@EUCC Sermons

Long ago and far away, I was a freshman in college and enrolled in my first college-level religion class--Hebrew Bible. Back home, we would have called the subject matter by a name more familiar to us--Old Testament.

I don’t remember a lot about that class or even my college experience. I can barely remember life before COVID-19. But I remember that my grandparents sometimes called me on Sunday evenings to see how I was doing. During one of those calls--the call that I remember most clearly--Grandpa asked me, “Are they teaching you anything?”

That last question was a showstopper for me, because of course I was learning a lot. But I was stymied by the challenge of how to sum up a month of college for two people whose economic circumstances had prohibited them from graduating high school.

Then this idea popped into my head, and I said, “I’m learning that city kids don’t have a clue about the Bible, because they weren’t taught the things that you were able to teach us, and because they don’t know the first thing about nomadic or rural life.”

The Bible isn’t just old. It’s filled with images and metaphors from nomadic and rural life that are opaque to people who grew up in cities and suburbs. So I learned in my first OT class that before the preacher exegete the Bible, she needs to exegete the nomadic and rural metaphors.

As an example, it’s tough to appreciate the full meaning of John’s description of Jesus as “The Good Shepherd” if you have never met a shepherd and you do not know much about sheep. Comprende?

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As Jesus spoke, hopes rose in the hearts of his followers, but they remained hesitant to believe. The news seemed too good to be true. So Jesus asked for something to eat. He was offered a piece of broiled fish which he ate in their presence. Then Jesus went on to interpret the scriptures, drawing the connections between the visions of the prophets, and his present-day mission, and then they got it. They finally understood the Easter message — suffering was not their purpose, death was not the end, and their hope was restored — and they were called to be witnesses of these things.

Did you notice how the disciples didn’t begin to comprehend the full meaning of these events in Jerusalem until they saw Jesus eat something, which is another way of saying — until they all had something to eat. Remember, in this setting, Jesus was the guest, so he would have been invited to eat first. That was and still is the norm in neareastern cultures, and many others. Guests are served first.

Where I come from, we say, “Company first. Family hold back.” The principle is the same. It’s about hospitality. It’s also about having enough to eat.

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The way that John tells the story, Mary Magdalene went early to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. But when she got to the cemetery, she found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty.

So she ran to Peter and John and told them that someone had stolen Jesus’ body, and she didn’t know where they had taken him. The two men headed back to the tomb with her in hopes of making sense of these mysterious events.

John reached the tomb first. He bent down and looked in and saw linen wraps laying in the tomb, but he didn’t find the body. Peter arrived next, and was followed by a third.

John went into the tomb, confirmed Jesus’ absence, and affirmed his resurrection. The others weren’t as clear in their analysis. The three men headed to their respective homes, but Mary Magdalene stayed behind at the tomb grieving and wondering what to do next.

She saw two angels seated where Jesus’ body had lain. One asked why she was weeping.

She stated the obvious: “Someone has stolen my Jesus, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Then she turned around and saw someone standing next to her. According to John, that someone was Jesus, but Mary Magdalene didn’t recognize him.

Jesus asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Who are you looking for?”

Supposing him to be the gardener, Mary Magdalene said, “Sir, if you have carried Jesus away, tell me where you laid him, and I will take his body away.”

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Despite my rejection of the orthodox doctrine of substitutionary atonement, I have come to believe that there is good to be found in this Friday’s narrative.

There is good that comes from confessing when one has betrayed another, especially when one has betrayed a person (or a group) to whom we have made significant promises, such as: a spouse, a best friend, a neighbor, a client, our family, or our faith community.

In addition, I believe that good comes from acknowledging how easily our values can be commodified and sold for a bag of silver. Like Peter, we can know what is right, good, and fitting--and still make the wrong choices. Like Peter, we say we won’t do x. We insist that we’ll stay strong. And then, mic drop, before we know it, we’ve accepted the purse, and the cock has crowed--not once or twice, but three times.

Furthermore, and perhaps especially in these current times, it is good that we face history and ourselves, and that we own up to the fact that we can be every bit as vulnerable to groupthink and mob rule as the rank and file who hovered around Jesus on that first Good Friday, and the fools who fed off of Adolf Hitler’s xenophobia in Nazi Germany.

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So it is incumbent upon us as Progressive Christians to expose the ideas and practices within our tradition that defame the physical world and human sexuality, and counter them with more holistic and healthier ideas and practices that exist within scripture and that are being revealed through research and scholarship in the human sciences.

It is also incumbent upon us to counter gender stereotypes that define women as morally responsible for men’s behavior, and men as knights in shining armor.

In addition, it is incumbent upon us to denounce the fetishization of women in general and people of color, and to clearly and crisply affirm that all people are fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God (Ps. 149:14).

