Waiting for the Revealing of the Children of God

Romans 8:19-27

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

         From this text today, I want to reflect on the phrase, “Waiting for the revealing of the children of God.” 

Back in April, it was not my day to give words of tribute to our pastor, teacher, and friend, Dr. Turner, on the occasion of his retirement from teaching at Duke Divinity School.  But as I begin, I want to offer thanks that are relevant to this sermon today.  I could make a very long list, but I will limit to three words of thanks.

There are many things that I have to thank William C. Turner for.  I have met pastors of Black Baptist congregations before whose first reaction to me was to be suspicious of what kind of angle this white man is playing.  I don’t blame them.  They have good reason to be suspicious.  And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least part of Rev. Turner’s reaction to me when I showed up at Mt. Level was to wonder just what I might be up to.  But whatever his range of thoughts may have been, his public and official reaction to me was never anything but care and welcome.

            Some of you may think I still have a ways to go on this next matter, but I have to thank him for teaching me how to preach.  I was at best a mediocre preacher in my experience up to the time I came to Mt. Level.  I found in our conversations that Dr. Turner and I had similar ideas about what a sermon should accomplish and how it should be structured.  But I had never had such a week-by-week training school of how to make the most of the divine opportunity of standing behind this sacred desk.  While I still have much to learn, my colleagues at Shaw tell me I have become a decent preacher over the years.  You all have had to endure my training, periodically sitting while I inflict my schooling in this craft.  And you all have been very good to help me understand when I am doing better, or maybe not so much better.

            But by no means least of all, I have Dr. Turner to thank for helping me to grow into a robust and rich understanding of the work of the Holy Spirit.  I explain to my students in theology class that I come from a kind of Baptists whose doctrine of the Trinity is weak, almost replacing the Holy Spirit with the Bible.  Dr. Turner’s writings on the tradition of the holiness churches and their relationship to the invisible institution of the black church before white people would allow free public worship by enslaved Christians—these have awakened me to a lively and powerful understanding of the Spirit’s work in the church.  His insights and guidance helped me not to ignore the way other theologians pointed me toward the Spirit’s work. 

            So today on the festival of Pentecost, the high holy day of the Spirit and the church, I cannot but stand before you to offer praise to God the Spirit who comes to us, pursues us, convicts us, calls us, fills us, and drives us onward toward God’s purpose for us.  We gather today to worship God who is Spirit, and we must worship in spirit and in truth.  We cannot come trampling the courts of our God who sees deeper into our hearts than we can see ourselves.  We cannot gather with pretense of self-righteousness before the convicting Spirit of God.  We cannot fast, cannot pray loud, wordy prayers, cannot try to impress others with our vocal expertise, cannot wear fashionable displays, cannot boast of our righteousness, and expect to please God who is Spirit.  We worship in truth.  We come and offer our righteousness as filthy rags before the Holy Spirit of God.  We humble ourselves to pray with pleading for the Spirit to fill us and guide us.  We gather in this sanctuary made sacred not by our feet, but by the Spirit who sets us on our feet every gifted day that we awaken into the world God has made.

            “Come, Spirit!  Come!” is our worship cry.  “Send the power!” is our plea to the God of heaven and earth.  Like the disappointed and confused, yet hopeful followers of Jesus in the first century, we bring ourselves together into one place, and behind closed doors we await the Spirit promised to us by Jesus.  We long to be nothing less than the very body of Christ, Christ’s presence on this piece of ground, a glimpse of the glory of God enlivened by the unction of the Spirit.  The church, the household of faith, gathers in the Spirit’s power to be the church, to be God’s people, the beloved community living as God created us to be, in fellowship with one another through our shared life in the Spirit.

            This is the festival we celebrate today, and it is good and right to seek to know how the Spirit works and leads us on a day like today.  The apostles found themselves surprised to know the way that the Holy Spirit would work among them.  Empowered by the Spirit’s movement, they served God in ways that they had not imagined.  The Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the festival also encountered the surprising work of the Spirit, hearing the preaching in their own languages from dozens of lands and locales in the known world.  Pentecost reminds us that no matter how much we thought we knew about God, God will still surprise us in the work of the Spirit.

            The texts for today include the story of the first Pentecost Sunday in the history of the church.  We have already acknowledged that story from Acts and will have it in mind throughout our worship.  However, I am focusing on the epistle for today.  It speaks to the kind of experience that the earliest church gathered in Jerusalem had faced as they waited for the coming of the Spirit with power.  Even though the first Pentecost of the church had happened during the first half of the third decade from the birth of Christ, what we might call the “30s,” Paul is writing more than two decades later about a similar pattern of experience in relation to the Spirit.  Yes, the Spirit had come at Pentecost with power.  Yet the Christians in Rome found themselves also waiting to see what the Spirit might be about to do. 

            This entire eighth chapter of Romans is a study of the work of the Spirit in the life of the church.  We cannot let ourselves try to create our own way of living, to be guided by our own desires apart from God’s transforming Spirit.  On our own, we will try to earn our place with God.  We will think God owes us something.  We will try to game the system and get over on God and one another.  But the Spirit lifts us out of this self-centered, selfish way.  The Spirit sets us free from sin and death.  We who are united to Christ and one another share in the Spirit.  The Spirit who enlivened the executed Jesus now gives life to our mortal bodies and to the corporate body of which we are limbs and organs.  As a people, we learn to listen for the Spirit’s voice.  The voice of the Spirit has not been isolated in any one of us, but each of us has the Spirit working to guide and shape our lives together as God’s people.  No one has a corner on the Spirit’s leadership. 

Thus, we all listen for the Spirit’s voice in one another.  We listen to the still, small voice of God calling for us from our inmost hearts.  We pray.  We study.  We praise.  We listen.  And often, we must wait.  Paul tells the Romans that in their time, during the fifth decade after Jesus’ birth, creation waits with eager longing.  Creation…that’s a big word, a big idea.  It’s kind of like a popular word from our era, the “universe.”  Creation means everything that exists that is not God, but which comes from God.  It is stars and planets, atoms and subatomic particles.  Creation is plants and animals, rocks and rivers.  Creation is food and drink, atmosphere and soil.  Creation is humanity in community, neighborhood and countryside.

So if our era of living is anything like the era of Paul the Apostle’s living, then we might conclude that also in our time, creation is waiting.  The land on which our sanctuary rests is waiting; the trees that line our parking areas, the grass in the cemetery, and the stones carved with our ancestors’ names are waiting. The timbers that were carted down from Granville County wait with eager longing.  The congregations worshiping across the street and down the road, the neighbors busy in their yards or homes, those sleeping in on a Sunday morning are all waiting.  The residents of Mill Grove who continue generations of family in this part of town as well as the immigrants from Mexico who found this neighborhood attractive and affordable wait with eager longing.  The workers at the Circle K, at the Bojangles, at the Waffle House, and at the Advance Auto Parts are waiting.  The worn out gravel roads, the boarded windows, the wrecked cars all in rows long to be set free from decay.  The poles that support power lines or t.v. and internet cables, the yellow stripes that divide lanes where we drive, even the deep pit where gravel is quarried wait for the revealing.  The new families who found a place to raise their kids off Hebron Road wait.  The hardworking folk who walk down our streets to reach the bus stop so they can go to work are eager.  The dogs and squirrels and cats and foxes and birds who live all around us—all creation is waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.

