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.

When Words Fail

This sermon was first preached at Shaw University Divinity School Chapel Service on February 18, 2017

1 Corinthians 3:1-23

            I think that most of you would understand what I mean if I said, “It’s been one of those weeks.”  You can probably identify with having that feeling at some point in the recent past.  In the midst of living life, sometimes we prepare our best work, we pray our most beautiful and confident prayers, we express ourselves in conversation as clearly as we can, but nothing turns out as we expected.  We are hurt, people don’t understand, friends are angry, God is distant.  I’m not good at hiding it.  Students see me walk into class and ask if I’m okay.  Co-workers pull me aside to ask what’s wrong.  It was one of those weeks.   

I have made a career out of using words: reading, speaking, and writing.  I read news, commentary, essays, and books a large part of every day of my life.  I listen to preachers in church; I listen to radio news in the car.  I write short, clever comments on what is happening in the world.  I write longer reflections on social issues and the church.  I do my thinking with my fingertips on a keyboard.  I must have written tens of thousands of words as I have struggled to live with the illness and death of my beloved wife. Sometimes what I write is simple and straightforward.  Sometimes it is complex argumentation.

            There are plenty of times when I can’t seem to get started.  Occasionally I begin, only to find myself headed down a road to nowhere, making me have to start over.  On some subjects, I have stored away many long and complicated sentences and paragraphs in the recesses of my memory, ready for me to pull them out on a moment’s notice to clarify a question or drive home a point.

            There is joy in crafting words.  Constructing a strong first sentence or a challenging final sentence in an argument can satisfy a thirsty soul.  Framing a vivid metaphor or a lyrical turn of phrase can give life to a project.  Employing the rhetorical skills passed down by a lively intellectual tradition of preaching can lift an entire room of spirits together, or stir them to anger, or challenge them to action.

            I’m not the greatest wordsmith by any means.  Too many of my sentences meander toward obscurity.  Too often I make an argumentative leap that leaves out important intermediary steps, forcing the listener or reader to wonder why I suddenly changed the subject without clear warning.  We all can look beyond our own achievements toward the oratorical craft of another preacher we admire for her or his depth of understanding, precision of vocabulary, and skill of delivery.  We find ourselves returning to certain writers whose ability to articulate and inspire on the printed page or on the pixilated screen leaves us wanting more.

            So for me, and perhaps for many of you, life unfolds in a proliferation of words.  It’s more than words, but it still is a flood of words.  A few weeks ago, I sat down in a hotel room in New Orleans where I was attending the Society of Christian Ethics.  I had been reading books and essays, contemplating an essay on the topic of reparations in theological education.  Over a period of a couple of days, broken up by conference events, meals, and a small amount of sleep, I wrote over thirty-two pages on the topic, and still felt I had not quite covered all that I should say.  I’m not really trying to brag here.  It’s simply an illustration of how my writing often gets done.  I was only able to do that because of habits coming from so many years of devotion to and immersion in speaking and writing.  It’s far from clear yet whether all those words will make much of a difference in the world.

I doubt that my three kids believe it, but there was a time in my life when I was known as a person of few words.  My wife, who could outtalk me any day, used to laugh at me for the way I had something to say about almost any subject, even those I knew little or nothing about.  She would tease me about being a “know-it-all.”  That’s probably not so hard for my colleagues to believe.  While I slip into the quiet mode still some of the time, mostly nowadays I produce and spout and swim in a sea of words.  I have come to trust in the power of words, especially when combined with the power of communities organized for strategic action. 

A little over a year ago, our community organizing group, Durham CAN, was struggling to see words turned to action on affordable housing in Durham.  The City Council, leaders of the County Commissioners, and of course the Durham Housing Authority all were on record supporting affordable housing.  It’s hard not to think that more affordable housing is a good idea.  But liking the idea and making change happen are different things.  We applied the power of words by creating and conducting a Downtown Durham Subsidy Tour. 

We held a public teaching session about the millions of dollars in subsidies that had gone into various commercially profitable projects.  These were tax incentives and public-private partnerships amounting to tens of millions of dollars from which private developers and businesses would benefit greatly at taxpayers’ expense.  A tiny fraction of those subsidy amounts would be enough to get Durham moving toward more affordable housing.  So we took citizens all over downtown and hung up signs on various buildings, detailing the subsidies that went to private developers and businesses.  Those spoken and written words made a difference.  Television and newspaper reporters’ words made a difference.  Targeted, strategic words made a difference, and progress quickly got underway on three different projects for affordable housing.

A public event like that or a powerful sermon or a groundbreaking book can demonstrate to us the power and importance of words for human society.  The Apostle Paul was clearly a man of words.  He was a speechmaker, a preacher, and a teacher who could adapt his style to the particular audience he was addressing.  In the opening three chapters of 1 Corinthians he discusses this aspect of his ministry extensively.  He reminds his readers of the good times they have had in the past teaching and learning about the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He points out how people started out not knowing much, and that God is able to use foolish people to shame the wise.  He insists that the wisdom of the world may, in fact, not be worth much at times. 

He is setting them up.  All these words, all the things he calls to their remembrance, suddenly are challenged in this third chapter.  He says he wishes he could use some of his big words with them, but he says he has to use words more suited to infants than to adults.  Apparently they are stuck in the age of eating baby food.  They may have picked up some fancy words to use, but they have missed the point of what they have learned.  They might know how to pronounce propitiation or concupiscence, but they haven’t let their training transform them adequately toward God’s purpose for them.  They are dividing into camps and sects, picking and choosing among their teachers to create factions.  Some want to claim Apollos, some Cephas, and some Paul.  He gets no satisfaction that some claim to side with him because he wants them to recognize that all the teachers are contributing to the one unified message and calling God has for them.

We’ve seen it happen.  Someone says, “Reverend Smith never would have done things that way.”  One whispers, “Deacon Johnson never tried anything like that.”  Another complains, “Sister Jones always knew the right thing to do.”  Soon it breaks out into conflict in the committee and board meetings.  Then small groups form in the parking lot to continue the criticisms and complaints.  Church conferences heat up with angry words.  People begin to impugn one another’s integrity and doubt the truth of one another’s words.

We take up sides.  We resist leaders trying to make a difference.  We shut out innovative ideas.  Churches too often work against our own best interests and our best opportunities for ministry.

Paul argues in our text today that all the teachers the Corinthians have had were building on a single foundation.  That foundation is Jesus Christ.  All the teaching and preaching had pointed back to this reference point—the ways and words of Jesus Christ are the basis for all that the Corinthians or any other churches must build.  Yet for all the words that Paul has loved sharing and has depended on to accomplish his work of building up the church, it seems that little growth in grace and discipleship have occurred.  Words have failed.  The people in the church have not remembered what they learned, nor have they remembered who they are.

