names and slogans and structures.

White supremacy.

Christian nationalism.

America first.

Privatized prisons.

Colonialism.

Nuclear proliferation (because pulling out of a nuclear treaty literally the week before we remember the anniversary of dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is par for the course, I guess). 

Militarized police forces.

Sexism.

Heteronormativity.

The NRA.

Thoughts and prayers.

Capitalism run amok.

Border security.

National security.

The military industrial complex.

Profit that comes from destroying our planet.

Profit that comes from destroying lives.

Patriarchy.

Every single time we try to protect ourselves and our own institutions at the expense of others.

All Baals. Every last one of them and more.

We pay tribute to them. We bow down and worship them. We make sacrifices to them. The lives of our children. And our children’s children. And our children’s children’s children. We think that if we just make one more sacrifice or say one more prayer to these false gods, then everything will be made right in the world without having to make any real change on our parts. Without realizing that the sacrifices we’re making and the tributes we’re paying are costing us everything; are costing us the lives of the very people we are called to protect and care for.

If we continue down this road, we can expect the same fate as those who came before us. Swords striking wildly in our cities, consuming our gates, and taking away everything we hold dear.

But there’s another way.

“Each of us,” Annan says, “has the right to take pride in our particular faith or heritage. But the notion that what is ours is necessarily in conflict with what is theirs is both false and dangerous. It has resulted in endless enmity and conflict, leading men to commit the greatest of crimes in the name of a higher power.” 

“It need not be so,” he continues, “We can love what we are, without hating what—and who—we are not.”

We can love what we are without hating what we are not.

We can hear the voice of God, roaring out like a lioness, and return to her like we are her cubs. We can turn away from the Baals enticing lure and re-align our lives with what God desires for us. All of us. Each and every one of us. Rich and poor. Free and fettered. Privileged and humiliated.

That might mean giving up our own power or letting go of our own privilege to stand alongside those who are most marginalized.

Or maybe it means using our power to be co-creators with God of God’s justice—using our power to dismantle the systems and structures that privilege certain people over others.

Both can be true.

Both have to be true.

“Your Majesties,

“Excellencies,

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

“You will recall that I began my address with a reference to the girl born in Afghanistan today. Even though her mother will do all in her power to protect and sustain her, there is a one-in-four risk that she will not live to see her fifth birthday. Whether she does is just one test of our common humanity – of our belief in our individual responsibility for our fellow men and women.

“But it is the only test that matters.”

I Have Seen The Lord

I delivered this message at Dulin United Methodist Church for an Easter Sunrise service. The scripture lesson is embedded in the message.

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"I Have Seen The Lord"

April 21, 2019

First Sunday in Easter

His name is Vedran Smailović. Currently living in Northern Ireland, he hails from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He currently spends his time as a composer and conductor, but before fleeing his homeland in the early 90s, he made his living as a professional cellist. He played for the Sarajevo Opera, the Sarajevo Philharmonic Orchestra, and a number of other professional orchestras in the region.

And then the siege started.

The Siege of Sarajevo. It was and still is the longest siege of a capital city in modern warfare. Inhabitants found themselves under bombardment from mortars and snipers stationed in the hills that surrounded the city. On average, the city would be struck three hundred and twenty-nine times per day. To this day, buildings and streets are still scarred by shells and rounds. Inhabitants were faced with a terrible choice. They could remain in the city and risk falling prey to the snipers or they could try to flee the city and risk capture. When the air cleared, over fourteen hundred days later, nearly fourteen thousand people were killed; over five thousand of whom were civilians.

This is where Smailovic found himself. A modern-day tomb, surrounded by death and destruction. The wages of the sins that blind us to the immutable fact that every human, regardless of their ethnic background, is a child of God were palpable. At the onset of the siege, he kept on keeping on. He tried to maintain a semblance of normalcy, to hold on to some element of life before the siege began. But then another mortar fell, and this time the victims were twenty-two people standing in a bread line, trying to get some much-needed sustenance.