Are there any children of God in Mill Grove?  How will they be made evident?  What would make anyone believe that there are children of God here?  God made this world, this vast creation, with the purpose of building love and justice for all people, for all of God’s creatures.  In all our efforts and failures, we have not managed to live up to what God wants for us and our neighbors in this world.  Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church recounts our admirable history of serving God through more than a century and a half, and yet we read Paul’s words to the Romans and understand that creation is groaning in labor pains. 

There are labor pains in our neighborhood as flood waters rise through the sewer system into our sanctuary.  We wait for clean up of a mess and for proper repairs of a drainage system unready to handle the rains of the recent storm.

There are labor pains as teachers in our state, in West Virginia, Arizona, Oklahoma, Colorado, and across the land, stand up together to tell the legislature and state school board that enough is enough.  Students need textbooks.  Schools need buildings repaired.  Teachers need to be able to afford a place to live and food for their tables.  How long will politicians prefer to pay more for housing prisoners than for teaching children?

There are labor pains in Santa Fe, Texas, near the home of your own daughter Lydia Broadway who found herself driving by ambulance after ambulance on Friday morning a children with gunshot wounds were being driven to the hospital down the street from her home.  All creation groans, waiting for the revealing.  Where are the children of God?  Where are the people who live as Jesus led them to live?  Where are those who love God and neighbor?  Where are they who bind up the wounded they find on the side of the road?  Where will they be revealed.

Paul says that even we groan.  We wait as a woman in labor.  The urgency can be overwhelming.  The possibility of what may come lies beyond a struggle that we fear we may not be ready to face.  We long for our adoption into the family of God.  We know that Jesus has come to us, that we have followed him, that he has saved us, yet we find ourselves longing for the fulfillment of all that it means.  We feel in our bodies the need for the fullness of God, of the Spirit’s presence and power, of the transformation from one degree of glory to another.

All creation waits, longs, groans, for the Spirit to set us free.  Free to be what God made us to be.  Free to live as God calls us to live.  Free to share our lives with abandon, with relentless affection, with humble service toward one another.  Come, Spirit!  Rule in our hearts today!

For many of us, the calling of Vision 150 has become a sign of the Spirit’s presence.  [Vision 150 is a plan to enlarge our church’s ministry in our community, including replacing a no longer structurally sound building with a new facility that will support more community ministries.]  We have grown into the vision, perhaps initially skeptical or doubtful, waiting for the Spirit to take hold of us.  We have seen signs of the Spirit moving in new ministries and in concern for the use of the land beneath us.  We have talked about the need to know our neighbors.  We have recognized that this corner of our town has needs that we may, perhaps, be strategically situated to be able to help meet. 

And still we wait.  We wait to see an adequate down-payment toward building a facility.  We wait for the future breaking of ground and the passing of a treasured but weary landmark as it is replaced with functional spaces for ministry.  We wait with all creation to see what will be revealed.

On the other hand, if we claim to be the followers of Jesus, if we have given our lives to our Lord, if we have the Spirit living in us, then part of what this letter to the Romans is saying to us is that we are the ones creation is waiting for.  We are the children of God, or at least we are called to be them.  God has touched us, laid a hand on us, filled us with the Spirit, and we are the ones to be revealed as the children of God.

All around us, creation is waiting to see if we will step into our calling.  Will we be friends with the people who live on Denfield, Monk, Ryan, Bobs, Todd, Teel, Weeping Willow, Rainmaker, West, Sun Dried, Felicia, Summer Storm, Justice, Shay, Graymont, Melanie, Geranium, Miller, Cozart, Swanns Mill, Genlee, Magnolia Pointe, Fanning, Lillington, and more and more and more?  Will we learn from them what kind of community they long to be part of?  Will we make partnerships with neighbors to see Mill Grove flourish as more than just the houses near a fast food smorgasbord?  Will we reach beyond to Old Farm, Argonne Hills, Danube, and Dearborn, where many of our Mt. Level family live?  Will we be among the voices advocating for a just and equitable plan for improving or rebuilding Oxford Manor?  Creation all around us is waiting to see what will be revealed in us.

And creation waits because it is not clear what is coming.  Too many churches have closed themselves to their communities.  They live far away, drive to their building, dress in their fancy clothes, get entertained, make networking connections, and leave, hoping never to have to talk to anyone who might be walking near their church building.  Many churches have revealed themselves to be the latest version of a social club or an entertainment center, but not to be the children of God who are following Jesus toward God’s purpose of beloved community.  Too many churches are satisfied to share a couple of hours of the week together, but want to be left alone to make their own friends and plan their own activities without concern for the people who live across the street or down the block from where they gather to worship God in the Spirit.

What will be revealed on this piece of land?  Will it be the revealing of the children of God, the ones who love the people they meet on the street, who are willing to make new friends for the sake of the one who they have promised to follow?  Will it be the children of this world who are mostly concerned with keeping up with the Washingtons or the Johnsons and watching their favorite shows and hiding inside their houses to avoid associating with the people they don’t even care to know?  What will be revealed?  All creation is waiting, eagerly anticipating, groaning for redemption and liberation.

We don’t see it yet, but we hope.  We hope, and we wait with patience.  And in our waiting, we already start to live the way that shows what kind of world we want.  As the teachers of nonviolence have taught us, the path to the goal must take on the character of the goal.  If we want to live in a loving world, then the path to get to it is to start loving right here as we walk toward it.  If we want to live in a world with justice, then we need to hunger and thirst for justice as we seek to bring it into being.  If we want to live in a peaceful world, a world of shalom, then we have to become peaceable people making peace with one another as we walk toward our goal.  The means must be as pure as the end.  The road to beloved community is to start building a community of love.  The path to a friendly neighborhood is to start making friends with our neighbors.  We live in the hope of what we are being called to be, but do not yet see.

The Spirit drives us to be the church that Jesus called us into.  The Spirit gives us strength to make new relationships.  The Spirit gives us power to change the character of our neighborhood.  The Spirit calls us to make our home to be the foretaste of the Kingdom of God, the Reign of God in this world.  In our weakness, the Spirit helps us.  Even when we don’t know what to do first, the Spirit is way ahead of us, praying in us and with us for the fullness of God’s purpose to be revealed in us.

All creation waits, and the Spirit is drawing us forward.  The Spirit is ready to make us into the very people God wants us to be.  The Spirit works within and around us to make things happen that we are not sure can happen.  The Spirit is transforming us to be the revelation of the children of God in Durham, on Hebron Road, on this soil and among these trees, on the streets and in the homes.  Will we heed the Spirit?  Will we walk in the Spirit?  Will we let the Spirit reveal to us and to our neighbors that we can be what God has called us to be?