Paul doesn’t give up.  He starts again to build his case with persuasive words.  Now he tells them that they are a temple.  The second-person pronoun in these verses is a plural.  It’s hard to tell in English.  We use the same second-person pronoun for singular or plural.  “Y-o-u” can mean one person, and the same word “y-o-u” can mean a group of people.  In the South, we know how to translate it differently than the English Bible usually does.  Paul, in this case is saying “Y’all.”  Y’all are a temple.  This is not the same way he uses “temple” elsewhere to refer to a human body.  In our text today, the temple is the community of faith envisioned as forming a structure together.  It’s similar to Peter’s image of a building made of living stones.  But the Corinthian church people have broken up the building.  It’s cracked, and there are big gaps, broken down walls, and fallen roof timbers.  For all the teaching, they have failed to become united as God’s building, the family of faith, the body of Christ.

Paul quotes from Job to remind them that just because a person can make a lofty and wordy speech does not mean one has displayed true wisdom.  They may be twisting their words to manipulate a situation, to try to prove themselves superior, to try to put someone else down.  God knows the difference, and Paul says he can tell the difference, too.  Words are failing the Corinthian Christians because they are willing to use them as weapons.  They are abusing the power of words to benefit their particular faction or camp, and the temple they are supposed to be building is falling into ruin.

Words fail us when we use them against one another.  Words as weapons tear down.  They deny the purpose of human living:  to love one another.  Words that shade the truth in order to try to win are failing words.  Words that construct alternative facts for the purpose of verbal battle succeed only in crushing truth beneath our feet.  Words fail in politics and in church when they become our sledgehammers and crowbars to destroy what God wants us to build up.  We may end up like so much of the world around us by choosing up sides and despising anyone who disagrees.  Paul was a couple of millennia too early, but I’m sure if he had been writing today, the people he was criticizing would be calling one another Nazis, fascists, and communists.  He tells them not to boast about human leaders—if they are good leaders, then what each of them gives you is good for all of you.

I’ll have to leave this 1 Corinthians text to talk about other times that words fail.  Here, Paul spoke to the misuse of words to divide, mislead, and destroy.  But sometimes words fail for other reasons.  For instance, sometimes words fail because they choke in our throats and drown in our tears.  I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had words fail me in this way.  Sometimes a hurt is so intense, the mind seems lost in a fog.  Words spoken seem pointless.  Things I’ve been able to say before no longer make sense.  I was so sure I understood a situation, but now to have even thought those thoughts seems utterly stupid.  Or I had thought I knew the direction my life would go, only to find out it will be impossible for those things to ever happen.  In these moments words fail us.  We try and fumble about to describe what we are going through, but with little success. 

In those moments of pain and struggle, words can fail another way, too.  For those of us reacting to someone else’s pain, we may become like Job’s so-called friends and start tossing words about in harmful ways.  If I approach someone going through the hellish pain of losing a loved one, and I offer platitudes about their loved one being in a better place, or say it’s all going to be all right, or claim everything happens for a reason, my words are likely to become instruments of greater pain.  The compulsion to provide a solution to other people’s pain is really about my own discomfort.  If I can sum up the problem with shallow theological-sounding clichés, I may assume my job is done.  I’ve figured it out for them, and now they will be fine.  What’s needed in times of pain, grief, and loss is fewer words, more presence, and humble service.  Don’t make words fail by forcing your pile of happy, crappy, empty theological banalities on someone in deep pain.  They are struggling to put words to their situation, and they don’t need useless and hurtful words to fill that void.

When words fail us in the depth of pain, we can be thankful that we are not left alone.  In his letter to the Romans, Paul describes the situation when our hurt and longing may be too deep for words.  In that crisis, God has not abandoned us, even if words have.  Paul says the Spirit cries out for us when we cannot handle it ourselves.  We may not know what the meaning of our situation is.  We may feel only loss and emptiness, loneliness that looks to be endless.  But God is present in the midst of our struggle. Remember this is the same God incarnate who saw his friends sleep when he needed their prayers, saw them run away when he was arrested, and ultimately cried out in the anguish of abandonment when hanging by nails from a wooden implement of state-sponsored torture.  In the depth of suffering, God knows the wordless void, enters it with us, and initiates the crying out and healing that will restore us.

Here in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul reminds us that when words fail, whether it is through our arrogance and divisiveness or through our hurt and emptiness, we still have a place to stand.  There is one foundation.  That is the foundation of Jesus Christ.  He is the firm foundation.  He has come for us and never deserted us.  We belong to him, as siblings, as joint-heirs, and members of one body, as living stones in a temple not made by hands.  To belong to Christ is to have our lives surrounded by and embedded in God.  You belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

To know Christ is to walk in his way.  In word and deed, we take up his path.  He calls us to follow him.  He says to choose the narrow way that leads to life.  He reminds us that it is not merely following a road he walked, but that he himself is the road, the gate, the life we must live.  He is the Word, the logos, the dabar, the essence of both God and humanity, in whom we live and move and have our being.  So words may fail, but the Word of God, our Savior, the True Human and exemplar for our lives, will never fail.  Thanks be to God.

Songs of Hope

TICKETS

With "Songs of Hope," Durham CAN has put together a powerful line-up of performers that represent much of the variety and strength of what Durham is.  We are a multi-racial, multi-ethnic community.  We have strong educational institutions.  We have creative business leaders and civil servants. We have many styles and tastes.  Songs of Hope aspires to display that range of life in Durham.

The list of performing artists includes

• Shukr7—a South Asian Folk band with a Bollywood sound
• Timothy Holley—cellist from NCCU
• Deja Blue—women’s a cappella singing group from Duke
• Latina Duet of Yolanda Correa and Victoria Perez—they promise to get us active
• Kadeisha Kilgore—liturgical dancer
• Terry Allebaugh—harmonica player
      and, the headline act of the program
• Lois Deloatch—internationally know jazz singer from Durham

This is a great opportunity to get out and be with other folks from Durham.  We will be celebrating the recent accomplishments of Durham CAN as we enjoy the talents of Durham's great artistic community.  "Songs of Hope" takes place on Sunday, November 13, at 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm, at Duke Memorial United Methodist Church, 504 W. Chapel Hill St., downtown, across the street from the police department.

"Songs of Hope" is a fundraising benefit concert for Durham CAN.  Tickets are $30.  There is much more work to be done on affordable housing, jobs that pay living wages, better schools and opportunities for youth, promoting fair policing and better police-community relationships, and safety and opportunity for all citizens of our county and city.  This is important work, and Durham CAN steps up to take the lead again and again, bringing the power of thousands of people who care about one another and about our community.  That's who we are.  We bring together people from all across our county and city to make living in Durham better for all our residents.  Please take this great opportunity to join others for an evening of entertainment and a contribution to the ongoing work of Durham CAN.  You can order tickets online, or you can contact me for tickets as well.