For Smailovic, enough was enough. His conscious would not permit him to carry on as though nothing had happened.

Early the next morning, just after curfew lifted, he made his way to the spot that had been hit. To the spot where twenty-two lives were suddenly and cruelly extinguished wearing a freshly pressed tuxedo and carrying his instrument in one hand and a simple folding chair in the other. He set himself up and began to play Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor. A simple, but powerful tribute to the lives that had been lost. For twenty-two days, against the advisement of soldiers and government officials and other civilians, he would return to that very spot and play his cello as the rest of the city woke up. For twenty-two days, he placed himself in the sights of the snipers stationed throughout the city, and tried to do something—anything really—to add a bit of beauty and offer some much needed grace to a place devoid of both. To show all those who heard his music that this wasn’t the way the world had to be.

This wasn’t the way the world ought to be.

Through his protest, he became a bit of a legend. The Cellist of Sarajevo. And when the twenty-two days had passed, he would continue to offer his services as a musician for funerals of those fallen during the siege. Continually bearing witness to an alternate reality—a more perfect reality. A more perfect reality that is just within our grasp.

That’s the proclamation and promise of Easter, is it not?

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. 

I have seen the Lord, Mary cries. That which was dead is now alive. Early that morning, in a tomb surrounded by death, Mary proclaimed that death had been swallowed up. The power of love—God’s divine love—showed that it would yield to no one and no thing and no force. I have seen the Lord, and the world would never be the same.

This is our story. This story is the central story to our faith. Why does any other part of the witness matter? Because of this story. Without the resurrection, none of the sermons or miracles or sayings or signs or triumphal entries or vicious betrayals or brutal passions matter. Rather, the resurrection shows that all of it—all of it—was worth it. We don’t follow Jesus because he was a good guy. We follow Jesus because through him, the magnitude of the power of God’s love for us is revealed and we know that nothing can stand in its way. It’s a fact that, admittedly, we can sometimes forget. It’s really easy to hold on and live in the old ways. It’s really easy to be surrounded by death and think well there’s nothing I can do about it. Lucky for us, Easter shows us another way. Easter shows us a better way. Easter enables us to stare death square in the face and say you have no power over me anymore for I have seen the Lord. An alternate, more perfect reality is within our grasp.

We just have to go out and witness to it.

One More Year

I preached this sermon at Dulin United Methodist Church today. The texts for the sermon came from the Revised Common Lectionary, and can be found here.

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"One More Year"
March 24, 2019
The Third Sunday in Lent

Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 

I was prepared to preach a very different sermon this morning.

I had just gotten back from General Conference when I was looking to see what the lectionary passages were for today, and I don’t know about you, but I was in a mood, and there was this beautiful passage from Luke staring right at me that told a story of a landowner giving a barren fig tree one last chance to bear fruit. The gardener was given one more year to dig around the tree and cultivate it and fertilize it, and let me just tell you, that imagery was really calling out to me.

For forty-seven years, we have cultivated the fig tree that is the UMC, and for forty-seven years, it failed to produce fruits of justice and repentance for our LGBTQ siblings. We were even given the chance to heap…manure onto the roots of the tree in the form of a Commission on a Way Forward and a Special Called Session of the General Conference that cost us an estimated four-and-a-half million dollars. And what did we get?

None of the plans that were put forth were really repentant.

None of the plans that were put forth gave real justice to LGBTQ United Methodists.

We did our waiting, and the fig tree still failed to bear the necessary fruits to save itself.

We did our waiting, and so the time for the axe to fall had come.

I was prepared to preach a very different sermon this morning. A sermon that was going to be full of the full force of the prophetic witness that called out the sins of our denomination. The kind of sermon that would get passed around on social media like wildfire. The kind of sermon that would get me a book deal and a national speaking tour.

It was going to be a very different sermon.

And then right as I was going to bed the Thursday before last, I was reminded that there’s a world that exists beyond the United Methodist Denomination.

