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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If You Are Coming for Me...

This is a sermon first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on October 29, 2017.

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18
19:1 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying:
19:2 Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy.
19:15 You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.
19:16 You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the LORD.
19:17 You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself.
19:18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

Matthew 22:34-46
22:34 When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together,
22:35 and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him.
22:36 "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?"
22:37 He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
22:38 This is the greatest and first commandment.
22:39 And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
22:40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
22:41 Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question:
22:42 "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." 22:43 He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,
22:44 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? 22:45 If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?"
22:46 No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Recently Congresswoman Maxine Waters found herself under attack in public because of her strong stands taken against white supremacists and her criticisms of the President. She has gained quite a reputation for her outspokenness, and as a matter of both personal defiance and of encouragement to young women to speak their minds, she has been famously quoted as saying, “If you come for me, then I’m coming for you.” They’re a version of what we might call “fighting words.”

It’s been a long time since I could classify myself as a person who knows all the latest slang and popular phrases. By the time I figure them out, my kids are happy to tell me that I’m so far behind that “nobody says that any more.” So I don’t know if Maxine and I are out of fashion to use the phrase, “If you are coming for me…” to state a challenge to potential critics and enemies. I have a colleague in another city at a university not to be named who can be expected fairly often to offer up challenges to people who would dare to question or challenge her. I think she is the one I first learned the phrase from because she used it quite often. I’ve noticed several other younger academics inclined to take offense at people they think are looking for trouble, and they have started their responses with this phrase, “If you are coming for me….”

When I was looking at this familiar passage in Matthew 22, it struck me that Jesus was surrounded by challengers and enemies who were scheming and making plans about how they were coming for him. The beginning of chapter 22 continues a sequence of similar scenes. A day before, Jesus had thrown the whole city into an uproar, taking over the temple, chasing away moneygrubbers and cheats who were exploiting the poor by jacking up prices on supplies for worshipers hoping to offer sacrifices.

 It was probably a fine-tuned system of outsourcing public business to private contractors. The highest bidders got to set up their tables and animal pens in the temple for a fee, and maybe an extra kickback to the officials to secure their favored position as a preferred vendor. Jesus messed up the furniture, scolded the vendors, chased away the animals, and then would not let anyone walk through the temple. Both the priestly leaders and the Roman occupiers held emergency meetings to consider what kind of response they should make. The may have met all night to get ready to come for Jesus when the morning broke.

At the beginning of the day, when Jesus showed himself in town again, the leaders of the temple were coming for him. They asked him why he thought he had authority to act the way he had been acting. Jesus was a shrewd political operator. He knew that the crowds were on his side, so on this next day after the big confrontation in the temple, he made use of that. This time he turned the metaphorical tables on these priests by asking them to weigh in with their opinions about John the Baptist. They were trapped. John was a popular figure and now a martyr. The crowds would not take kindly to the priests trashing one of their heroes. Jesus outmaneuvered them, and they went away frustrated and angrier.

For the rest of that day, groups kept caucusing, trying to come up with a way that they could come for Jesus and show him up. They were sure they could outwit him. They knew he had to be just a backwoods bumpkin who they could eventually humiliate and get the people to turn on him. Sure of themselves, each group would come with a question or puzzle, only to be caught up by Jesus and have to walk away. It almost became a contest between various cliques and factions to see who could get to Jesus first. After the chief priests and elders failed, the Pharisees gave it a shot. When they couldn’t trick Jesus, the Sadducees gave their best try and failed as well. So at the beginning of our reading today, we learn that after the Sadducees failed, the Pharisees got up their nerve again and came with the question about the greatest commandment. Jesus’ answer was so good, they had nothing to say in reply.

I guess they thought he might say the law was of no value or something similarly rebellious. Instead, he went to the deep meaning of the law, quoting two of the most beloved teachings of the Torah which were revered by the rabbis. They had come for him over and over, and to no avail. So when they had nothing left to argue about, Jesus came for them. He posed them a puzzle from the Psalms, a hermeneutical conundrum about the Messiah as the Son of David, but also as the one whom David himself called Lord. They were mad as hornets at the trap Jesus set for them, and again refused to answer his questions because they feared the crowd’s reaction if they condemned Jesus publicly, even though that’s what they wanted to do.

It’s as if Jesus had said to them, “If you are coming for me, then you had better be ready to face the truth.” “If you are coming for me, then you had better realize who it is you are dealing with.” “If you are coming for me, know that I am calling all God’s children together.” Jesus was fine with their challenging questions, but they weren’t ready for the kind of answers he brought.

What made Jerusalem such a center for turmoil and political controversy? Why was the temple such a focal point for conflict when Jesus came to town? Probably any of us who have read and studied the gospels have raised these questions from time to time. We recognize that Jesus had enemies. We may be puzzled as to why anyone would not like Jesus, whom we have boxed into an image of sweetness and meekness. But if that’s as far as our thinking has gotten us, then we need to dig deeper and ponder further.

While the world of Jesus was in many details very different from ours, there are also many ways in which we need to look at his world as similar to ours. We don’t have a Caesar or occupying Roman legions. We don’t have the same kind of Ruling Council of Priests, Scribes, and Elders, the Sanhedrin, or partisan groups called Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, and Zealots. On the other hand, we do have Presidents and Governors and Mayors. We have Capitol Police and State Police and Sheriff’s Deputies and ICE Detention Officers. We have a City Council and County Commissioners and a General Assembly and a Congress. We do have Democrats and Republicans, a Tea Party and Anarchists and the Alt-Right. We have the Chamber of Commerce, Bank of America, Walmart, AIG, Amazon, and GlaxoSmithKline.