Affordable Housing: Can Durham Make Progress Soon?

Everyone running for city office in Durham has been talking about affordable housing.  There are many ideas bouncing back and forth.  The need for affordable housing is a big and complex problem that will require solutions from many sectors and with many strategies.  I don't think anyone doubts that.

Durham needs better wages from its employers.  While major employers in Durham have made commitments to paying a livable wage, still many of Durham's hard-working citizens make poverty wages.  Workers at many levels of income must work in various parts of the city and county, including downtown.  Durham City workers making a livable wage cannot afford housing downtown.  In fact, a livable wage worker makes less than half what the it would take to afford an apartment downtown at the average market rate.  The same goes for Durham County workers, Durham Public Schools workers, and Duke workers making a livable wage.  And those making minimum wage or a little more have even more difficulty finding affordable, quality housing.

Some might reply, "Everyone does not need to live downtown."  Of course that is true.  Yet good access to downtown with transit-based affordable housing and with affordable housing spread throughout the city, including downtown, makes sense.  Some downtown workers, at any income level, will want to live in various parts of the city and county.  Some also will prefer to be near their jobs.  Where it is possible to provide affordability in every part of town, it seems reasonable to take efforts to do so.

Everyone is talking about affordable housing, but it seems some have been talking past each other.  Mayor Bell has been promoting a rental subsidy from earmarked funds to make downtown affordable.  His plan could benefit many targeted families and persons whose income falls between 60% and 80% of the Area Median Income.  Yet many of Durham's workers, not necessarily living in poverty, fall below that 60% threshold. 

Councilwoman Catotti and other members of the council emphasized the need to have a comprehensive plan in mind as the City proposes and adopts specific affordable housing developments.  It is good that our Council is eager to plan rather than merely react.  A report that will contribute to promulgating a more comprehensive plan is already underway.  However, that does not in and of itself preclude moving ahead with a particular development which accords with the commitments the Council has already made as they continue to plan for even larger solutions.  Acting both now and in the future will help Durham work toward solving this complex problem.

Some approaches to subsidized housing are targeted toward very-low income citizens, some of whom are disabled or retired without adequate income to afford housing on their own.  Programs of the Housing Authority and other programs target providing housing to those people.  More is needed, as thousands of qualified households remain on waiting lists for years.

Between very low income and near median income, a group of workers are being squeezed out of housing.  Many of Durham's working citizens earn between 40% and 60% of AMI.  These workers and families would receive help from a project that draws upon the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program which allows a developer to reduce the cost of construction through tax credits.  Durham CAN, Self-Help Credit Union, and others have supported a downtown project that can build a large number of units of affordable housing next to the Durham Station Transit Center.

The Durham City Council primary elections have helped bring our focus onto affordable housing.  Everyone who received high percentages of the votes has been outspoken on the need for rapid and strong action to keep Durham affordable to all of its residents.  Now is the time to press forward on achieving success in developing affordable housing in all of Durham's neighborhoods, and with special focus on affordable housing near future transit stations.

Those who have talked past one another can arrive at proposals on which all can agree.  Affordable housing for citizens that brings together people of various income levels living in shared communities is a worthy goal.  It is achievable in steps we can take now and for the long haul.  As the November election approaches, citizens need to continue supporting candidates who are ready to solve the lack of affordable housing and make Durham a city open to all of its people.

Everyone Wants Affordable Housing--But How to Do It?

One sure thing came out of today's Durham City Council work session discussion on agenda item 29:  Affordable housing draws strong support from Durham's City Council.  What kind of development to carry out is where there is disagreement.  Some support a Durham Can proposal for a development that could provide 80-100 units of housing affordable for households making 40% to 60% of the Area Median Income, which would be up to $43,000 for a household of two people.  Working class, lower end of the middle class--about  40% of Durham's population is below that threshold.  They are people with steady jobs, earning a salary or a high hourly wage, starting families, building careers.  They are the backbone of our community.

Others insist any development should have a wider range of incomes, including some above the AMI.  One comment from Mayor Bell praised a development that has 40 units above AMI and 100 units below AMI.  That calculates to over 70% below AMI, and certainly there should be room for much or most of that to include the targeted population of 40 to 60% of AMI.

Others spoke in more vague language of "some" affordable housing.  Reasonably, a mixed-income development which targets affordable housing would not fall below offering homes to at least 15% of resident families who make below 60% of AMI.  But I think we can do better than that. 

The only sort of sour note in the conversation was the way that some people implied that Durham CAN was proposing to build a Cabrini-Green Homes style of housing structure.  The comparison is far off base.  Unlike that infamous Chicago development of thousands of highly concentrated public housing units, this proposal is for no more than 100 units.  It is not a public housing project, but a private venture supported through a public partnership.  The target income range, while below AMI, is at 40% AMI a higher base level than Habitat for Humanity housing (starting at 30% AMI) and has the same upper limit at 60% AMI.  Although I do not see why providing housing for very low income residents should be a problem for downtown planning, that is not what this particular proposal aims to do.  On the east end of downtown, Durham is having good success in building strong neighborhoods with even very low income levels. Higher income citizens are eagerly moving into East Durham.  People are not destined to remain so divided, unless market forces work alone to shape housing.  Several speakers praised diversity.  But diversity is exactly what current downtown development is preventing.

In conjunction with adjacent buildings, it would be part of a mixed-income neighborhood strategy and a strong head start to catch up with the goal of 15% affordable housing near the transit station.  Right now there is 0%, and none planned in the "pipeline" of development that will lead to 2200+ units within a half mile of Durham Station.  Even 100 units will be less than 5% of the goal for affordability.  There is much more to do, and getting this development underway will be a good start.

I remember getting a list of salaries for professors at one of the area universities a few years ago.  Barely a third of faculty at this historic university would make a salary above 60% of the AMI.  These are committed, hard-working, highly intelligent, community-minded citizens, many of whom live in Durham.  They are strong contributors to any community.  I think people like these university professors, along with school teachers, artists, construction workers, police officers, mechanics, and others who would fall in this income category are exactly the kinds of citizens we want living in any of our neighborhoods.

I believe there is still an opportunity to make this project happen at Durham Station.  Either Durham CAN's proposal or some other version of a development including significant affordable housing is right for this property.

Durham's Housing Crisis and the Wise Exhortation of James

Today I heard a sermon based on a passage from the New Testament Letter of James.  It made me think about the current crisis of affordable housing in Durham and strategies to fix this problem.  Addressed as a letter, James looks more like a collection of wisdom teaching and moral exhortations.  Rev. Dr. William C. Turner, Jr., pointed us to the first ten verses of chapter 2.