An AP news alert came across my phone saying that a white nationalist had shot up Christchurch Mosque in New Zealand during Friday Jummah prayers.

As the reports came in and the number of casualties climbed—fifty worshippers dead and fifty more who were injured—I was suddenly drawn to the first part of the story from Luke.

Jesus had spent the past fifty-nine verses preaching and teaching about the impending arrival of the reign of God when all of a sudden, someone brought to his attention Pilate’s slaughter of Galileans who were worshipping at the temple; their blood mingling with that of their sacrifices.

Truth be told, we don’t really know why it was brought up at that moment. The text certainly doesn’t give us any clues anyways. Maybe it was breaking news and was offered up as a point of information—hey, this thing just happened and you should probably know about it. Or maybe it was offered up as a foil to Jesus’ message—sure, sure I hear what you’re saying Jesus, but what about those Galileans that Pilate killed? Where do they fit into all of this?

One of the hardest parts of living through or witnessing a traumatic event is the recovery. It’s the picking up of the pieces. It’s the long, dark sleepless nights praying, perhaps in vain, for the return of some semblance of normalcy. It’s the searching for answers that will make sense of it all.

And to Jesus’ credit, he doesn’t offer up any answers. Always be wary of those who, in the wake of tragedy, show up with easy answers or empty platitudes. You know the ones. Everything happens for a reason. God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. This is just a test. This is all a part of God’s plan.

What humans meant for evil God meant for good.

No. Put that scripture back where it came from, or so help me.

Jesus, no matter how much we might want him to, doesn’t take this opportunity to give us a drawn-out treatise on theodicy, or an attempt to make sense of the nature of God’s justice in light of the reality of suffering that exists in our world. On the contrary, he quickly dismisses one of the prevailing understandings of theodicy of that day: the idea that bad things only happen to those who do bad things.

It’s really easy to fall in to that trap. It’s really easy to blame the victims. Why didn’t he wear a seatbelt? She had a lot to drink and did you see what she was wearing? Well, he did smoke a pack a day for years. Their “lifestyle” brought God’s judgment on them. If only there had been a good guy with a gun. 

Jesus takes all of those questions—those questions that, at their core, betray a belief that the tragedy wouldn’t have occurred if only the victims lived their lives according to my superior sense of morality—and flips them on their head.

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?

Of course not, Jesus says. You’re not any better than they were.

Of course not, Jesus says, and that’s the end of his explanation. Sometimes, bad things just happen, and deep down, deep in the core of our very beings, we know that there is no answer that can ever erase the pain completely; no answer that will ever make complete sense of it all.

Perhaps, some of us are there this morning.

One of the sad realities of life is that we can never know what a day will bring.

But the good news is that’s not the end of the story. While it might have been the end of Jesus’ explanation, it’s not the end of Jesus’ response. Jesus offers us another way.

The Gospel of Luke frames the life and ministry of Jesus as being centered on liberation. Our liberation from our ways and our thoughts to freedom found only through God’s perfect love for us and our love for our each other. In his very first public act in this Gospel, Jesus proclaims The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor and to proclaim freedom for the prisoners. Jesus is here to show us that the kingdom of God is at hand, but its arrival is predicated on the liberation of our bondage, and in our lesson this morning, we learn that if we want to break those chains, repentance is the first order of business. 

Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.

Ok, I can see your faces, and in my defense, I said this was good news, not easy news.

We don’t really like to talk about repentance; it makes us feel bad. Perhaps that’s because often times, we hear about repentance the loudest from street so-called preachers—you know the ones I’m talking about; the ones with the bull-horns and the tracts. Or maybe it’s coming from the mouth of someone like Jerry Falwell, Jr., or Pat Robertson. Repent or perish! It just fits so neatly and cleanly on a sign. 

But no matter how much all those folks might protest otherwise, they are missing the point of the gospel. We are not to wield the gospel as a weapon to strike terror into the hearts of those who pass us by. Fear has no place in evangelism. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. The common understanding of repentance won’t make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The common understanding of repentance won’t bring about the reign of God. The common understanding of repentance is not what Jesus is calling us to do.