In our world, as in Jesus’ world, the people who are claiming the most power are scheming together to make sure that anyone else who might want power will have trouble getting hold of it. They look for wedge issues, and they make up ways to divide communities against one another. The Sanhedrin was trying to drive a wedge between Jesus and the crowds of people who had come to the Passover Festival. They were hoping their provocative questions would break down the popular consensus around Jesus and get people arguing with one another. As Jeanne DeCelles has written (New Heaven, New Earth),

Jesus did not get into trouble with the powers of his day simply by challenging the individual behaviors of his hearers. His downfall came from challenging the very systems of his society. He challenged the cornerstones. Just as the values of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, and the Pentagon conflict with the gospel, so too with Jesus and the institutions of his time: he was in conflict with the power structures of his own day, religious and civil alike.

Yes, on the day after Jesus cleared the temple, they came for him. They were set on bringing him down by dividing the crowds against him. On this day, they would not succeed. But they would keep trying.

 Ironically, the Roman Empire’s agents were using the same strategy against the Jewish leaders that the Sanhedrin was using against Jesus and his followers. They played favorites and offered benefits to some and not to others. Some Jewish leaders were called Herodians because they had signed up to play along with the Roman appointed kings in the family of Herod. Others, the Sadducees and Pharisees, had originated when the previous empire’s Greek rulers worked to divide Jews against one another before the Maccabean uprising. Now the Romans played Sadducees and Pharisees against each other, and here they were taking turns at Jesus. All the while, they were maneuvering for power against one another. And the Zealots were lurking on the margins, looking for the chance to stir up turmoil in hopes that it might lead to a revolution to overthrow Rome.

 This strategy of empire to divide God’s children against one another is a perennial and highly successful means of keeping the rest of us down. Rev. Dr. Barber regularly instructs whoever will take time to listen that the strategy of the powerful and wealthy has always been to convince poor whites that no matter how bad their lives are, at least they aren’t black. Now they also try to divide blacks against Latinos, white men against minorities and women, and any potential crack in the social fabric they can capitalize on.

Barber calls on us to remember how the fusion politics that brought black and white farmers and business owners and families together to stand up for their common interests and the common good managed to overthrow the plantation politics that concentrated wealth and power in the hands of a few families. The last thing the empire wants the rest of us to do is to figure out that we could work together to make things better for all of us.

Some of you were here at Mt Level last Thursday night. If you arrived near 7 pm, you may have had to park far away. The sanctuary was full to overflowing with people from many different parts of Durham. There were Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Holiness, and some who claim no denomination. There were Unitarians and Reform Jews. There were members of non-profits organized for the environment, for helping students, for supporting the unemployed, for promoting affordable housing, and for building community solidarity. There were African Americans, Latinos, pale-skinned folk, and Asian Americans. There were students from Duke and Carolina, from Central and Shaw. There were people from different neighborhoods, different professions, and different socio-economic classes.

We had every reason imaginable to divide against one another, create rivalries, look down on one another, and try to get an advantage over one another. But in this case, we did not do that. Not only the current member organizations, but a dozen more churches and community groups who hope to become members crowded into this hall. They came together, WE came together, because we realized that it is not our differences but our ability to build trusting relationships for mutual benefit that make us strong.

Moneyed interests and political powers of another sort may wish to tear us down by trying to divide us. They might try to make the Durham Committee or the People’s Alliance shun us or treat us as rivals. They might try to get the DCIA or the Ministerial Alliance to see our clergy leaders as a threat. They might encourage a new group like Durham for All to see Durham CAN as a giant to be knocked down and defeated. Durham CAN could act superior and ignore other potential partners in the struggle. But that’s not what happened here on Thursday.

On Thursday, when they came for us, we stood together to fight for better housing for all, for better wages for all, for a first and a second chance for all. The full parking lot and the full house of people on Thursday night is a glimpse of what it means to live up to the great commandment to love one another. It is love in action that stands up for those who struggle even when they don’t look or talk the way we do. It is, as our own pastor, Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., told the gathered masses, “the measure of who cares.” Which of the people in our community will bear the mark of those who care?

Of course, just because Durham CAN had over 600 people uniting around an agenda on housing and jobs does not mean we have arrived at heaven on earth. Maybe there is a small glimpse of what could be, but the powers of this world have many tricks and traps to continue to break apart what is strong and healthy and flourishing.

Even after a success, we can easily fall back into the trap of letting ourselves be divided and then trying to protect our little bit of turf from others. This is the nature of sin. Sin is the decay and even destruction of the good that God has accomplished in our lives and in our communities. Sin is turning away from the path of hope that we set out on. Sin is rejecting the best possibilities that God and our neighbors have to offer us. And it does not only happen in our cities and suburbs and countryside. It happens in our churches.

Jesus reminded the Pharisees and the crowds in the streets on that day that what God wants for us can be stated in a few crucial sentences. These two commandments represent the revelation in the Torah of the very purpose and meaning of creation and human existence. Late in the night when we can’t sleep, we may find ourselves asking why are we even here? What is the meaning of life? Well, Jesus answered those questions on this day in Jerusalem.

He told all who would listen that the God who is Love spoke the world into existence as an expression and fulfillment of the love that flows in eternity from each person of the Trinity, mutually and reciprocally, perfectly and unendingly. God made the world out of love and for love. We are here in the world to love. We are made to love God and to love one another. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Wayne Gordon says that when he was a young coach and school teacher, leading Bible studies with high school youth, those kids grew very serious about their devotion to God. One day, they brought an insight to him that powerfully changed his reading of this text.

They called his attention to the commandment to love your neighbor. They said, “If the individual Christian is supposed to love our neighbors, wouldn’t it be true that a church full of Christians is supposed to love our neighborhood?” Their deep insight helped him to recognize the call of God to start a church and make a long-term commitment to transforming a run-down, poor neighborhood into a place fitted to God’s purpose of abundant living and beloved community.