My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?

You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.

Housing has been driving economic restructuring for more than a decade.  At first, it was the housing bubble created by overinvestment and irrational exuberance about buying up mortgages.  That led to all kinds of bad risks in writing mortgage loans, misleading people without experience in dealing with real estate markets, repeated selling of a property for inordinate profits, lying about the reliability of mortgage-backed securities, and in general lots of swindling, taking the money, and running.

When that manipulated, false market crashed, more restructuring happened through a foreclosure crisis.  Housing values dropped so far that many business's and investor's paper wealth disappeared overnight.  High-risk securities and credit default swaps were exposed to be the emperor's new clothes.  An economic recession led to massive layoffs and soaring unemployment.  That put millions of people into foreclosure.  Efforts to ease the foreclosure crisis failed as the "bailout" turned out to benefit only the banks, the brokerages, and the very actors who had caused the economic crisis.  Average workers and homeowners were left high and dry, unable to pay for their overpriced mortgages.  The powers of government and financial institutions resisted any serious plan to offer principle reduction or debt forgiveness, which had successfully restored the economy after the Great Depression.

People who did manage to stay in their homes found the new housing market to have very low demand, so that if they needed to move or get more space for a larger family, it was almost impossible to sell their homes.  Slowly, the market started to recover.  First, all the bargain housing sold.  Next, slowly people began to be able to sell near the uninflated prices before the housing bubble.  There are still many pockets of foreclosed neighborhoods, and not all housing prices have recovered.

But now we are seeing what looks to be another bubble emerging.  Cities and municipalities are putting capital into downtowns.  They are trying to bring recovery and prosperity to city centers.  A new generation, facing a long period of high gasoline prices and tired of traffic jams for commuters has regained interest in living downtown.  These trends attract developers, which is something that is good for all of us.  Every city wants to see vibrant businesses and neighborhoods.  However, prices are skyrocketing for central city housing.  As rents and purchase prices rise, speculators begin to look into other nearby streets and communities for more land to buy up.  Lower cost housing gets razed, and the occupants have to look elsewhere, away from their neighborhoods and friends, to find a place to live.

We know this process as gentrification.  Some see it as only good--better housing units replace older, unmodernized, sometimes run-down units.  Property values rise.  More money in the neighborhoods attracts businesses and jobs.  I don't think anyone is against those kinds of things.  But many are bothered by the callousness that some have about displacement of people, relationships, institutions, and communities.  They also wonder why it is that lower income people always get displaced and told to go somewhere else.  Why can't redevelopment create spaces for people to continue in the networks and neighborhoods where their families have lived for years and decades?  Why is redevelopment only targeted to attract new colonizers of old and established communities?

No one is surprised that developers want to maximize their profits on the risk they take in building new housing.  We know they won't take those risks if they can't expect to make a profit.  Building new housing takes big up-front capital investment, so we don't begrudge developers a profit.  On the other hand, part of building a good city to live in means that people of various income levels need to share in the benefits the city has to offer.  If I live in Durham, I will depend on city, county, state, and commercial institutions to help structure schools, fire protection, medical care, and public safety.  Doctors and entrepreneurs, pharmaceutical executives and hi-tech wizards may have six- and seven-figure incomes.  But teachers, firefighters, nurses, and police will live on more meager salaries.  Shop clerks, wait staff, cooks, mechanics, maintenance workers, and cleaning staff--all of these people will contribute to making a city a good place to live.  They are fellow-members of the community, not merely servants to the ones who have more money.  All of us need a place to live.  All of us deserve to enjoy the benefits of a flourishing city.

That's why, in the wisdom of our civic traditions, leaders have seen fit to put in place programs and incentives to make sure there is adequate housing for people of many levels of income.  One such program, the Low-Income Housing Credit, provides tax subsidies for developing affordable housing that enable developers to make a profit.  Durham CAN and Self-Help Credit Union want to use that subsidy to build 80 to 100 units of housing downtown, by the Durham Station Transportation Center and across from the NC Mutual building.  City leaders have expressed a desire to see better affordable housing opportunities, and by donating this land for affordable housing development, they can do their part in helping make Durham affordable to more of its citizens.

These units would be affordable to people who make 40% to 60% of the median income of Durham County.  That means up to $37,000 for a household of one, or $43,000 for a household of two, and slightly more for larger households.  These people, working hard to bring home enough money to feed, clothe, and shelter their families are of equal importance to a flourishing city as those who make the median salary or more.  Durham has had notable success in the recent past with some affordable housing, and we hate to see that only in the past.  We are hoping this project can be the next planting of a seed, the down payment, toward a new strategy and plan for creating more high-quality, affordable housing in neighborhoods all around Durham.

Sadly, there are some who have said that downtown is for the millennials, for entrepreneurs, for people with higher incomes.  They say that Durham can find a way to provide affordable housing for lower incomes somewhere else, somewhere less in demand, somewhere less desirable, somewhere out of the way of the profits a select few desire to make.  Those kinds of arguments sound to me like there is some kind of insider decision-making going on about who gets to live in what neighborhood and who gets pushed out.  It seems that someone has in mind a "certain quality of people" that are acceptable for Durham's nice downtown.  Others need not apply.  If there is no property available for affordable housing downtown, the doughnut hole, then the next step, and we see it happening already, will be no affordable housing in the doughnut ring around downtown.

Moderate- to low-income people get pushed farther and farther away from the neighborhoods with rich heritage.  Will the last remnant of Hayti be a museum surrounded by residents who know and care nothing about the struggle and achievement of families who built a prosperous community when all odds were against them?  Will Walltown go the way of Brookstown, Hickstown, and Crest Street, to be a faint memory of a lost past?  Cities change, and neighborhoods change.  That is inevitable.  But will people of various economic levels have access to the historic neighborhoods of Durham?  Or will the profiteering incentive lead to closing off the central city from people of moderate to low income?

Enter the wise exhortation of James.  James saw a problem in some churches of his time.  He saw that people became overly impressed by the wealth or affluence of some who came to their churches.  They catered to them.  They escorted them to the best seats.  They fawned over them.  But when people whose clothes were plain or even a bit worn came into the church, they directed them to the side or the back, or even suggested they stand by the wall sit on the floor.  The text says they were showing favoritism, based on the apparent affluence of those who came to their churches.

James reminded them of the Lord whom they serve.  He reminded them of the way of Jesus, who was himself from a working class home, born under bad conditions, sympathetic with beggars, outcasts, prostitutes, and others who found themselves on hard times.  His co-workers had mostly made their livings fishing and other hard work.  James, probably from the same family as Jesus, knew what it was to be looked down on by those who thought they were better.  He reminded them that the social dynamic of poverty was exploitation, and that the wealthy gained their affluence often through paying low wages or otherwise mistreating their workers.