We often equate repentance, as one of my seminary professors used to say, with moral guilt. That feeling in the pit of your stomach that says I did something bad, so therefore I must be a bad person. But that’s not the case at all. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We’re all in this mess together. Repentance isn’t about self-loathing. We are not called to linger on our past mistakes so that we feel bad about ourselves, but rather to tirelessly work on correcting them for generations to come. Repentance requires a complete and total transformation and reorientation of our outlook on life. It’s forsaking our ways, for God’s way and it’s forsaking our thoughts for God’s thoughts. It’s looking out not for our own interests, but rather for the interests of others.

And so we’re left asking ourselves some hard questions.

In what ways have we fallen short? In what ways have we, as individuals or collectively as a church, national, or even global community messed up and inflicted harm on someone else?

It’s our obligation, our gospel-mandate, to not only name our shortcomings, but also to then do something about them to ease the pain and stop the bleeding, not because we feel guilty, but because it’s the right thing to do. Our individual and collective liberation depends on it.

If that sounds like a daunting amount of work, you’re absolutely right. It is. It takes intentional cultivation and care and digging and fertilizing. But the good news is that we know how the story ends. As we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of our Lenten journey, we know that Easter is coming. We know that the hard work repentance requires of us is not done in vain. And we don’t have to garden alone. Sometimes, we’ll mess up. That’s bound to happen. And sometimes, bad things will happen. That’s also bound to happen. And when they do, we can rest confident in the knowledge that we are surrounded by a community of gardeners all trying to care for this supposedly barren fig tree together, and we can use our collective strength to get back up and carry on the work for just a little bit longer; because, we know the fruits of our labor are ready to burst forth.

Glory Revealed

[note: I preached this sermon at Dulin United Methodist Church on January 20, 2019. The sermon comes from Isaiah 62:1-5 and John 2:1-11 (with a little bit of Amos thrown in for good measure). Audio may be forthcoming]

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Isaiah 62:1-5

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,
    and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest,
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
    and her salvation like a burning torch.
The nations shall see your vindication,
    and all the kings your glory;
and you shall be called by a new name
    that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
    and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
    and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her,
    and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
    and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
    so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
    so shall your God rejoice over you.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

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And he did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

And his disciples believed in him.

Oh John. He makes it sound so simple.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing there. I mean, when my brother came to me saying “Simon! Simon! We’ve found him! The anointed one! The Messiah!” I didn’t expect to be rolling up to a wedding with the guy just a few days later. Right? It’s one thing to get a plus one to a wedding, but a plus twelve?! 

Though in those days, I guess I didn’t quite know what to expect. There was this...in the air, you know? You could feel it. Cut it with a knife. Tension over in the capital was bubbling up and boiling over, but hey you probably don’t know what that feels like.

No. None of us knew what to expect. But I tell you what, it sure wasn’t that guy. After all, our people had been waiting for the Messiah for a really long time. Like, a really long time. As long as I can remember. Waiting for the one who would vindicate us and make our salvation shine out like a torch, yeah, I knew the scriptures. And every day, a new one just seemed to pop up, making all these promises about how they would restore Israel to her former glory and overthrow Rome and root out corruption and how they would make us shine like a beacon to the nations, our glory on display for all the kings to see. But you know what happened. Every day, they would be squashed. Put down. Nixed. Caput. 

All those big and grandiose promises. A lot of good it did them.

So yeah. When Andy first brought me to him, I have to admit, I was skeptical. I mean, wouldn’t you be? He was…just a guy. Not all that impressive. Kind of scrawny and scraggly to be honest. Not all that loud or wild like that John guy he had been hanging out with down by the Jordan. And I thought, no way. No way is this guy the one we’ve been waiting for. I’d seen the Roman legions utterly destroy vast and powerful foreign armies. This guy wouldn’t stand a chance. 