But few churches in our day share that kind of vision. We lock our buildings against the neighborhood and flee away to distant places to live. Church people don’t know their neighbors, and when they do know them, they don’t like them or want them inside their church buildings. The original families in a church grow suspicious of newcomers, and new members resent the people who try to hold on to power and position.

Churches start to function as subsidiaries to social power. They occupy socio-economic strata in the social order, so that executives and managers go to this congregation, professionals and academics go to the other congregation, laborers and factory workers here, schoolteachers and public employees there, and the unemployed or homeless don’t feel welcome at any church.

Erika Edwards, a professor at UNC-Charlotte, spoke to the Shaw Divinity School Women’s Conference about the heritage of scientific racism. In earlier eras, biologists, medical doctors, anthropologists, and various other scientists sought to prove what everyone already had decided was true—that white Europeans were superior to people of darker skin from other parts of the world. Very few scientists would be willing to make those kinds of claims in public in our time, but the residual effect of that era continues to operate in the thinking and structures of our culture and our churches. Edwards talked about ways in which ranking—from darkest to lightest skin—functions to classify people’s beauty and intelligence even today. Dividing and conquering even within communities of color prevents the kind of loving cooperation that would lead to the uplift of all.

Ruby Sales talked to us at the same conference about the way that generations are being divided against one another in the current political climate. On the one hand, she said young people do not know the history of the struggle and the costs paid by those who have gone before them. All they can see is that too many seem satisfied to have gotten a small piece of the pie, to have climbed up a few steps of the ladder, and no longer have a vision of change for the better.

On the other hand, older folks have become accustomed to their strategies of respectability politics to the point that the patterns of respectability have replaced the ideals of freedom, hope, and community. Wearing braids, getting tattoos, sagging pants, or short skirts are interpreted as evidence that young people have no dreams or care too little about themselves. They may blame the young people for the lack of knowledge of their history and of the costs paid for every advance, when it was the responsibility of their generation to pass down the story.

All over this country, young people are outside of the churches believing that those of us inside have become too elitist, too self-congratulatory, too closed minded, and too uncaring about the world around us. All over this country, people inside churches are wondering where the young people are, decrying how kids are so messed up these days, angry at the social forces they blame for undermining the lives and faith of our children. We have become divided against one another, and we are being conquered.

So even within our churches, we let the empire seduce us, divide us, turn us into parties and sects and cliques. But Jesus would have none of it. He turned the argument back around to the heart of the gospel. God has loved us. God made us for love. Love God with all that you are. Love one another. Love others by wanting for them everything good you would want for yourself.

Jesus was quoting from the Old Testament. Loving God who made us and loves us was the Shema, the core confession of the entire tradition of the Jews. Today’s text from Leviticus names many ways of thinking about what it means to love our neighbors. We must not harbor any hate. We must be willing to speak up and correct those who are bullying or cheating or doing harm to themselves and others. We can’t hold grudges or be happy at other people’s misfortune. We mustn’t be opportunists and getting advantage or money from what has hurt someone else.

Leviticus says that in graphic terms: you shall not profit by the blood of your neighbor: I am the Lord. We must deal justly and judge others with justice. We can’t be respecters of persons. We must aim to do no less than to display the love of God, the character of God, in the way that we live.

How is it that we can resist sin and the powers, thrones, dominions, and authorities of this world in order to live according to God’s purpose and calling to love our neighbor? At its most basic level it involves a surrender of our willfulness and our selfishness to God. What is best for us and what we ought to do may not always be what we first wish for and want to do. Our vision is limited, but God in Jesus Christ has revealed to us the way that we should go.

Jesus has called us to be peacemakers, to hunger for justice, to be pure in heart, meek, and humble. Jesus has shown us the way to lead by becoming a servant, to give of ourselves so that there will be no need among us. And he summed it all up by reminding us to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Turning away from our limited self-interest, toward the richness of God’s interest in the flourishing of all our communities, all our neighborhoods—this is the path away from enslavement to sin and domination by empire and the powers of this world that have refused to bow the knee to Jesus.

Have you come to worship today with a searching heart? Have you found yourself jealous of the good others have and bearing grudges every time someone else found success? Are you worried that you will lose out because someone else who is struggling might get some of what you want? Have you wondered if God even cares for you or is on your side?

Have you ever come to know that Jesus came into the world to show us that God is for us? And if God is for us, who can stand against us? How many ways might we keep on dividing ourselves from one another when what God wants for us is to live in loving community? The Holy Spirit is active and present to call you today to unite yourself to God, to follow Jesus down a path of love and servanthood. If you have never given your life to God by following Jesus, there is no reason to continue to delay. Be joined to Jesus so that you live in him and he lives in you.

Have you let your church become your social club where you want to pick and choose the kinds of people who are allowed to join? Has church become a place of status where we can look down on the people who don’t measure up, feeling smug that we are the ones God likes? Has church become an in-group busily defining how many others we can put into the out-group?

If the Holy Spirit has quickened in you a desire to become holy as God is holy, to be set apart by the generosity of your love rather than by the uppity angle of your forehead, then renew your vow to God to be an apostle of love in your neighborhood, in your family, and in your church. God is stirring in Mt Level, and wherever people have ears to hear, to raise up leaders and to raise up a new generation.

If we are not ready to respond and ready to listen, we will continue to quench that work of the Spirit. Will we someday look back on Thursday night, October 26, 2017, as the last day in the history of our church that we saw a full house? Lord help us to be ready to open our hearts and our doors to whomever you send to us, that we might shine as a beacon of love and fulfill our calling to be beloved community in this corner of Durham. Let us not divide ourselves, but unite ourselves to those who are brokenhearted, alone, and struggling, even if they are different from us in so many ways.