James knew showing favoritism was not the way that Jesus had taught and planned for his followers to live.  "Love your neighbor as yourself" was Jesus' motto.  His life and ways had shown he meant every neighbor--Samaritan and Jew, blind and sighted, man and woman, worker and manager.  If it came to a question of injustice, Jesus took the side of the oppressed and stood up to the oppressor.  James said this to remind the churches that Jesus had come to reinstate, to kick-start, God's plan for this world as a good society, "There should be no one in need among you."

So when leaders in our city say that downtown is only for millennials, we wonder which millennials do they mean?  What about millennials who become teachers?  Don't some millennials become firefighters and police officers?  I think that some millennials are nurses, city staffers, cooks, and mechanics.  Aren't they welcome downtown?  Of course, I don't think anyone intends to have only one age group in the neighborhood.  Will there be room for all economic levels, age groups, and other segments of society, or are we back to drawing red lines on our maps to indicate who we will let live in which districts?

Now I understand that James is writing to the churches, and that Durham is not a church.  I also recognize that municipalities may not do everything the way churches do.  Yes, I am familiar with the distinction between church and state.  But I also want to say that the faith of the church is that Jesus came into the world to recall Israel, and all others who would come to join in, to build the kind of beloved community that God made this world to be.  While I would not think it appropriate to ask the city to enforce everything the church believes in, I do think there are many points at which our purposes of building a flourishing community may coincide.  Not cordoning off portions of the community by wealth and class and ethnicity and race and age and family size is one of the goals that the church and the city may have in common.

One theologian said that there are times when the social agenda of the church may appropriately blend with the social agenda of the communities with which the church shares space and time.  He said it is kind of like a "spiritual osmosis."  An idea like "no more shacks" that drove the Christian community of Koinonia Farms in Americus, Georgia, to create the housing model of Habitat for Humanity over time became widely accepted by people who had no connection to Christian churches.  Church or not, most people see that this plan works, and volunteers come from all creeds and no creed to build Habitat houses together.  Making room for affordable housing in the central city, near transit stations, in the doughnut hole and all the surrounding rings of the city is a similarly worthwhile goal.  People don't want to be displaced.  They want to be able to find housing near their jobs, near their schools, near the places they like to go for fellowship, friends, and food.  At all income levels, people want to share in the good things of life.

Durham must not have a housing policy which says to the wealthy and affluent, "Please, as our favorites, take the best places in which we have invested heavily, creating them just for people of your kind," and then turns to the moderate- and low-income citizen and says, "You, who are not our favorites, are on your own, and you'll have to go away from all the good things our city has invested in, because they are for someone else."  I think James's wise exhortation speaks to this issue of urban development.  Let's keep the best, that is all, of Durham available to all of it's citizens, and not show favoritism.

Where Can Durham's Workers Live?

In October 2012, Indy Week published an article called "Durham's Affordable Housing Crisis," written by Lisa Sorg.  It featured the closing of the Lincoln Apartments, reported to be eliminating affordable dwellings for 200 low-income residents.  On a much larger scale, it told the story of too few affordable housing units for so many of the working poor.  These people work in the service industries building a new economy in which only the highest levels of management see increasing wages.

What has often been misunderstood as a problem for only those working poor has become a problem for many workers holding critical public service jobs:  police officers, fire fighters, school teachers and other school employees.  In addition, as new economic development occurs, restaurant and cafe serving staff, maintenance and cleaning workers, retail workers, and many others need housing that is convenient to their work.  The affordable housing crisis is a workforce housing crisis.

City planners and architects have had opportunity to learn a great deal about how to develop affordable housing successfully, if they want to learn.  Mixed income communities are much more successful than overly stratified, class segregated communities.  The world of work and commerce is made up of people with many different roles and responsibilities, and they constantly share space and interact.  Clerical workers and managers, store owners and checkout clerks, chefs and food preps--all need a place to live, accessibility to their work, places to eat and shop, and safe neighborhoods.

New age redlining would say that certain urban playgrounds are for entrepreneurs and young urban pioneers, not for low-income workers.  But how is this different from the kind of politics of urban development that led to ghettos and housing "projects" that became icons of public planning failure?

Durham's affordable housing situation has not been solved since 2012, and in fact it threatens to become much worse.  As older neighborhoods become destinations for house flipping and gentrification, Durham is developing a new doughnut hole where only the wealthy can live.  Houses that needed repair are now being restored, enlarged, and upgraded, taking housing out of the affordable range.  Property values surge, meaning that even more modest homes in a redeveloping neighborhood also become unaffordable.  I'm not telling anything new, just saying it again.  Most of Durham's already limited affordable housing is threatening to disappear.

The incentives adopted to urge developers to include affordable housing in their projects have not produced the desired outcome.  With thousands of new housing units built downtown, none are affordable.  Moreover, some developers want to claim that a house costing $250k is still affordable.  What do they think that most workers earn in Durham?  I am for increasing wages, but while we are waiting for that to happen, housing costs need to be proportional.

Recent study of Durham's affordable housing situation recognize that the potential of Light Rail Transit means neighborhoods with affordable housing may see their property values rise and the affordability disappear.  This creates a mandate for the city and county to take action.  The best leverage they have is existing property that they own.  In these situations, they can require affordability as part of a plan for development.  Federal housing funds and various public and private partners committed to affordable housing are available for this kind of development.  What it will take is a public commitment to see that all residents can afford quality, safe housing.

Durham CAN and Self Help have proposed using a parcel of land in downtown Durham for a mixed-income affordable housing development.  The land is next to Durham Station Transportation Center and near NC Mutual and American Tobacco.  It would give members of Durham's workforce access to housing near the jobs and commerce which are booming downtown.  Approximately 90 high quality units of various size could be made available through this project.  City officials have been looking at this proposal, and it is no surprise that there are differences of opinion about how to use this piece of real estate.

Often the conversations about such projects get derailed by misunderstandings or out-and-out misinformation.  A focused affordable housing development is not the same thing as a ghetto.  Mixed-income affordable housing provides opportunities for low-wage workers as well as for low-salary professionals like police and teachers who are being squeezed out of town by rising housing costs.  NC State Employees Credit Union has a strong interest in affordable housing for its members, and funds to support projects. 

To be honest, some of the arguments against affordable housing are coded language against potential Latino or African American residents.  One would be hard-pressed to find someone who would publicly oppose ethnic and racial diversity in downtown, but approaches to affordable housing which push it all away from downtown still smell and look like redlining.  Durham does not want to take the path of cities which cannot recruit these workers because the affordable housing is just too far away.