What a day that first Pentecost of the church was!  Peter went far beyond his own learning to proclaim a new word.  He recognized that the prophets had expected a day when a great transformation would begin.  Whatever the barriers and limits that people had put on themselves, blaming it all on God’s will and God’s plan, the word coming from Peter and the apostles on that day said that God would be shaking things up.  The young and old would all be blessed to see what God can do.  The men and the women would all proclaim the world of God with power.  On that day, Jerusalem changed dramatically, and the change had implications for dozens of cities and regions and language groups for miles in all directions.  It was not a day for narrow vision or limited possibilities.  The Spirit was doing the kind of work that would free creation from its bondage to decay.  The labor pains were ending with the reward of transformation.  The Spirit was bearing fruit that would expand and continue for millennia into the future.

Can we join that movement here in our neighborhood?  Will we join the gospel band?  Spirit, guide us!

Lord grant us the capacity to listen to your Spirit, to wait for the guidance we need, and to step out in public to reveal that as for Mt. Level and our house, we will serve the Lord.  We will be the children of God revealed as the loving koinonia, the communion of sharing our lives and our goods and our gifts with one another for the good of all creation.  Lord, send your Spirit to fill us.  Spirit, change us.  Spirit drive us forward.  Come, Spirit!  Amen, and amen!

***********

Benediction:

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful and enkindle in them the fire of Your love.

Send forth Your Spirit; renew the face of the earth.

O God,

Who instructed the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit,

grant us in the same Spirit to be truly wise,

and ever to rejoice in Your consolation.

Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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The Importance of Remembering: A Sermon for Ordination to Ministry

This sermon was preached on August 27, 2017, at First Baptist Church, Raleigh, NC (Wilmington Street) as part of the ordination service for Rev. Belinda Wisdom and Rev. Chris Whitaker.

Exodus 1:8-22

1:8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

1:9 He said to his people, "Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we.

1:10 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 from the land."

1:11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh.

1:12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

1:13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites,

1:14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

1:15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,

1:16 "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live."

1:17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.

1:18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?"

1:19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them."

1:20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong.

1:21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.

1:22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live."

Romans 12:1-8

12:1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

12:2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect.

12:3 For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

12:4 For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function,

12:5 so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

12:6 We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith;

12:7 ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching;

12:8 the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

The Importance of Remembering

The story of the Hebrew midwives is familiar.  Their names are less familiar, but the writers of the Torah made sure to include them so that we could know them:  Shiphrah and Puah.  They are crucial to the history of God’s salvation of Israel, and through Israel, the world.  Let’s say their names:  Shiphrah and Puah. 

They were important members of the community because they played an important role at a crucial moment in everyone’s life.  They weren’t like the bakers or fishers to whom people might go every day for bread or fish to eat.  You didn’t stop by once a week to get any needed supplies.  No one depended on them to lead periodic religious ceremonies, either weekly or monthly.  Children didn’t go to them on school days to practice their reading or math.  But Shiphrah and Puah were important.

When the time came to need the services of Shiphrah and Puah, a family would hate to have to do without them.  Probably someone in any family had some experience with helping a woman through childbirth; however, Shiphrah and Puah were the communal stewards of the wisdom of generations.  Moreover, they had seen it all.  They knew well that every baby did not come into the world in the same way and at the same pace.  They knew that women’s bodies and emotional strength were different.  They had learned ways to encourage and calm and comfort mothers dealing with the pain and anxiety of giving birth.  They could recognize when a baby was under stress or in danger.  When it came time for Shiphrah and Puah to do their job, people would be foolish to ignore their gifts and skill.

That’s why the King of Egypt strategically chose them to carry out his diabolical plan.  He was jealous of the prosperity of the Hebrew people.  He was fearful they might rise up in rebellion.  He was concerned about the loyalty to one another and their commitment to justice.  Over the years, he and his predecessors had found the Hebrews to be useful as cheap immigrant labor.  He knew that the Pharaohs had not always treated the Hebrew workers fairly.  He needed a plan to make sure they would continue to be unable or unwilling to stir up a revolution.

Sadly, the King of Egypt did not understand his own formative history.  He did not know how his ancestors had benefited greatly from the unexpected appearance of this sheep-herding clan from the northeast.  He must not have been told the stories of the visions and dreams that the slave boy named Joseph had interpreted for the Pharaoh.  Someone had not bothered to clarify that Joseph of the Hebrews had been vice-regent of the entire kingdom, supervising an era of great prosperity and power for Egypt among the nations who were their neighbors.  So the Bible tells us that this Pharaoh did not know Joseph.

Not knowing Joseph meant that he was willing to use and abuse the descendants of Joseph for his own greed and ambition.  Not knowing Joseph means he was not thinking about how “all life is interrelated.”  He had not reflected on the fact that “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny.”  He apparently did not realize that “Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (MLK, Jr.)  Those, of course, are words from Dr. King.  Ken Medema has another way to say it pertaining to our being created by God:  we are “bound together and finely woven with love.”  But Pharaoh did not seem to know that.

He thought that he could get his way by dividing society into warring groups.  If he could make the immigrants seem dangerous in the eyes of others, then he could try to leverage that fear and hate to get some things that he wanted.  If he could single out a group who look and talk and eat and pray differently, then he could get others to flock to his agenda and follow him down any path.

I don’t know who Pharaoh’s advisers were.  I suspect some had big investments in the construction industry.  Some were in the extraction business, cutting and transporting stones for monumental construction projects.  Other advisers probably had trained security teams for managing work projects.  And he kept his generals close to try to make himself seem more patriotic.  He had to know people who knew how to get financing for big projects.  Above all, he loved building big towers to show off his power.  His advisers knew how to manipulate their king to make him feel good about himself while deciding to do things that they wanted him to do.

To build his construction projects—cities, towers, roads, monuments—he needed a ready, inexpensive work force, so he was working the Hebrews as forced labor, drafted into “public service.”  He made their working conditions worse and worse, without adequate compensation.  They had to go home from a hard day of building cities and monuments and work more just to get food on the table.  The King of Egypt had enough insight to realize he might not be able to keep these people down forever, so he huddled with his most devious advisors to come up with a plan.  He was ready to compose and promulgate another Pharaoh-dential executive order.  The one about making bricks without straw had been very unpopular.  His advisers suggested that he work a back channel this time.  They had an idea of where the weak spot was among his opposition.

He called Shiphrah and Puah to a meeting.  He had nice chariot go by and pick them up.  They were brought into the plush palace of the king for a face-to-face meeting.  Anyone might be impressed and honored by such an opportunity.  He was counting on the “wow” factor to win them over.  He tried talking with them like they were buddies and allies.  He explained to them what he wanted them to do.

Shiphrah and Puah were certainly overwhelmed by being in the palace.  They may not have been reacting the way the Pharaoh wanted, but they were intimidated.  They knew the cost of opposing the people in power.  So they played along.  He gave them some parting gifts and sent them back home to do his bidding.