If you are in search of a church home, we pray that the Holy Spirit will speak to you about where your life should be united to the work of Christ in our city. If the Spirit is prodding you today to say that Mt. Level is the community of God’s people where you should be, then we welcome you to join with us in the service of God that we have also been called to do. The doors of the church are open.

Whosoever will, may come into the loving community of neighbors who are gathered today to love one another. If you are coming for me, let me be the first to acknowledge that God is calling us into community. Let us be reconciled to one another, and take on the ministry of reconciliation in this world so full of those whom God loves.

Death Behind Us, Death Before Us

This sermon for the Lenten season was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church on April 2, 2017.  It seems highly relevant for Good Friday or Holy Saturday.

Ezekiel 37:1-14
    1 The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.  2 He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry.  3 He said to me, "Mortal, can these bones live?"
    I answered, "O Lord GOD, you know."
    4 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD.  5 Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.  6 I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the LORD."
    7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.  8 I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.
    9 Then he said to me, "Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord GOD: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live."
    10 I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
    11 Then he said to me, "Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, 'Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.'  12 Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel.  13 And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people.  14 I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act," says the LORD.

John  11:1-45
     1 Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.  2 Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill.
    3 So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, "Lord, he whom you love is ill."
    4 But when Jesus heard it, he said, "This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God's glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."  5 Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.
    7 Then after this he said to the disciples, "Let us go to Judea again."
    8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and are you going there again?"
    9 Jesus answered, "Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk during the day do not stumble, because they see the light of this world. 10 But those who walk at night stumble, because the light is not in them."  11 After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to awaken him."
    12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will be all right."
    13 Jesus, however, had been speaking about his death, but they thought that he was referring merely to sleep.  14 Then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus is dead. 15 For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
    16 Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
    17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
    18 Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
    20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.  21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.  22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."
    23 Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."
    24 Martha said to him, "I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
    25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
    27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
    28 When she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, and told her privately, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."
29 And when she heard it, she got up quickly and went to him.
    30 Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.  31 The Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary get up quickly and go out. They followed her because they thought that she was going to the tomb to weep there.  32 When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
    33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.  34 He said, "Where have you laid him?" They said to him, "Lord, come and see."
    35 Jesus began to weep.
    36 So the Jews said, "See how he loved him!"
    37 But some of them said, "Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?"
    38 Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.  39 Jesus said, "Take away the stone."
    Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, "Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days."
    40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
    41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, I thank you for having heard me.  42 I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
    43 When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"
    44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go."
    45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.

    We already heard the reading from the prophet Ezekiel.  I’ve had a special affinity for Ezekiel, for his many acted out prophecies and for the pathos of his life as a prophet who was rejected among his people.  Ezekiel’s visions, another sermon for another day, make a crucial theological turning point, along with the other great prophets of his era–Jeremiah and the Exilic Isaiah.  They reshape the vision of a people under God who are not dependent on an earthly army or king, or even on a land of their own.  They elevate the doctrine of the Hebrew God to One who is not limited to land or ethnicity, but rules in all places and among all peoples. 
    This passage in the 37th chapter, one of the most famous ones from Ezekiel, is a text I have preached more than once.  I want to highlight the first verse before I read from the gospel text.  If you want to turn to the 11th chapter of John’s gospel, I will start there in the first verse.  But first, let me repeat the first verse of Ezekiel 37.  “The hand of the LORD came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones.”
    Now if you will join me in the Gospel reading from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary selects verses 1-45, telling a familiar story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus.  I will narrow the focus to the first 16 verses.  John 11:1-16.... 
    And look again with me at that final verse, 16.  “Thomas, who was called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’”
    Join me today as we consider these two passages on the theme, “Death with us; death behind us; death before us.”  Death behind us. Death before us.
    The first thing to strike me about these lectionary readings for the Fifth Sunday of Lent was the pervasive presence of death.  The prophet Ezekiel was carried away by the power of the Spirit and set down in a place of death.  It was some kind of historic battlefield scene, but one in which the traditional practice of burying the dead must have been too overwhelming.  Instead, a field of dried, bleached bones lay scattered before the prophet.  As so many other times in his prophetic ministry, Ezekiel found himself overwhelmed.  Here he stood, surrounded by the signs of death of so many who had lived before his time.  He was immersed in the memory, or perhaps it was the forgotten memory, of so much death behind him, so much death that loomed heavy behind him.
    Then we look at the Gospel text and find another very familiar story in which Jesus initially feels no pressure to check on his friend, only to find out soon that Lazarus had died. I was struck by more death.  With his disciples, he has to face going to the home of his dead friend.  Moreover, his disciples are concerned that to take this journey could also mean the death of Jesus and even their own deaths.  In the midst of their work of ministry, they are looking down a road toward death.  Death looms before them.
    My mind quickly jumped to a famous Irish prayer associated with St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland.  One of the most remembered sections of the prayer repeats one affirmation after another about the presence of Christ:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise...

But my mind replaced the affirmation of Christ with the recognition of the presence of death. 

Death with us, death before us, death behind us,
Death in us, death beneath us, death above us,
Death on our right, death on our left,
Death where we lie, death where we sit, death where we arise...