Mixed-income affordable housing in places where retail and service businesses are already thriving does not lead to blight.  In this location, affordable housing will lead to improving neighborhoods, greater use of transportation services, and a stronger Durham.  Success in this case can help to promote future projects that will build a better Durham for all of us.

Organizing and Liturgy

At the end of the Durham CAN Delegates' Assembly last night, I gave closing remarks about how we move forward.  The overarching theme was linking liturgy, as the work of the people, to the continuing organizing to be done on policing, jobs, and housing.  Here are those remarks.

Hello.  I am Mike Broadway, Associate Minister at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church and part of the Clergy and Strategy teams of Durham CAN.

It has been some time since we have gathered in this kind of assembly to testify, to plan, and to make promises to one another about making our city and county more of what it ought to be, more filled with opportunity and a good life for all of its residents.  It has been 231 days, to be exact.  For me, it has been even longer.  After four and a half years sojourning in Central Texas, through many changes for me and for Durham, I’m blessed to be among you again as part of this great work of building power together. 

Many preachers have stood before you today, and maybe it seemed like a liturgical assembly at times.  While we preachers are only a small part of the leadership of Durham CAN, it is fitting that we think of this gathering as a liturgy.  The word liturgy means “the work of the people.”  It comes from an ancient Greek term that describes the duties that people in a city have toward one another.  Those with talent, with property, with power, with resources have responsibility to contribute toward making life in the community better for everyone.  Liturgy, not merely the words and actions we do in our houses of worship, is the work we are called to do for the good of one another, for the common good.  It is learning to use the power that God gives us.  It is not confined to a worship service; it expands into public service.  We are all liturgists—we are public servants.

This duty of public service also has deep roots in the story of God’s calling out a people.  Abraham and Sarah of old were told that God would bless them and their descendents.  Those blessings, however, would not be for clutching tightly and hoarding.  They would be blessed so that they could be a blessing to others.  Have you been blessed with a position of influence?  With ability to negotiate?  With connections and power?  With a job?  With a home?  With friendships?  Do you have energy to work?  Do you have a deep resistance to injustice?  In all these cases, you are blessed.  And remember, like Sarah and Abraham, you have those blessings so that you can become a blessing to others.

Today we have testified and poured out our hopes for our neighborhoods, for jobs, for housing, for living wages, for young people’s opportunities to learn and work—these are the liturgical prayers of the people.  In our conversations, we have made progress and promises with one another today.  That’s how we build our power.  We have agreed that the time when we could ignore unjust practices of profiling in policing will come to an end in our city, and we will work together to see that day.  We have taken a first step toward concrete progress, should I say frame, brick and mortar progress, on abundant affordable housing.  We have made plans to strengthen relationships across the community to make sure that our out-of-work neighbors have opportunities both now and in the future to train for, apply for, and to work in good, living-wage jobs.  These promises are just the beginning.  They are the confessions and creeds of the liturgy.  Having recited them, another powerful work of the people begins now.

Take the hand of the people on each side of you.  We made promises and agreements.  We are in this work together.  Turn to your neighbor and say, “I’ve been blessed.”  That’s right.  We’ve all been blessed, and we all have blessings to share.  Now turn to your neighbor again and say, “We have the power.  It’s time to do the work.” 

With thankful hearts for the seeds of justice planted in us, for the blessings we have received, for the Spirit’s powerful work among us, for the visions and opportunities ahead of us, let’s all go forth from this place and do the work of the people.  Thank you all, and good night.

Learning to See and Learning to Listen

This dialogue sermon was first preached at Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church, Durham, NC, on March 1, 2015.

Matthew 16:1-26

The Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test Jesus they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red. ’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening. ’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of Jonah.” Then he left them and went away.

 When the disciples reached the other side, they had forgotten to bring any bread. Jesus said to them, “Watch out, and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” They said to one another, “It is because we have brought no bread.” And becoming aware of it, Jesus said, “You of little faith, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many baskets you gathered? How could you fail to perceive that I was not speaking about bread? Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees!” Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

 Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

 From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

Today we are going to try an experiment in dialogue.  Those of us who have studied about preaching have been taught that good preaching is not a one-sided lecture.  Good preaching is a dialogue between the pulpit and the pew.  In the tradition of black churches, we practice that dialogue in part through a kind of call and response.  When the congregation appreciates the preaching, they speak back to the preacher.  When the preacher gets a response, it affects how the sermon continues to unfold.  A quiet congregation may be giving a message as well.  Nowadays, when I go to a white congregation to preach, it’s a bit of a struggle for me.  I’ve grown used to having you help me out.  So today I am going to ask you for some help, but in a different way than usual. 

I’m going to ask you to have a conversation with others who are around you in the pews, considering a set of questions relevant to the sermon.  These questions relate to our life as a congregation on mission in this community.  They also relate to our church’s alliance with other congregations and community groups in Durham, through the community organizing group Durham CAN.  Mt. Level has been a part of Durham CAN from its very beginning, almost 20 years ago.  We want to continue strong relationships with our friends across the city and county.  We have accomplished many important things in the past, from improving after-school care opportunities for young people, to getting sidewalks and streetlights fixed, to promoting a living wage for workers, to helping arrange a means for poor people to get access to specialized medical care, to getting the schools and the local governments to hire bilingual staff and interpreters, to pressuring the city and police to respond and change their ways of relating to minorities in the community, and so many other ways.

There is not a head honcho of Durham CAN who decides what we will work on next.  There is not a backroom board that sets the agenda.  In organizing of this kind, the agenda rises from the people.  It happens in listening sessions.  Today, we want to listen to one another, to have a listening dialogue in this sermon.  Over the next month or so, at least a couple thousand people in member organizations across our city, including many congregations, will gather to discuss what is on our hearts and minds, each in their own ways.  At Mt. Level, we are having this discussion as part of this morning’s sermon during our 7:55 am service.  Don’t think you came to the wrong place and have ended up at the PTA meeting.  No, this is still church, and I am bringing a sermon, but you will also have a part of the sermon.  So let’s press on with it.

Not everyone gets caught up in the latest fad story on the news or on the internet, but I would not be surprised to find that at least some of you have heard about people arguing over the color of a dress in the past few days.  Is it white and gold, or is it blue and black?  Physicists, computer programmers, psychologists, and all kinds of people have given expert opinions about “the dress.”  I am not sure why it is such a big deal, but I bring it up because it illustrates an aspect of what this sermon is about.  Although we all may be in the same space and time together here and now, that does not mean that all of us see and hear the same thing at the same time.  What you and I may see as we look around us may be very different.  That’s in part because of the way that we look at things.