Shiphrah and Puah are the predecessors of some more famous Hebrews who came along many centuries later.  Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were three Hebrew young men who were told by a great king to do something they knew they should not do.  We know them by the names that king called them—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.  They had another friend named Daniel, whom the king liked to call Belteshazzar.  But just as these young men understood that they could not meet the expectations of the king if they were to meet the expectations of God, so did Shiphrah and Puah.

The Pharaoh had asked the midwives to do something unspeakable.  He wanted them to kill babies when they were born.  Worried that the Hebrew boys would grow up to be “bad hombres,” Pharaoh wanted them killed before they had a chance to breathe the fresh air of the world God had made them to live in and love in.  Pharaoh wanted to end their hopes and possibilities before they could ever get started.  He had figured out that a secret deal with the midwives would solve his problems.  But the problem with this Pharaoh, this most powerful ruler of his era, was that he had fallen into forgetfulness.

One of the great sins of power is forgetfulness.  Now stop before you jump to conclusions.  I’m not saying that when we sometimes forget the things we meant to do that it’s sin.  I’m not saying that as we get older and names and words slip out of reach in the middle of a conversation that we are sinning.  That’s not what I mean by forgetfulness today.  The forgetfulness I am talking about has to do with the way violence and power work in society.  Often when people scheme and cheat and push and shove to get what they want, they turn around and talk about how they earned it through virtue and character.  This kind of forgetfulness retells the history to make the people with power the heroes.  It retells the story to sanitize out the oppression and violence.  The textbooks don’t call forced laborers slaves, but immigrant employees.  They call forced segregation school choice.  They call slaves happy members of the extended family.  Forgetfulness becomes self-congratulation that erases the memory of violent, murderous schemes to gain and maintain control.

If everything had worked out the way Pharaoh was planning, he would have had little problem forgetting the conniving violence he employed to weaken the Hebrews.  A cover story about disease or genetic defects would have been invented to rationalize so many infant deaths.  All who knew the truth would be paid off or eliminated.  Pharaoh was playing a dangerous game, but the stakes were high and the potential rewards were great.  Pharaoh was willing to do what it takes to achieve his objectives and make Egypt great again.

Shiphrah and Puah returned to their homes and their work with a new resolve.  They would have to redouble their efforts to save the lives of the Hebrew children.  They could not be careless.  If they openly disregarded the Pharaoh’s authority and flaunted their disobedience in order to look heroic, Pharaoh would find other agents to carry out his plan.  And who knows what would happen to them for their rebellion?  So Shiphrah and Puah had to have a workable plan.  They had to get their story straight.  Lives were at stake.

They realized that the very forgetfulness that was Pharaoh’s modus operandi could work in their favor.  The King of Egypt did not know Joseph.  He had forgotten the common history of the Egyptian Kingdom and the Hebrew immigrants.  He had replaced it with a narrative rooted in the logic of difference.  The logic of difference says that if you and I are different in a few ways, then perhaps we should conclude that we are different in every way.  We might even be complete opposites.  If my skin is light and yours is dark, then the logic of difference says that whatever I think is good about me must be the opposite about you.  If I am good looking, you must not be.  If I am hard-working, you must be lazy.  The logic of difference is insidious and demonic.  It hides the obvious truth we could see if we would just look at one another and get to know one another.  It replaces our opportunity to know one another with the assumption of inscrutability, of unknowability.  It is a reasoning process that has shaped the invention of the races in the modern world.  We use it all the time in how we think about men and women, too.  The logic of difference is an intentional kind of forgetfulness.

So when the Pharaoh had time to realize that there were still lots of new little Hebrew boys running around in the ‘hood, he sent his chariot out to get Shiphrah and Puah to bring them before a board of inquiry.  He asked them why they would go against the specific instructions he gave them.  They played on his prejudice.  They leveraged his ignorance.  They offered a story about how Hebrew women were different from Egyptian women.  Of course, he knew that had to be true.  He believed in the logic of difference with all his heart.  So they set him up.  They said that when they got called to help with a birth, these Hebrew women with short labor and fast childbirth would already be finished.  The baby would be born, and their chance to secretly kill the baby boys was past.  They didn’t say whether they had still managed to kill a few of the boys—they let him think maybe they had, or at least they were trying.  Wow! Pharoah thought.  This plan was harder than I thought!  So it seems he sent them away with instructions to work harder and move faster to carry out their plan.  Shiphrah and Puah survived another brush with the empire, and Hebrew parents and children were a little safer for a little longer.

It is a powerful story.  It sets up the story of Moses’ birth.  The desire to keep baby boys alive made it very difficult for Hebrew families in this time.  Eventually, Pharaoh made it a patriotic duty for Egyptians to kill Hebrew baby boys.  That led to the unique turn of events of Moses’ floating in the river and adoption into the household of the Pharaoh.  How many other little boys did not survive the murderous plot against them?  “Rachel, weeping for her children” was a cultural memory that flowed down through the centuries, all the way to the Exile.

This contrast of forgetfulness and remembering strikes me as a crucial message for today.  We gather here in a commissioning service for those who have answered the calling of God to minister among God’s people and in the homes and streets and halls of power where we find the people God loves.  What will be our modus operandi as we do this work?  Will we surrender to forgetfulness and leave behind the people who brought us this far?  Will we use our commission to lord over others and to use them to serve our greed and lust for power?  Will we forget who Joseph was, or will we remember?

This story points to at least three ways in which remembering is crucial to taking up the mantle of servant leadership.  First, we can see that Shiphrah and Puah remembered who they were.  Second, we can recognize that they remembered who called them.  And third, they remembered why they had been called.

The story of Shiphrah and Puah leaves one important detail uncertain.  Were these midwives from the tribes of the Hebrews, or were they Egyptians who worked among the Hebrews?  Some have argued that Pharaoh would have had little reason to trust them to do this horrible task if they were Hebrews.  He would have selected Egyptians with whom he might hope to share a common prejudice against the immigrant Hebrews.  That seems possible.  Many, however, have argued that the midwives were part of the Hebrew community which was where they did their work.  Various rabbis have supported this view down through the centuries.  The wording in the text is ambiguous, but I think it doesn’t make a big difference for our purposes.  In either case, whether Egyptian or Hebrew, these women remembered better who they were than did the Pharaoh.

These women had worked and built relationships among the Hebrew immigrants for long enough that they had become well-known, even respected in their work.  When Pharaoh wanted to scheme with some midwives, these were the ones well-known enough to get the invitation to his palace.  Even though he did not remember Joseph, apparently Shiphrah and Puah did.

Now the text does not mention that they knew Joseph.  But they did clearly know the people of Joseph.  They knew the goodness of family life, the love of friendship, the joy of new beginnings, the struggle of poverty, the pain of grief and loss.  They knew flesh and blood human beings, created by God, made for love, given gifts and strength for work, striving to make the most of their situation.  They knew the stories of cousins and aunts and uncles, of parents and grandparents and great-grandparents.  They remembered the history of where they had come from, whether as Hebrew immigrants or as Egyptians who had cast their lot in friendship with the Hebrews sojourning in their homeland.  They knew the people of Joseph.  They remembered the many ways his character and virtue had been taught, shared, and passed down through generations of Hebrew children.  They remembered the welcome of the Hebrews into Egypt and the gratitude and service the Hebrews offered in return.  They remembered that they stood on the shoulders of giants.  They remembered who they were.