I admit it’s not a pleasant set of thoughts.  We live in an age of denial.  We like to call our denial positive thinking.  We think we can mentally hide from the realities of life.  So faced with the pervasive presence of death, we are most often inclined to say to ourselves or to one another, “Why don’t we change the subject?  Let’s talk about something happier.” 
    I’m not criticizing that strategy.  Sometimes that’s the best way to cope with some of the hard truths of our existence.  But we should not confuse coping through occasional denial with opening our hearts to the truth about what people face every day in our world.  We, as Ezekiel and as Jesus, live in a world where death surrounds us.
    Many of us have in recent months had to entertain the possibility of death’s presenting itself in our families as national leaders threatened to eliminate health insurance for millions of us.  What kind of logic, or should I call it greed, drives people to believe it’s acceptable to cause the deaths of many thousands of fellow citizens by taking away access to health care?  What does it mean to call health care a responsibility and not a privilege, when at least half of workers make such low wages they could never take the responsibility to purchase health care on their own?  Death with us, death in us, death where we lie down.
    I’ve heard people say that when I preach they know to expect a social justice sermon, a sermon about ministry in our community.  I don’t mind that reputation.  I hope that along with that reputation I can also have a holistic faith and ministry that touches all kinds of needs and hopes of God’s people.  But I don’t apologize for always seeking to look beyond our inward well-being toward the well-being of the world God loves.
    Yet today I want to say that while there are obviously social justice implications for this message, it is also an attempt to delve into the depths of what it means to live and love, to lose and die, and to be God’s creatures, to be human in this marvelous and mysterious world God has made.
    In day-to-day living, we don’t always have time or energy to think about the mysteries and marvels.  We stay busy putting one foot in front of the other.  We count on the continuity of having the people around us present today and tomorrow and next month and next year.  Jesus probably felt the same way about his friends in Bethany.  When he got word that Lazarus was sick, maybe he did not initially take it very seriously.  Everybody gets sick now and then.  I had a head cold this week.  Some of you may have had a rougher time with the flu recently.  We think of getting sick as something to endure, with the assumption that “this, too, shall pass.”
    A couple of days later, Jesus decided it was time to go to Bethany.  Had another person come to give him a message?  We don’t know that, but we soon find out that he had somehow come to know that Lazarus had died.  Maybe he had a vision or an intuition.  Moreover, John does not give us much insight into his mood or feelings at this point.  Later we learn how sad he was about Lazarus’s death.  At this point we only know that he has made up his mind to go to Bethany.
    His disciples are pretty upset about this plan.  They have been doing their work farther north, and across the Jordan, outside of the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem authorities.  The reason is that Jesus has not always been respectful and diplomatic in his dealings with the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the Herodians, and the Roman authorities.  During his last visit to Jerusalem, of which Bethany is a near suburb, a mob had actually picked up stones to kill him.  Jesus and his buddies slipped away before the stoning could happen, and they had stayed far away ever since.
    Now Jesus is facing the death of his beloved friend Lazarus down the road, near Jerusalem.  The disciples are thinking about that angry mob with the rocks.  We know from the other three gospels that Jesus has warned his disciples that when he goes to Jerusalem, the rulers there are going to kill him.  Their strategy has been to keep their distance.  They are not sure Jesus is thinking straight.  He insists on going, so Thomas gives a plainspoken response–“I guess we can all go die together.”
    Under the rule of empire, the residents of Palestine were acquainted with death.  They had the experience of harsh treatment by the Roman overlords and the Herodian interloper kings.  They could not get out of their minds the image of their friend John who had been beheaded because he would not mince his words.  And they had seen the way crowds can shift to mobs in a moment when the conversation turns an unpopular way.  They weren’t ready to die, and they were not convinced they or Jesus needed to die.  If Jesus would just get organized for battle like a real Messiah was supposed to do, they could gather enough fighters to sweep into Jerusalem and take out all the enemies of the people.  But Jesus showed no interest in being a Messiah under those conditions.  So maybe they were doomed to die together.
    The slogan Black Lives Matter is a response to the pervasiveness of death in times and places where it just should not happen.  The former president stood in the role of every person when he confessed that in the killing of Trayvon Martin it was clear that the boy could have been the son of any black parent, including himself.  The blood of Trayvon, of Michael, of Sandra, of Freddie, of Rekia, of Jonathan, of José, of Uniece, and of so many more cries out from the ground.  How many deaths until young people’s lives matter?  How many killings until accountability becomes a reality?  Death on our right side, death on our left side, death where we rise up, death where we sit down.
    The rest of the story from John 11 is very familiar.  Jesus goes on to meet Martha and Mary.  He weeps over the death of his friend.  And God performs a powerful sign through the Incarnate Son to demonstrate that there is nothing out of the reach of God’s power.  The story of Lazarus’s coming forth from the grave is a powerful moment in the gospel account of Jesus’ life.  It foreshadows something even greater to come when Jesus comes out of his grave.  In and of itself, this event does not abolish death.  Lazarus went on to die at a later time, as did his sisters and everyone else gathered in Bethany that day.  And so we still find ourselves living in the midst of death, as did Jesus and his disciples and friends in this story.
    I stumbled upon a book of poetry by Audre Lorde this week as I was preparing for this sermon.  The title of the book is Our Dead Behind Us.   I decided I needed to understand what she meant by that title, so I got a copy of the book and started reading the poems.  I was not too surprised to find that title phrase in the first poem, one called “Sisters in Arms.”  It is a poetic narration of two women who find themselves in a crisis.  Both live as expatriates from different societies–one from the USA and one from South Africa.  The South African woman gets news that in a horrific and violent series of repressive acts, her fifteen-year-old daughter in South Africa has been murdered by the police forces.  In the same sequence of events, elementary school children have also been massacred for protesting against injustice and apartheid–six-year-olds, nine-year-olds, even a three-week-old infant.
    The mother heads to South Africa to bury her daughter and join in the struggle.  The other woman remains behind, and in her pain and anger is working in her garden.  Let me quote a few lines from the poem,

my hand comes down like a brown vise over the marigolds
reckless through despair
we were two black women touching our flame
and we left our dead behind us