Sometimes we call this having a different perspective on things.  From my point of view, and from your point of view, the world may look different.  Sometimes we call this our vision of reality.  And part of what Jesus, his friends, and his opponents are dealing with in this chapter from Matthew is that they see the world differently.

There is more than just how they see at stake in this chapter.  Also, when someone is speaking, they are not always hearing the same thing.  I can bet many of you have been in a conversation in which one person thought she said one thing, but the other person heard something very different.  Listening to one another is often harder than we think.  Husbands and wives, parents and children, long time friends—even people who are close to one another often struggle to agree on what is being communicated between them.  

You said this. 

No, I said that. 

No way! I distinctly heard this. 

Well, you distinctly heard wrong, because that is not what I said.  

If you’ve never been in one of those conversations, I would be very surprised.

So today I want to consider the proposition that we all need to learn to see and learn to listen.  A good example of this difficulty happened just a week ago on national television.  On a program called “This Week,” hosted by George Stephanopoulas, two authors were pitted against each other concerning the way to overcome the wrongs of racial injustice which go back across centuries through slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination in housing, employment, and society in general.  Ta-Nehisi Coates argued for actual financial solutions to previous financial damages.  Shelby Steele said that government efforts to help black people had only hurt them.  These two well-known intellectuals saw a different world and heard very different things being said.  They agreed on the wrongs of slavery.  They disagreed on what has happened since that time in the lives of blacks in the United States.  They saw different histories unfolding.  They did not hear the same message when they listened to the cries of the black community.  Something like that went on in our text from Matthew’s gospel as well.

Let’s walk through this complicated series of events.  They happen across different geographical settings as Jesus and his followers travel and carry on conversations on a whole range of matters.  I think there is a lot to observe here about how we see and how we listen.

It begins with an argument between some of the community leaders and Jesus.  The Pharisees and Sadducees come with a chip on their shoulders.  They don’t like Jesus.  They are the ones who know “what’s what.”  They don’t approve of Jesus’ talking to so many people and having so much influence.  They don’t think he has the right credentials.  They see an opportunist and imposter.  They come at him demanding to see a sign from heaven.

Jesus turns it all back on them.  He points out that they know how to interpret the weather and plenty of other things around them, but they can’t see the signs of the times.  They are supposed to be the spiritual leaders who know what’s what.  But they can’t see what everyone else seems to see.  Crowds of people are following Jesus around, listening to every word he has to say and watching every movement he makes.  These crowds are convinced that something great is happening in the world and that Jesus is at the heart of it all.  They believe that God is doing something momentous through Jesus.  But the Pharisees and Sadducees can’t see it.  They are so fixed on what they already see as the way of God, that is the way that they like to do things, the way that keeps them in the dominant class of society, that they can’t see something new happening. 

Jesus says, repeating something he said earlier recorded in chapter 12 of Matthew, that the sign they get is the sign of Jonah.  Now of course, there is an allegorical meaning here related to Jonah’s being dead to the world in the belly of a fish, then sort of resurrected when the fish spit him out, a story that parallels the coming death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus.  But the meaning of the sign for this moment is more focused on the ability to see and hear what God is doing in the world. 

Jonah himself could not believe that God would do something new in Ninevah.  Yet when the Ninevites heard the word of God, they received it with repentance, thanks, and joy.  God was doing something new in Ninevah, and the prophet who should have known about it did not see it coming at all.  In the same way, the people all around the countryside and in the towns and cities can see that God is doing something great, but the religious leaders don’t see it at all.  The crowds listen and hear the possibilities, but the leaders hear only interference with their plans and their power.

Which are we?  Are we able to see a world of possibilities in which God is working for our good?  Do we hear the words of life and respond in faith?  Or do we see only the same old same old, day after day, nothing changing, so we are just settled in to wait out this life until its over?  Do we shut out the sounds of fresh beginnings because we have become comfortable where we are?

This same kind of drama keeps playing out in various ways throughout this chapter.  When Jesus, upset about his encounter with the Pharisees and Sadducees, makes comment in figurative language to the disciples, they completely miss the point.  All they can think about is that they forgot to buy some lunch.  So when Jesus mentions “yeast,” they think he is talking about bread for lunch. 

This makes Jesus even more frustrated.  They seem not to have been listening to him at all.  He starts telling them some stories to remind them of all that has been happening.  He reminds them of days when many thousands were fed from only a few bits of food, and all the many baskets of leftovers that were collected.  The twelve baskets of leftovers, like the twelve tribes that make up the whole of the nation of Israel, and the seven baskets of leftovers, like the seven days of creation and Sabbath, represent completeness and abundance.  The work that God has been doing is the ushering in of a new age, the age of God’s reign, the Kingdom age.  It is breaking into the world right before their eyes.  Don’t they remember?  Yet the Pharisees and Sadducees “yeast” was their teaching which supported the status quo, the existing power relations, the economic disparities and injustices of their world.  Jesus said to look out for those who only can continue to prop up the world as it is and cannot hope for and see a world as it should be.

What are we seeing as we go about our lives?  Are we seeing a world that cannot change?  Is it a world of injustice that will always be bad or even keep getting worse?  Or is it a world in which Jesus has put thrones, dominions, powers, principalities, and authorities under his feet?  Can the way that power and economic life is arranged be turned upside down?  Can God bring down the mighty and lift up the lowly?  Are we able to hear what Jesus is telling us, or are we just trying to get our lunch and forget about making a difference?

In the next part of the story, we read that they arrive at their destination of Caesarea Philippi, a place bearing the names of the current and previous empires that have dominated Judea, the Roman Caesar and the Greek Emperor Phillip.  In this place, Jesus decides to have a listening session of his own.  He has a set of questions for the disciples to discuss.  The first one asks them what they have heard and what they know.  “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  They had a range of answers.  At least two important findings emerge from this conversation.

The first important finding is that many people think that Jesus may be John the Baptist.  That is a dangerous political idea.  What has happened to John the Baptist, who was once the same kind of popular traveling preacher that Jesus is now?  John has been arrested, imprisoned, and executed by beheading—that’s what happened to him.  So if powerful people believe that somehow John the Baptist, or someone just like him, is still out there, they may be soon on their way to arrest, imprison, and execute Jesus, too.  What else did the first question bring out?  They say that people compare Jesus to the great prophets.  They recognized that he is bringing the same kinds of preaching today that the prophets did of old.  They believe Jesus is calling Israel back to faithfulness to God.  They see him as challenging injustice and demanding a change in the way the powerful and wealthy treat the poor, the widows, the orphans, and the immigrants.  So the disciples report that Jesus’ message rooted in the prophets of old is getting through.  People recognize that he is bringing God’s word and the possibility of a new age.