In taking up Christian ministry, can you remember who you are?  Not many among you were noble, not many wise, not many powerful.  But each one has been given grace gifts by the Holy Spirit.  Each earthen vessel is capable of having the power and wisdom of God poured into it for God’s use.  God didn’t have to use you, but God has called you.  The church didn’t have to notice you, but the church has acknowledged your potential and called you to a task.  The Spirit didn’t have to fill you, but you have known the unction that only comes from God.  Do you remember who you are?

In small towns and in some neighborhoods, it was traditional to get to know someone by asking, “Who is your momma?  Who is your daddy?  Are you so-and-so’s boy?  Are you what’s-her-name’s girl?”  It is about figuring out who you are by remembering who you come from.  Are you from Joseph’s people?  If you weren’t born to them, have you been grafted into their family?  Do you remember what kind of people Joseph taught them to be?  Are we going to see Joseph when we see how you live?  Are you going to be the Jesus we see in the world?  If you want to be God’s servant and a minister, then remember who you are.

We can also see that Shiphrah and Puah remembered who called them.  Part way through the story, we might start thinking that the midwives who got called to the Pharaoh’s palace would become the Pharaoh’s agents.  We might think they would be answering the call of their king and becoming his servants.  But the story turned out differently.  He was accustomed to being able to impress people or throw his weight around and get them to do his bidding.  He was used to being the boss and hiring and firing according to his whims.  So he seemed surprised when what he asked Shiphrah and Puah to do did not happen.  When he called them back, he was probably looking forward to getting to say, “You’re fired!”

The story took a different turn.  Not only did the Pharaoh stay oblivious to what was happening in the birthing rooms of the Hebrews, the One who really called these midwives took care of them.  Shiphrah and Puah knew who they worked for.  They knew who had called them out as leaders.  We don’t know how many midwives served the Hebrew women, but it probably was more than two.  So Shiphrah and Puah are representative figures.  Maybe they were the leaders and organizers of the midwives.  Whatever their role, they had a clear understanding who it was they worked for.  So when the Pharaoh stepped in to try to be their new supervisor, they were polite and immediately disobeyed.  They served the one who had put them to their task, not the one who wanted to use them to do his dirty work.  And the story tells us that God stood by them, protected them, and blessed them mightily for remembering that it was God who called them.

Will you remember who you work for?  One of the first things that usually happens in a church when a new minister comes along is that everyone tries to get a piece of her or of him.  Folks want to have coffee or go out for lunch.  They come by the office or call on the phone.  The conversations may start very general and encouraging, but many of them end up playing an angle.  People have grudges against other church members, or they have been upset ever since some group or program got eliminated.  They have visited a church and seen something they like, or they are never satisfied with the way the Bible is taught.  So they start recruiting the new minister to be on their side, to join their cause, or even to do their dirty work.  They plant seeds of suspicion or communicate veiled ultimatums. 

Who do you work for?  Of course, Shiphrah and Puah worked for the families they served at times of childbirth, and you work for the people God is sending your way.  But don’t get that mixed up.  You work for them because you work for God.  Your work for them is to do the work of God, not to join in schemes for power or influence, for greed or status.  You are not their stepping stone, but they are not your stepping stone either.  God is the one who has called, us, and we are pressing on toward the high calling of Christ Jesus.  God took hold of you, and now you are striving to take hold of that for which you were taken hold of by God.  You have to lay aside the weights.  You have to shun the temptations to sin that so easily get your imagination.  You have to leave some things behind so you can reach out for the fresh gifts of God’s Spirit.  Remember who called you.  Remember who you work for.  In all your ways, acknowledge God, and God will direct your paths.  If you want to be God’s servant and a minister, then remember who called you.

Let me highlight a third way of remembering that we can see in the story of Shiphrah and Puah—they remembered why they had been called.  They were midwives.  That was their job.  It was their calling.  They knew they served God’s people.  They knew that it was God who called them.  And they also remembered what is was they had been called to do.  They remembered why they had been called.  Their job was helping families bring healthy children into the world.  They had to learn the traditions, learn from experience, develop the science through observation, be alert and rested for the job, give their best every time, and find the joy and fulfillment that comes from a job well done, a life lived in faithfulness.

Now and then a birth might not go as hoped.  There might be complications and injury to the mother.  There might be problems that keep a child from being born strong, or alive.  Shiphrah and Puah had to be ready for these times as well.  They were called to do their best to help a family bring a baby into the world, and they also were called to support and care for families who struggled with the vicissitudes of life that can come with childbirth.  They had a mission.  They were servants of God and servants of their fellow human beings.  They were called with a purpose, and they could not let that purpose slip away from their vision.

Too often, a change in role can cause a change in how a person relates to others.  We all have seen it.  It can happen in even the most minor of situations.  Sometimes, in a church committee, people have worked together for many years, sharing, speaking up, listening, and carrying their loads as equals, as children of God seeking to do what they are called to do.  Then one of the group who has not been the chair of the committee before becomes the chair.  Suddenly, the new chair acts like a different person.  Because of a title, she or he starts behaving as if the other committee members should only do the listening part, not the thinking and talking and deciding parts.  It starts becoming a one-way relationship of boss and underling rather than equal partners.  And all that can happen when there isn’t even any program money to decide how to use.  Rising into an office can confuse some people so they forget what they were called to do.

Pharaoh thought he could get Shiphrah and Puah to forget that they were called to help life flourish and get them to become murderers and life-destroyers.  He thought that their promotion to being in his inner circle would change their view of their work.  Thank God that he was mistaken.  They could not see any way to accept his orders to kill the baby boys.  They were strategic in finding a plan to make sure they could prevent that from happening under their watch.  They knew their calling, their purpose, and they kept their eyes on the prize.

You are called to be a servant.  Minister is the translation of the Greek word diakonia, which is also translated as servant.  You are not overlord.  You may oversee some programming, some budget, some mission tasks, but oversight is not the same as being the boss of me, the boss of him, or the boss of her.  God has called you to serve.  By now you may know some specific ways in which God wants you to serve.  So if you are called to preach, do so with truth and conviction.  If you are called to teach, study to show yourself approved.  If you are called to evangelize, make your life good news to those God sends your way.  If you are called to hospitality, then receive God’s children with joy and generosity.  If you are called to pray, then make yourself a vessel of God’s work as you are transformed to do his will.

The lectionary epistle text for today reminds me of my own calling to ministry.  It seems centuries ago that I was 18, but at that tender age I accepted God’s call to minister.  I had no idea where it would lead, and could not have predicted I would ever be in a position to stand before you here today.  But in those early days of my calling, I often returned to this epistle text from Romans 12. 