The power and pain of death, even in their sympathy and care for one another, was breaking them down and breaking them apart.  Their lives kept going on, and their dead were left behind them.  This experience is not far away from many people throughout this world in which we live and die.  Death before us, death behind us.  We don’t escape it if we live in this world.
    God has made us finite beings.  We are born, we live, we die.  Even Jesus’ coming into the world has as a crucial part of it his full sharing of our existence, all the way to the point of death, and more specifically an undignified death. 
    By the time most of us reach middle age, we have become far more acquainted with death than we wish.  Grandparents and parents whose love filled and shaped our lives leave us in this world without their presence.  Too many of us lose loved ones far too early for their time.  The mystery and grief of their absence weighs heavy on us.  We sometimes are tempted to join with the writer of Ecclesiastes and wonder if all of life is in vain.
    I do feel some trepidation in taking you down this difficult road of thinking about death today, but I can’t help but testify to the light the Spirit has shed on these texts.  From Ezekiel to Lazarus, even when we walk with Jesus, we walk amidst death in a dying world.  Part of what we must recognize in Thomas’s remark from John 11:16 is that if we are going to be faithful to Jesus, we may even have to challenge death.  The way of Jesus, we see now in hindsight, is a way of the cross.  It is a road to execution.  It is a pilgrimage of standing strong for God and God’s justice even in the face of those who would kill us for doing so.
    Many of us have grappled in recent months with the likelihood that struggling for justice may become harder in our time.  It may not be adequate to call the congressional representative or write a letter in support of some legislation.  It may not be adequate to have celebratory marches in which we are happy to be together in the cause of justice, then stop off at our favorite restaurant on the way home.  It may be that we will have to face down harsher opponents in our time.  We may begin to catch on that when our young people are beaten and shot in the streets, we cannot keep telling ourselves that it was because they were not acting respectably enough.  In some circles and places, the forces of evil are gathering their strength.  They are already lashing out at Muslims and refugees and transgendered persons.  They are looking for ways to cut away the safety net for the poor, for the elderly, for school children, and for children of immigrants. 
    Protecting the vulnerable may become costly for us in ways that it has not been.  Standing up against official injustice, against warmongering, against government sanctioned discrimination, against unfair voting practices–these may become as dangerous as it was for children in Birmingham, for citizens walking on a bridge in Selma, and for Dr. King organizing with sanitation workers in Memphis.
    I’m not predicting these things will happen to you or to me.  I am simply reminding myself and all of us that when we take up the calling to follow Jesus, a cross may be near in our path.  If any of you would follow me, you must deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me. Anyone who would save his or her own life will lose it, but all who would lose their life for Jesus’ sake will find it.
    There is a deep logic of death and resurrection in the very nature of the church.  Our sacramental practice of baptism articulates that logic.  We ought not to be unfamiliar with death, but we ought to be able to see it differently than the world does. 
    For part of the reason that Jesus was ready to head to Bethany was that he had become convinced by his faith in God that death was not final.  He had come to realize that even if he were captured and executed as an enemy of the state, that God still had a purpose for him beyond that moment of death.  Moreover, his dying as an act of defiance and protest to the injustice of the empire would be far greater than the regime’s acting against one person.  He had come to realize that the death he would endure was one which would encompass the deaths of all of us.  In his role as the Second Adam, he would be recapitulating, reconstituting, rebooting humanity into a new creation.  This is what he tried to explain to Martha later in Bethany--he himself is the resurrection in which we also share.
    Paul wrote about this logic of death and resurrection often.  In Jesus we all die, and in his resurrection we all are raised.  In his death, our past inadequate way of living passes away.  In his resurrection a whole new life already has begun in us.  He, who is our Savior, is our new life.  As Paul wrote in Galatians, I am crucified with Christ, yet nevertheless I live.  But it is not I who live, but Christ lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live in faithfulness to the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.  He reminds us in Romans that we die and are buried with Christ in our baptism.  We rise from the waters of baptism into a new life.
    So there is another sense in which we might say without despair, and perhaps even with rejoicing, that death is behind us.  Although Ezekiel looked at the bones and saw death in its brutality in the history of that valley of bones, his eyes were opened to see that those parched and desiccated bones can live when God raises them to new life.  Jesus, on the road to Bethany, can face the likely wrath of the powerful in Jerusalem because he has fixed his eyes on the joy that is before him.  He is willing to despise the shame of the cross, of the jeering crowd, and of the mocking crown on his brow.  He can endure the cross for the sake of the new creation.  He can endure death because he will bring us all through it with him.  Oh, Death, where is your sting?  Oh, grave, where is your victory?  In bringing all of us together into his death, Jesus puts our deaths behind us.
    Now some of you may rightly want to complain that it’s not quite right, Rev. Broadway, for you to lay on all this thick death conversation and then try to turn it around to be happy in the last minute or two of the sermon.  Let me say that I also hope I know better than that.  It ought not to be a rule that we have to leave church feeling giddy and happy all the time.  Sometimes we may have to leave with some burdens to bear.  So I’m not going to try to dress up death in a pretty outfit so you can forget about what these texts teach us.
    What I do want to say is that in our baptism, we are united to Jesus in his death.  We undergo the death of our sinful ways.  The death of our rebelliousness and rejection of God is accomplished.  The old short-sighted and egocentric self dies in order to be joined to the new self, the true human self, the Second and True Adam, Jesus.  Our new humanity is constituted by being joined to him.  We live in Christ.  Christ lives in us.  We are made new.  This is great and wonderful news.  But that is not the same as saying that we no longer have to face the troubles of the world. 
    I think there is something to be learned here from Jesus’ baptism.  The gospel accounts tell us of the remarkable experience of his baptism in which all three persons of the Triune God are made manifest together as the Son is baptized.  It is a crucial moment of Jesus’ life and ministry, and yet he comes up out of the water only to face some of the greatest trials he ever had to face.  He goes alone, driven by the Spirit, into a deserted wilderness, and great temptations befall him.  He struggles with his mission and Messiahship.  How should his life count in the world?  What kind of Messiah should he be?  It was not easy for him, and it will not be easy for us.  Yet still, because of his example in baptism, and because of the way he embodied that baptism through faithful life, death, burial, and resurrection, we have become united to God through him.
    Would you go on living on your own, alienated from God, if you knew that you could have your life joined to God for every moment and every day?  Would you seek to have the courage to face whatever troubles and trials come, knowing that in all of them, Christ is living in you and you in him?  That is what God is offering to each of us today.  If you have not yet answered the call to unite your life to Jesus, to follow in his way, and to enter with him into baptism that demonstrates our passage from death into life, then there is no better time than today for you to follow Jesus.  Follow him through this vale of tears, through the pervasiveness of death, with hope that God is at work even now to transform this world we live in to become the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, a land where peace and justice reign in the lives of women and men.  Follow Jesus today.  Pass from death to life in him.
    There may be some present today who are struggling with loss and grief.  You have lost a friend, a family member, a spouse, a parent, or some other loved one to death.  You know you are supposed to acknowledge that such a death is a mere passing on to another dimension of life, an entry into the presence of God even more fully than we know on this earth. Still, it does not take away the emptiness and hurt you feel on this side of that transition.  Perhaps you need to turn toward God and ask for comfort and healing as you continue on the road of life that remains for you, before and until the joyful reunion you long for beyond the grave.  If you need to come and cry out for God’s Spirit to fill and heal you, then now is the time to come.  Don’t be embarrassed for having grief.  It means you are human and that you know what it means to love and be loved.  God is a healing God.
    If you live in Durham, but you are not currently united with a congregation, take a moment now to call on the Holy Spirit for guidance.  It may be that God has brought you here today because you should be united to this local body of Christ’s followers as we fight against the pervasive power of death and shine the light of life in the world.  If you feel the calling to join with us in the ministry that God has called us to in this city and this neighborhood, why not go ahead and join with us today.  Amen.
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An addendum:  a few words from Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