And yet as ordinary as he was, there was also something kind of extraordinary about him as well. He wasn’t all that different from you or me, but it was the way he looked at you, you know? Like, really looked at you. Like he knew you, like he really knew you. And then he spoke to me. Called me by my name, like I mattered. Even gave me a new one: Cephas. Peter. The Rock. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but in that moment, something came over me, and I went along, not really knowing why.

I guess faith is kind of like, as another great teacher would one day say, taking that first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase.

But I digress. You want to hear about that wedding.

Well we picked up some more folks along the way, but next thing we knew there we were. This motley crew walking into a wedding that had suddenly gone dry. Isn’t that just the worst? You think you’ve planned for every possible contingency when all of a sudden, bam! The wine stops flowing. Talk about a party foul.

And you know, a lot of people like to give that steward a hard time on this one. He had one job, after all: managing the consumption of food and wine. See, around those parts and in those days, a wedding wasn’t just a one-night affair. No, the festivities would go on and on and on often for as long as seven days! Because hey, when you’re living under the heel of an occupying power, sometimes you just need a reason to get down. And the steward had the unenviable task of making sure that the stores of food and wine lasted for the whole party.

Yikes.

And sure. We can talk and talk and talk about why the wine ran out. It’s really easy to point fingers and play the blame game. But whether it was the steward’s fault for mismanaging the wine or the bridegroom’s fault for not providing enough wine to begin with or even the guests fault for drinking too much too fast doesn’t change one simple fact. There was no longer any wine to go around. 

Typically, this would be the end of the party. You know. Closing time. You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here kind of a thing. But if there’s one thing I learned hanging around him for three years, it’s that just when you think you’ve reached the end of the story, there’s always another chapter that’s more beautiful and full of surprises than you could possibly imagine. The party continues.

People always ask me, how did he do it? Was there a magic word or a special prayer he said? Did he do something with his hands? But truth be told, I didn’t actually see him do it. I was hanging out with another group. Oh yeah, I caught him back-sassing his mom being all “my time has not yet come, woman” and I didn’t want to be around when he and his buddies were catching her hands, if you know what I mean. No thank you.

No, I just saw the staff take those big jars out back for a little while and then next thing I knew, the steward and the groom were bickering about serving good wine when everyone is already drunk. But the staff knew what was up. One of them told me what he told them to do. “He told us to fill those purification jars up with plain old water and to give some to the steward to taste and you’ll never believe it, but suddenly all that water turned into wine!”

My head was spinning at that point, and I hadn’t even had any of the wine yet! Here I was with this guy I barely knew, even though he deeply and truly knew me…down to my soul, at this wedding as one of his guests just as the party is wrapping up and suddenly he’s taking these sacred vessels and using them to hold a lot of wine, like a lot of wine. Nearly two hundred gallons of the stuff! Do you have any idea how long of a party that much wine would sustain?! It would keep going and going and going and going! 

And there it was, sitting in these giant vessels that we used to keep things ritually pure for our prayers and ceremonies! When you stop and think about it, it was kind of sacrilegious. I know that thought certainly crossed my mind anyways. How many times had I let my firm grasp on tradition and my sense of religiosity get in the way of divine action and restoration? 

Because that’s what this was, right? “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when the one who plows will overtake the one who gathers, when the one who crushes grapes will overtake the one who sows the seed. The mountains will drip wine, and all the hills will flow with it.” Amos. Yeah. Like I said, I knew my scriptures. There was suddenly enough wine at that party for it to flow down all the hills. This was it. The divine promise of our people’s restoration was standing there in front of me and he knew me by my name.

And he did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Sure, I guess on the grand scheme of things, turning water into wine to keep a party going isn’t quite on the same level as healing someone’s child or giving sight to someone who was blind from birth or bringing a friend back to life or even feeding a large crowd of people. But this one will always stick with me. This was the first one. The one where it all finally clicked. Andy was right. This guy really was the one we had been waiting for. The anointed one. The Messiah. The answer to all of our people’s prayers.

And from then on, my life would never be the same.