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, [I beseech you] by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.  For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

At 18 I was a mixed up mess of overconfidence and fear.  I had been told by everyone that I was smart and gifted, and I often believed the hype.  But some of the time I knew it was just hype.  I knew I was just a scared kid trying to make it in a bigger world.  I was trying to listen to God and trying to be somebody.  I didn’t want to disappoint my family, and I wanted my friends to like me.  And no small part of me was trying to impress the girls I couldn’t get my eyes off of.  If that’s not a description of an earthen vessel, I don’t know what is.  So when I read Romans 12, it reminded me I had some changing to do.  I needed to grow up from my immaturity.  I needed to put aside the wants and ways of the world that I had learned growing up, and I needed to take on the wants and ways of God.  I needed to follow the way of Jesus, which this verse describes as presenting oneself onto the altar as a living sacrifice to God.  It’s a complicated metaphor.  I was relieved that it said I could be a living sacrifice, even if I also realized in the back of my mind that when Jesus lived that way it had cost him his life.

This giving up of my self-made image, my self of my own construction, was the crucial step to learning God’s will for me.  I longed to hear God’s call, and this epistle text told me that by giving myself, I could find my way to discern the will of God, and that it would be good.  It would be excellent.  That’s what I wanted.  To achieve as high as I could, but within the scope of what God wanted me to do.  I couldn’t think too highly of myself, but had to put myself on God’s altar to be remade, to be transformed, to become God’s servant to do God’s will.  If I would walk that path, God promised to make the most of me for a particular task in my time and my place.

Do you remember why you have been called?  Too many lose sight of it when they get dollar signs, TV ratings, and big buildings on their minds.  Others just want to go their own way and can’t figure out how not to try to be the one who is large and in charge, even if it means only with a tiny flock of longsuffering church people.  God has a good purpose for you.  It means putting yourself aside and letting God replace your ambition and greed with God’s own purpose and grace.  If you want to serve God and be a minister, then remember why you were called.

I rejoiced when I saw that this story of Shiphrah and Puah was the lectionary text for this Sunday.  For any of you who heard it preached this morning, I pray that the Holy Spirit has brought you an additional gift from the richness of the Holy Scriptures as you heard it again.  But there is one more thing I want to point out about the importance of remembering as we close.

There are many times when the Bible lets us down concerning God’s love for and calling of women to lead and work for the Kingdom of God.  Written in times when women had little status in society, too often the texts omit and forget their names.  In the story of the great flood, we never learn the names of the very important characters who are the wives of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  Even in the stories of Jesus, a Samaritan woman from Sychar who comes to get water at the well, a Syro-Phoenecian woman who gives Jesus the opportunity to expand the grace of God to Gentiles, a woman who gives all she has to God, a woman who touches his garment in faith, a woman he forgives when the crowd wants to stone her—so many who are central to communicating his gospel life go unnamed.  But this story is not one of those.

We know the names of Shiphrah and Puah.  The Books of Moses tell us their names.  The Torah, God’s gift of love to the people of Israel, names them.  But did you notice, there was a so-called famous character in this story.  He is called the King of Egypt.  He is called by the Egyptian imperial title, Pharaoh.  But we don’t know his name.  Scholars argue about which of the known rulers of the Egyptian empires this character might be.  They compare the dynasties and their writings, and some theories seem sort of right, and sort of wrong, to fit the Bible story.

We don’t remember this Pharaoh’s name.  The Bible doesn’t remember this Pharaoh’s name.  The Books of Moses do not remember this Pharaoh’s name, although surely Moses, who lived in the household of Pharaoh knew who this king was.  But we do remember the names of a couple of midwives who worked among an outcast immigrant people.  We know these women who were instruments of God’s work.   

We know these ministers, even though we don’t know the Pharoah.  He already demonstrated that he had a bad memory.  He forgot what he did not want to know, and he did not know Joseph.  But Shiphrah and Puah knew Joseph.  They remembered who they were.  They remembered who called them.  And they remembered why they were called.  Go forth today in the spirit of Shiphrah and Puah and serve God with the same faithfulness they demonstrated so many centuries ago.  Speak their names.  Remember.  Amen

Standing Up When It Seems Too Much: Reposting "Put On the Armor of Light"

I suspect that most of us have arrived at times when it seems that the obstacles are too big for us and the opponents are too strong for us.  In such a time, the Apostle Paul's words to the Roman church become a lively message to us.  In the shadow of a powerful and greedy empire, they read his words of hope that still speak to me in these times that can be very discouraging for people who love justice and pursue the common good.  Respectability politics will not achieve justice, only delay it.

This sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on September 7, 2014.

Romans 13:8-14

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

             Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (NRSV).

In the text that was read this morning, the Apostle Paul makes remarks of the same sort that the Prophet Micah did many centuries before.  As Micah had posed the question, “What does the Lord require of you?”, now Paul offers the guidance that we should “owe no one anything, except….”  Micah said that it is really pretty simple.  Do justice.  Love mercy.  Walk humbly with God.  Paul says they should narrow it down to this:  love one another.  That’s all you owe anyone.  That’s what Jesus said really mattered.  That’s what God expects of you.  That fulfills the whole stinking law, every jot and tittle of it.  Of course, you can learn by studying the specifics of the law, but Jesus already told us how to sum it up:  Love your neighbor as yourself.

So in the way that you live with others, if you love them, you will do no wrong to your neighbor.  And the law is largely about telling you what wrongs not to do.  So love, and you won’t do wrong.  That’s why love fulfills the whole law—every bit of it.

Paul was continuing a train of thought from what to us is the previous chapter.  Of course, Paul did not divide his letters into chapters and verses.  Like you or I, he just wrote out his sentences and paragraphs.  The chapters and verses were added later by readers who wanted to be able to analyze and talk together about the books in a systematic way.  That way, you and I can quickly get on the same page for conversation and study.  But Paul did not have chapters and verses.  So I should say he was continuing a train of thought from a few paragraphs before.

In our habit of speaking, in chapter 12, verse 10, he started talking about living toward Christian love with one another as God’s people.  Just before this section, he had written about how everyone has gifts from the Spirit, and we are not all the same.  But each of us has something to offer to one another and to the whole group, like parts of the body all have their function.  He told them back there, “Let love be genuine.”  Those verses were part of the wedding vows Everly and I spoke in 1980.  That short sentence is now engraved on the gravestone where she is buried.  “Let love be genuine.” 

It was a commitment we shared with one another.  In so many ways, we certainly fell short of the ideal, but it was a byword for how we knew we ought to live in relation to the world and the people God had given us.  But it is not a statement specifically about the love of married people.  It is about the love that we have for one another in the church.  It is the love God expects us to have for all God’s children.  As followers of Jesus, married people and families should also live up to this kind of love.  So Paul is making it plain here.  Love genuinely.  Love honestly.  Love thoroughly.  Love wholeheartedly.  Love the lovable people, and love the unlovable people.  Love when you are eager to do so, and love when you are on your last nerve. 