Whoever enters discipleship enters Jesus’ death, and puts his or her own life into death; this has been so from the beginning. The cross is not the horrible end of a pious, happy life, but stands rather at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ.

Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?

The Christmas season sweeps over people with wave after wave of emotion, a wide range of feelings that reflect the memories of family time, of fears, hopes, dreams, and disappointments.  I'm one of those people. 

I don't remember much mixture of emotions when I was a child. I think when I was a younger adult, part of the mix of emotions was being tired from finishing papers and projects in school.  There was the excitement of giving and receiving presents, and the inevitable disappointment that the long-anticipated presents were not going to actually make life perfect or even very different.  Eventually, the joy was in seeing the happiness of our own children, mixed with the nagging sense that we had sold our souls to the consumer gospel and had accumulated way too much junk.  Now as I look around at the boxes still unpacked from my move to NC from Texas, I still know that it is true.

So this Christmas Eve has been no surprise.  I've had the satisfaction that my adult children and I have agreed to cut back on the orgy of consumption and share time together without the pressure of last-minute shopping or checking off lists from the the tit-for-tat gift mandate.  For that reason, we are able to enjoy being together better, taking care of preparing meals and reveling in them together.  I hung out part of the day with brother-in-law Jim and Dad.  Most everyone relaxed and napped a while.  Jim played some Andy Griffith episodes to make us laugh.  Then our old man trio went to Black Mountain Presbyterian Church for Christmas Eve liturgy. 

Even while waiting and listening to the preparatory organ music, I was drawn to a beautiful hymn and prayer printed in the order of worship:

Jesus is our childhood's patter; day by day, like us he grew;
He was little, weak, and helpless, tears and smiles like us he knew...

God of the commonplace,
we confess that we have bee seduced by human wealth and power.
We do not expect to meet you in haggard faces,
cold barns, or lonely watches.
We are slow to receive your word when it comes from improbable places.
God of all creation, intrude on us this night.
Let the clamor of angels and the hurried steps of shepherds
echo in our hearts, until we, too,
spill with good news of great joy.

That waiting, that anticipation, those moments shared so many times with my beloved Everly and Hugh Delle, began to overwhelm me.  Sitting between my dad and a woman who sweetly greeted me when I joined her on the pew, my face clouded and tears flowed.  A knot seemed to swell in my chest, a tension formed of deep longing for what is out of reach.  In our first Christmas without Mom and now the fourth without Everly, I don't really think this kind of feeling is going to ever go away, until a day comes when I don't even know myself any longer.

When I looked ahead and saw the lyric line, "Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains?", it struck me as a summation of my thoughts and feelings in the moment.

My longing and discomfort in this season in inextricably tied to not having Everly and Hugh Delle in the room with me, but it spreads from there to many other things.  There is a great sorrow weighing on me because of the discouraging events and social uproar of this moment in time.  It is a time when people of my generation may have hoped we would see taking shape in our world some element of redeeming change, of movement toward overcoming the racialized structure of the world, of seeing an end to the centuries of Eurochristianist-Muslim hatred, of dividing and despising people for bodily differences. But if we are honest with ourselves, we have to recognize that much of what we hoped might be changed has remained a molten magma under the surface of false civility.  Granted permission and encouraged to set aside pretense of politeness, the fabric of social existence seems to be dissolving around us.

I'm not generally inclined to believe all is lost, but there are times when it is hard to see the hope.  A quarter century ago the long and deadly Lebanese Civil War which had divided a previously peaceful country into camps ruled by warlords, came to a tenuous peace, only to be followed a few years later by an outburst of violence among Rwandans that seared every conscience.  Bolstered by social theory that questioned the inevitability of human unity and highlighted the depth of disagreement as far beyond the conventions and capacities of rational agreement, I wondered if Lebanon and Rwanda might be the future toward which modernity is inexorably plunging.  Next came our family's heartbroken departure from a church in which too many members were asking, "What would be wrong with being an all-white church?" It was not a future I hoped for my children.  But I'm drifting that way again with Syria, deportation, Muslim registries, gun and weapon extravaganza, police killing, racial profiling....