Then the second question asks for the disciples’ own judgments, their own heartfelt answers.  “Who do you say that I am?”  We don’t know what all of them said, but I suspect this was a long and interesting conversation.  Different disciples must have shed different light on how they had come to understand who Jesus was.  We only get the report of Peter’s answer in the gospel text.  Peter gives a great answer for which Jesus commends him.  Peter has expressed, perhaps in summary of what all the group had to say, that Jesus is the Messiah.  To say in his day that Jesus is the Son of God was not the same as we use that term in the post-resurrection, post-Pentecost era of the church.  Peter’s saying he was the Son of God was pretty much the same as saying he was the Messiah.  For the Jewish monotheistic faith, Son of God did not mean that Jesus was a divine being.  That would be blasphemy to them.  Son of God in the Old Testament generally means something like calling someone a messenger directly from God.  An angel, for instance, might be called the Son of God for delivering a vital word directly from heaven to earth.  So Peter says in two different ways that we believe God sent you and that what you bring to us comes from the very heart of God.  Jesus was so happy to hear that answer.  He was not, to his disciples, just a magic show, a gravy train, a crackpot orator, a charismatic figure.  To them, he was from God and doing God’s work.

It was a high point, followed by a very low point in the career of Jesus.  Because they acknowledge this valuable understanding of who he is and in doing so express their willingness to follow him further into his mission from God, Jesus starts having a strategy session with the disciples.  He begins to talk to them about what he needs to do.  In the tradition of the prophets, he needs to speak the truth to power.  He needs to confront the powerful and the oppressors, to challenge them for their injustices, and to press for them to change their ways.  Because he has already heard his enemies talk about wanting to get rid of him, and because of what has happened to John the Baptist, he realizes that what he needs to do next will be risky.  In fact, he does not believe he will survive it.  He is, in fact, expecting that he will help get the movement started, but that when he gets arrested and executed, his followers will have to continue the work.  God will vindicate their sacrifice, and he is confident that even if he dies, God will raise him up again.

Hearing this, but not really listening, Peter jumps in and contradicts Jesus.  Wait a minute, Jesus.  Let’s not rush into anything.  There are other possibilities.  Like you reminded us, there were lots of baskets of food left over before.  You can afford to wait awhile.  Maybe we don’t need to go to Jerusalem just now.  Let things calm down a bit.  Take another lap around Galilee.  Let’s build up the base of support a little more.  Don’t go inviting disaster when things are going so well.  You don’t have to say everything you know to people who don’t want to hear it.  There’s lots of work to do besides confronting the powerful.  Go heal someone else’s mother-in-law.  That went over well before.

Jesus was crestfallen.  He was so disappointed.  And apparently he was troubled.  He knew what Peter was saying.  Those thoughts had probably passed through his own mind.  Maybe he didn’t have to face down the people in power.  Maybe he could just keep things straight in his own backyard, his own household.  This is what we call temptation, and Jesus was tempted just as we are.  It’s like the first temptation he experienced in the wilderness, linked to his conversation about the baskets of leftover food. 

That’s why he responds to Peter’s words with the command, “Get behind me, Satan!”  He’s not calling Peter Satan.  He’s calling out the tempter.  He’s saying like the song, “Get out of my way!  Get out of my way!”  Get out of my way, Satan.  I’ve got a job to do.  So he tells his disciples not to be a stumbling block.  They need to understand the mission.  They need to do the power analysis.  If God’s mission is to be fulfilled, then the fight has to be taken to those who are in the way of God’s work.  They need to believe that change is needed and that it is possible.  They need to listen to what they are saying to one another and listen to what Jesus is saying to them.

Do we really believe that God has a better way for our world?  Can we let the joy of knowing God, the hope of God’s will being done on earth, the love of one another to stir our passion to take on the challenges of our time?  Is the Messiah God has sent to us the one who leads us into a more livable, loving, just world?  That’s what the first invitation is today. 

I want you to get a partner, just two or three of you together at the most, and talk about the questions on the half sheet of paper that you received from the ushers.  Open yourselves up and be willing to have this holy conversation.  What has made you proud to be part of this church?  What pressures are bearing down on you and your family?  On what matters should our church take a stand?  As you carry on this blessed conversation, talk about what really matters to you.  You are in the presence of God and of brothers and sisters in the family of God.  When you get to the last question, jot down in a few words what each of you would believe to be priorities to continue the work of God that Jesus was starting and that we are continuing even today.  We want to collect your notes on that last question especially to begin this process of listening to one another, right here in our congregation and all across Durham.  So start now to talk with one another.  I’ll be doing the same thing right here in the room with you.  After a few minutes, we will come back together to finish this sermon.  Don’t be timid.  Start right away.

[Conversations began all over the sanctuary using the following listening guide.

Mount Level Listening Sessions:

Contributing to a Common Agenda for

Durham CAN

Tell a story about one time when you were most proud to be part of Mt. Level Missionary Baptist Church.

What are the greatest pressures that you and your family are having to face at this time?  Can you give an example of how this has affected you?

If there was one issue that Mount Level should stand up for and strive to make a difference in now, what would that be?  Why is that such an important issue for us to take on?

After giving a reminder and a few minutes to complete the conversations, we returned to the more traditional part of the sermon.]

All right.  I hope that most of you were able to talk through the three steps of this conversation.  If you are still jotting down what you heard from listening to one another, finish that up.

Jesus went on to explain to his disciples how important the work they were about to do would be.  He said, in anticipation of his confrontation in Jerusalem, that following him would be like taking up a cross.  That means being willing to be mistreated and suffer because you stood up for the weak, the oppressed, the poor, and the outcast.  He said if we are not willing to do that, it is as if we are throwing our own lives away.  Clinging to our own comfort and selfishness rather than giving of ourselves for brothers and sisters means that we lose the true meaning of life, the true joy of fellowship, the true communion with God.  But if we can put aside our self-centeredness and count the lives of others as of infinite value to God, then we can find what God has made us for, what God has made us to be.  What is the profit of winning a pointless, worthless life?  Nothing is worth throwing away what God wants for us just to get a moment of comfort.  Nothing is worth a life without knowing God. 

Have you met the Lord Jesus?  Have you seen the world Jesus offers to us?  Have you heard his call to loving community and mutual service?  Today is the day to follow Jesus with your life.  If you have never taken the step to join Jesus on the road to victory over sin, oppression, and death, there is not better time than now to join yourself to him. 

Are you in Durham and not united to a congregation?  We at Mt Level want to be a people who follow our Lord wherever he may lead.  If the Spirit is telling you that this is the place, that these are the people, that this is the mission to which you should join your life, come and become part of this congregation.  Follow Jesus with us.  Help us become what God would have us to be, as we offer to you our friendship and fellowship along the way.