But, we may ask, isn’t there something or someone I can hate?  Paul says to hate evil.  Don’t harbor your evil thoughts.  Don’t plot evil devices.  Don’t fixate on evil responses.  Don’t seek revenge.  Hate evil, but don’t act evilly to oppose it.  Hold fast to what is good.  Keep on imagining the good possibilities.  Look beyond people’s troublesome actions to see the good that is in them.  Think of ways to return good for evil.  Do not repay evil for evil, but put your mind on a noble response to the times when you are wronged.  At the climax of this reflection, he tells them there is a way to fight evil:  overcome evil with good.  Let good grow and snowball and expand and press outward until it overwhelms all the evil it can find.  Don’t let evil overcome you.  You get out there in all the goodness that God can produce in you and let that goodness overcome evil.

Paul knew that the times in which these Roman Christians were living were evil times.  Powerful people wanted to persecute them, put them in jail, fire them from their jobs, take away their homes, make outcasts of their children, drive them out of town.  Rulers were selfish and devious, and so were their assistants and lackeys.  Soldiers and police were directed to obey the whims of the rulers.  They might not have the strength of conscience to realize that the policies of the leaders were twisted and wrong.  Paul was not deceived.  He knew his own life had hung in the balance of unjust laws and unjust rulers before.  So he acknowledged that the times were rife with evil.  He warned the Christians to watch out.  And he taught them that even in an evil setting and situation, God had a different way for them.

He could tell them this because Paul also knew that the time in which these Roman Christians were living were good times.  They were fertile with opportunities for virtuous living.  They could watch the growth of their love touch their neighbors and their neighborhoods.  God was not defeated by the Imperial power.  God was just getting started showing them all that God can do.  So when they come up against violence and wrong, Paul said to live peaceably with all.  He said don’t avenge yourself, but stand up against evil by doing good.  Don’t flag in your zeal.  Be ardent.  Be motivated.  Work it out.  Yes, work it.  Work that goodness that God has placed in you.  Be intense about fighting wrong, but do it with goodness. 

Paul knew that the Roman Christians should have hope.  Knowing that hope, they could rejoice even in hard times.  They could show patience when they suffered because their hope is in God.  They could continue in prayer, knowing that God is with them and guiding them into the next opportunity to overcome.  Love one another.  Show mutual affection.  Outdo one another in doing right and honoring each other.  Make sure no one is in need.  Show hospitality.  Love, love, love, love, love, in word and deed.  Because God created this world to be good.  God’s goodness has been poured out in your lives.  Good will prevail, even if not in every moment, if not in every situation.  Even after setbacks, we can build a better world in God’s power and grace.  Death is defeated.  Christ is risen.  Good will prevail.

Paul had pressed this case hard in that earlier section, the second half of chapter 12.  Then he took a kind of aside.  He chased a rabbit.  He made an illustration of sorts.  He planned to finish his exhortation about love, but there was this little matter of the Empire to deal with.  He started talking about how they should act toward Caesar and Caesar’s minions.  But he talked about it in vague terms.  He talked about his enemies in abstract terms.  He did not say anything about Caesar, per se.  He didn’t name Caesar or any of the lesser officials.  He did not say anything about the Empire or the Senate or the Roman Legions or the Centurions.  He did not name any of the officials or even their offices.

Instead, he talked in broad theological terms about divine creation.  He talked about God’s good work in creating humanity as social beings.  He talked about the concept of authority in the abstract.  He said that having a system of authority is a good thing.  Ruling authorities, in general, help make our lives better.  Human authorities, as a concept, contribute to a better life for us.  In the ideal, authorities reward good and punish evil.  According to its purpose, authority maintains justice. 

But of course, Paul has been talking previously not about theory, but about the facts on the ground.  The facts on the ground were that Roman authorities were prejudiced toward their own kind.  The facts on the ground were that Christianity was an illicit, an illegal community of faith.  The facts on the ground were that everywhere Christianity had raised its liberating message of God’s love for the least and the lowly, people in power had gotten angry.  From the synagogue officials to the Sanhedrin.  From the Proconsuls to the Procurators.  From the Kings to the Emperors.  From the Pharisees to the Sadducees to the who knows who sees you practicing Christian faith, people wanted to shut it down.

That’s what Paul was telling them in the discourse about letting love be genuine, hating evil, and overcoming evil with good.  The facts on the ground were that the authorities, not in concept, but in flesh and blood, were coming down hard on the Christians.  The facts on the ground were that people who in theory were supposed to keep the peace were disturbing the peace.  Officials whose job was to serve and protect were self-serving and destroying lives in the streets.  Paul understood what was what.  He knew that everybody who had a title did not live up to the duties of office.  He knew that power, once it is in someone’s hands, can become a tool of domination.  That is what he and the Christians in Rome saw.  It’s what they knew.  It’s the yoke they felt on their shoulders.

So he said, in theory, they should recognize the goodness of authority.  They should cooperate with authority to do good.  They should not resist authority just to get their own way.  Paul was not being a respectability preacher here.  There have been a number of people lately talking about “respectability churchfolk” and “respectability preaching.”  They mean those people who try to find the fault in an unarmed youth’s behavior for his own death.  They mean those people who say that if the black community could just work harder to stay in school, to dress conventionally, to keep a job and keep their noses clean, then things like Ferguson would not happen.  That’s what they mean by the “respectability” view. 

But Paul was not talking respectability, and neither am I.  Paul was not saying that the answer to our oppression is to be more docile in obeying our oppressors.  He was not saying that the real problem is us, so we need to mend our ways.  No, he knew who was troubling the world.  God was not doing this.  The church’s service to God was not doing this.

If the powers that be want to keep people down, it does not matter how respectably people act.  They will get pressed down on.  So the answer is to press back.  That’s why Paul was saying that they need to get serious about resisting evil in the world.  They should continue their efforts to overcome evil with good by pressing the authorities to do the good they should do.  But he was not fooled into thinking that Caesar or his minions were likely to do the good.  That’s why he reminded the church to go ahead and pay taxes to whom taxes are due and revenue to whom revenue is due.  But then he turns the phrase.  He speaks with irony and from the point of view of faith.  He does not say that some people who demand your respect may not deserve your respect.  No, he is not that explicit.  He does not say that Caesar has not earned the honor that he wants you to show.  No, he is more subtle.  He says to pay respect to whom respect is due.  (Wink, wink.)  He says give honor to whom honor is due.  (“You know what I mean?”)  God deserves our honor.  Caesar probably does not.

But just so we don’t conclude that he means to start blatantly disrespecting the officials, and blatantly dishonoring Caesar, he goes back to his previous theme about loving our neighbors.  Now, we are finally back to the text we started with.  He says owe no one anything except love.  Martin Luther, the 16^th-century reformer translated that verse as a declarative statement, not an imperative.  He said it means that you don’t owe anyone anything, except you do owe everyone love.  God made us for love.  God made us to love one another, to be loved by one another, to receive love from one another—God made us for love.  So even Caesar gets our love.  Even the harassing official on the street gets our love.  Love does no wrong to the neighbor.  Love fulfills all our requirements and obligations.  Not just a feeling of love, but more importantly a way of treating someone.