Searching for paths toward another future, I continued to study and converse and experiment toward a new way of ecclesial practice in community that would form in the world a counterpolitics of beloved community.  In time, that led me into relationships with radicals and innovators--people who, unlike me, were not writing a story in academic language, but remaking neighborhoods and cities and race relations in their corners of the world.  Most of my direct work has been in community organizing, and I've supplemented that with relationships among those who are doing Christian Community Development, who are forming intentional new monastic communities, and who are crying out a prophetic word toward moving Forward Together at Moral Monday rallies.  I still can stir passion to teach and preach that these springs in the desert are the real path toward good news for the poor and despised of the world. I tell myself this is the new wave of Christian renewal. But if that's true, it's so slow. What I've had to accept for a long time, that this world is not on an upward path of progress, remains a painful lesson to learn again and again.

At Christmas time, when all my children who live in three different states have come together, and I sit in church without their mom or grandma still in the world, it becomes painfully, desperately, dismally slow. How have I and my generation of church people failed in our imaginations, in our strivings, in our comfort with this world, to live a gospel radical enough to be a sign of hope in this world? When my friend Chanequa Walker-Barnes asks whether those attacking "Black Lives Matter" can understand the "sheer horror of people objecting to the statement that our lives are valuable?", it drives home the disillusionment with the times. When the NC legislature, elected through illegal voting districts and voter suppressive laws, insists that the heritage of allowing harm to people because of their body differences is too close to their hearts to repeal, it dissipates hope. When people insisting on being known as Christians vote and cheer for the very things that Christians ought to oppose, it begins to clarify the world in which we live.  In an era when churches' primary de facto liturgical expression has become "where are the young people?", I'm feeling a bit lost on how to offer an answer of why young people should give a damn about the church.

Sitting in a church full of white people tonight, I was deeply moved by the liturgy, but it was not lost on me how the message of turning away from fear toward hope seems as out of reach as ever in that context and so many more. The pastor's remark, mid-meditation, that the church has been guilty of peddling fear in order to turn around and offer hope, hits very close to the core of the problem.  Churches of all sorts, having aligned with the tide of culture, are playing the same games. Promote fear, then offer yourself as the solution--sell your product, line your pockets, seek your own interest. I'm pretty sure that's the church my kids and their generation see. I know it has been sold to me many times, and I've willingly bought it. But I hoped I knew better. My friend Deborah Boston and I talk often about the difficulty of believing churches can or want to make the changes they need to make in order to be the gospel here and now. The chilling truth is how much that is true of my own way of being in and of the church.

The beauty of tonight's liturgy, to me, was in its recognition that this advent's waiting was not just pretend. The harshness, horrors, terrors, and struggles of the world are real. When false evangelicalism has told me, "You should not be living under the circumstances. Rise above them!", it was so much bourgeois claptrap. The circumstances are crushing and destroying the very people we claim God loves and wants us to love. Aloof discipleship that looks for a fantasized solution outside of human suffering does not fit with the story of this night. There have been too many times in this almost 59 years of living that I've been willing to let a spiritualized gospel replace the true gospel that took form in a shit-floored shed where a naked baby clung tenuously to life, surrounded by just his homeless, refugee parents and various domestic animals. As Steve Harmon reminded me tonight, the memory of that stable opens up a great mystery--it wasn't a gala party with dressed-up people, a sterile hospital full of highly skilled technicians, or even the comfort of home with family and neighbors helping and praying. The animals in the stable, not the self-important humans hoping for a photo op, were the first witnesses of Jesus in the world.

O magnum mysterium,
et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
jacentem in praesepio!
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!

By the next day, Joseph must have had to go out and hustle up some water, some bread, and whatever other food he could buy or beg.  Mary must have been exhausted as she relinquished from her very body's strength to carry, give birth, and feed the infant Jesus

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera
meruerunt portare
Dominum Jesum Christum.
Alleluia!
How blessed is [Mary] the virgin whose tender flesh
was deemed worthy to bear
our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Alleluia!

I started out talking about mixed emotions across a wide range.  Mostly here I've been dwelling on the sadness of this Christmas Eve.  I don't mean by digging deeper into the sorrow that I'm now fixed in one frame of mind and heart.  Yet it seems that I should at least feel the wave of sadness all the way through in this "get over it," "move on, already," "accentuate the positive" age. It's a world in which commercial interests aim to stir up happiness through encouraging mass consumption of trinkets and gadgets.  In the morning, Momma won't be getting me up to have breakfast.  Everly won't be organizing us to look in stockings and unwrap packages. Trinkets, gadgets, and positivity won't change that. And the epidemic of indifference, greed, and hate that has swept our world will still be convulsing all around us. It's not suddenly easy being born or giving birth.

With all the promise of joy that angels announced to the farm workers on the hillside, those marginalized workers still had their hard work to do.  Mary and Joseph, holding on to that tiny baby, still had to find a way to make a living, a place to live, and food to eat. "Shepherds, why this jubilee?" Can such a lowly, outcast moment two millenia ago make a difference now? Looking at the churches of this land, it seems unlikely. But it still seems there is enough good news in the holistic gospel that's worth fighting for. As my friend Matt Jantzen said this week, "I'm angry, and I can't stand to just wait around while things get worse, and not try to do something about it." I hear you, Matt. I can see only glimpses of the path in the dark of this midnight. Y'all who still hunger and thirst for justice gotta help me see where that hungry baby is calling for me to bring some milk, a blanket, and an arm and chest to rest on.