Having made his case about love that’s genuine, that overcomes evil with good, that supersedes whatever resentments or desires for revenge we may have, Paul then starts talking about how important it is for us to stand strong in the face of evil.  He does not mean for us to sit back in our bedrooms thinking loving thoughts about those who do evil.  He does not mean for us to wait around the kitchen table until the tide of evil forces overwhelms and swallows up our whole neighborhood, our town, our community institutions.  He does not mean hiding behind church doors, shouting and singing while the neighborhood dies.  No we can’t just nap while destruction is happening all around us.  Overcoming evil with good is not a passive admonition.

We have to know what time it is.  It is the time for God’s good news.  It is the time for people to know that we can live together in harmony.  We can live together in love.  It’s the time that no one any longer has to be trying to dominate anyone else.  People can make a life without domination systems.  So if it was not real to you when you first got saved, then it needs to become real to you now that God is not interested in just a little bit of our lives.  God is not interested in just 10% of the church people to be part of the struggle.  God is not interested in just a token commitment.  God wants the whole of us.  God want you, and God wants us, and God wants you and me and us to be building the beloved community.  That is the whole reason God made the world and put us in it.  God wants to see that loving, just community come into the light of day.

Paul tells them to lay aside the works of darkness.  Now somebody might try to twist the term darkness here and make out that dark is equivalent to black, and that somehow blackness is opposed to God.  But Paul was not talking that way, and we know better than to fall into the trap of that kind of thinking.  Darkness here is the absence of light.  Light is the beacon that shines upon the realities of the world and reveals the truth.  Darkness is the world hiding from the light.  What is hidden from the light is afraid, is ashamed, is deceptive, is indifferent.  But in the light of day, we have to take a stand.  We have to show who we are and what we live for.

Paul says that the light is our armor.  Armor is our protection.  Bringing the truth into the light of day is our hope, because Jesus himself is the truth.  The love of God is the truth.  People able to get along and treat one another right is the truth.  Enough good gifts of God to feed and clothe and shelter everybody is the truth.  Letting everyone have a good education is the truth.  Paying people a decent, living wage is the truth.  Finding ways to keep people in their homes is the truth.  Our armor is joining together in the truth. 

You or I alone might try to stand up to the powers that be and get ignored.  But we are not alone.  God has put us together into a holy nation, a peculiar people.  Together, in solidarity with one another and with God, we can stand up to the powers and be heard.  This is the heart of the labor union movement.  The people with the capital, the people with the money—these people know that they need to organize into corporate boards and chambers of commerce and political action committees if they are going to make the world go their way.  Their hope is that the workers and the average people will stay disorganized.  A labor union exists to provide the organization necessary to stand up to the owners and managers who want to be in charge of our lives.  In a way, the church is a labor union of the neighborhood.  We organize together and care for our neighbors with the intensity and capacity to be a union of neighbors, loving our neighbors.  We join Durham CAN to operate as a union of people of faith and people of commitment to press our theoretical public servants toward being actual servants of the people.  The union makes us strong.

What time is it?  Paul says we had better know.  It is a time when people full of fear are trying to shut down and shut out and shout down and shut up the voices of those who are suffering.  They are belittling and humiliating teachers.  They are closing off access to voting.  They are shutting down jobs and taking them places where the poor workers have no protections.  They are refusing to hear the cry of the poor.  They are warehousing the desperately unemployed in prisons.  They are blaming the victimized and the marginalized for all the social ills.  They are shooting down our children in the streets.  They are claiming that the 1% deserve to own half of all the goods in the world.

We’d better know what time it is.  We have to lay aside the works of darkness.  The works of darkness are many.  Hiding out and believing we cannot make a difference is one of the works of darkness.  Get out in the light and stand for truth.  Being satisfied that we have a home and a job and not caring about others is a work of darkness.  Get into the light.  Letting some misguided police (I know it’s not all of them) continue to do whatever they have made it their habit to do, just because they can get by with it, is a work of darkness.  Pressing for reform is our armor of light.  Paul says don’t get discouraged and drown your sorrows in drunkenness.  Don’t go out and party because you think the world is going to hell anyway.  Get into the light.  Shine a light for God.  Shine a light for justice.  He says don’t take up the ways of the oppressors and sink into debauchery.  Don’t say that since the world is all corrupt anyway, I will now join the corruption of licentiousness, and consider that I have a license to do whatever I “blankety-blank” well please. Being free from the law does not mean that each of us can be a law unto ourselves.  Let a light shine into that despair that wants to give up on making things work, and let that light bring the hope of Jesus Christ who showed us another way. 

And don’t slip into the darkness of arguing and quarreling with one another.  We can find a way together to move forward.  It is the deceiver that tells us that it has to be my way or the highway.  Let the light of cooperation and solidarity shine.  And Paul says don’t become jealous of who is getting the credit.  If the Mayor or City Manager can bring a change, then let them claim the credit, even if they did so only because we pushed them and nudged them and scared them into doing it.  If the Police Chief wants to turn around and start policing in a fair and just and transparent and clean manner, then let him have the credit, no matter how slow he was in coming around to the light.  If the legislature wants to do right by our teachers and our voting citizens, let them have the credit, even if they did it kicking and screaming in resistance to the flood of people crying for justice.  Let the light shine above and beyond jealousies.  If justice is done, we don’t care who gets the credit.  We know God is the one who gets the credit.

So dress yourselves up to be the image of Jesus Christ that the world needs to see.  He did not count his own life above others.  He did not let even the small children or the disabled widows be disrespected.  He did not tolerate the poor being mistreated or the haughty and wealthy acting proud.  Paul says we should get dressed in Jesus.  Go to our closets, pull out a hanger with Jesus on it, and put that on.  Wear Jesus out into the wide world.  It’s a graphic image of the deep theological claim that in his life and death and resurrection, we have been united to Jesus.  God has drawn us into God’s own self.  So our image should be a beacon of God in the world.  We are the Jesus the world an see.  Jesus is the light of the world, and we keep on shining that light.  Be a light.  Be a beacon.  It’s a dangerous and troubling time.  But it is a time ripe for goodness.  The harvest is plentiful.  The workers are few.  We must work while it is day. 

Drawing on the words of songwriter Kyle Matthews (“My Heart Knows,” See for Yourself, Benson Records, 2000.)

We’ve thought it through,

And we’ve decided

We’re sure of You,

Whatever happens to us…

Whatever happens to us.

And if you lead

Where there is no path,

Where there’s no way out

And no way back,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is with You.

The road is rough—

Our courage leaves us.

The way of love

Was never easy for You.

And it won’t be easy for us.

But If you’ll reach down

From time to time

And let us feel

Your hand in ours,

We will go where we have to go;

Give what we have to give;

Face what we have to face;

And we will live where we have to live.

Our hearts know where home is.

Our hearts know our home is You.

Our hearts know, Lord.  You are our home.  So lead us now.  Lead, us Jesus.  Lead, kindly Light.  Lead and we will follow.  Thanks be to God.  Thanks be to God.