Without embracing these challenges and taking them on, I guarantee you that the roots of xenophobia that perpetuate egregious hate crimes like the type we saw unfold in metro Atlanta this past Tuesday will continue to plague us and our posterity.

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This past Thursday, March 11, marked the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. Usually anniversaries are occasions for celebration, but in this case--not so much. So many lives lost. So many jobs, so many businesses, and so many in-persons lessons lost. There is so much to grieve. Some of us will be grieving these losses the rest of our lives.

And yet, the news is not all bad. There is good news, too. Lessons have been learned, vaccines have been discovered, alliances and partnerships that never existed have been forged, and some archaic systems that have needed to die for a very long time have finally imploded under the stress of the pandemic.

So we have been and we are tossed to and fro during this pandemic like sailors on the high seas in the midst of a hurricane. We are tossed from one side of the ship to another, so we reach for something to grab hold of and we hang on for dear life.

The same is true within the realm of public health. On the one hand, the most vulnerable among us have taken a beating by this virus and its economic impact, and on the other, a bright light has been shown on the least, the last, and the lost. So that no one can deny any longer the suffering of those who are now named “the especially vulnerable:” our frail elders, people of color, kids in cages, refugees and aliens, economic migrants, asylum seekers, people with multiple morbidity issues, and individuals and families with low social and economic status.

These health disparities which are also economic disparities and racial-ethnic disparities have been daylighted, and even the privileged are coming to terms with the news that none of us is safe from COVID-19 unless all of us are safe from this disease and its variants.

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Stephen didn’t feel any need to use euphemisms to describe himself. In fact, I’m pretty sure that he enjoyed watching others squirm when he used the word “homosexual.” The more nervous the term made others, the more frequently he used it, and the more he relished it and labored over every syllable: “ho-mo-sex-u-a-l.”

Right after he enunciated the word, Stephen would squeal with glee—sort of like my 6-year old great-niece when her mom tells her that her chores are done and she can saddle up her horse for a ride.

At the time I knew Stephen, he was one of the most “out and proud” members of the LGBT communities I was a part of.

Thirty-some years later, I’m here to tell you that the same is true. He still is one of the most out and proud queer people I’ve ever known, but being a homosexual does not adequately describe Stephen. Because he was also unapologetically a Christian.

Like the Apostle who wrote in II Timothy, chapter 1:11-12, Stephen frequently interjected these words in conversation over lunch, as easily as he did from the pulpit of Colby Chapel on our seminary campus:

11 For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, 12 and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that day what I have entrusted to him. (II Tim. 1:11-12)

I heard Stephen repeat this passage numerous times over the three years that I knew him. In some ways, his doing so wasn’t that remarkable. He was, after all, a card-carrying Baptist,. He had the floppy Bible with the gold trim and the fancy ribbon page markers and the tabs to prove it. He had the blue suit, white shirt, black tie Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes too. In addition, Stephen was doing what Baptists do. He was good at quoting scripture.

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Contemplating all of these realities leads me to cry out with my Hillbilly relatives and country music singer, Carrie Underwood, “Jesus, take the wheel!”

Jesus, take the wheel, because our lives and our world are out of control. We are spinning around like an old Chevy with no snow tires on an icy stretch of highway in West Texas, and when we end up in the ditch there isn’t going to be anybody coming along for days to find us, because no one in their right mind would be out on the roads in these conditions.

And yet, when we zoom in on Mark’s gospel lesson today, we discover — perhaps for the very first time — that the wilderness of Lent was and is not the godforsaken place that we may have assumed it to be. Listen again to Mark 1:12-13:

“...the Spirit immediately drove Jesus into the wilderness. He was there forty days, tempted by Satan; and Jesus was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.”

Did you hear that?

The Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness. The Spirit, not the devil, drove Jesus into the wilderness. And Jesus was there forty days and forty nights, and he was tempted by Satan. And, he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

To be sure, the wilderness is not “the happiest place on earth,” but neither is it the godforsaken place that we may have thought it to be.

Mark says, the Spirit sent Jesus into the wilderness, and the Spirit accompanied him through the wilderness, and the angels — the good angels, not the bad angel — flapped their wings around him and attended to his needs.

If you let these verses seep into your soul, and if you believe like I do, that God is good, and that, as the prophet Jeremiah says, “God has plans for us--plans to prosper..and not to harm [us], plans to give [us] a hope and a future. “ (Jer. 29: 11) Then, you, like me, may come to believe that the wilderness is a good place--or at least a place where good things can happen.

Wrap your mind around those thoughts for a moment, and ask yourself: “What good could lay ahead in this wilderness of Lent? What good surprises may God have in store in the final chapter of this damn demic?” These are some of the questions that I encourage us to ponder as we travel through this season of Lent. These are questions worthy of our reflection, and that hold the potential for strengthening us in the struggles that we encounter, and prepare us for the final chapter that God has in store for us.

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Regardless of our party affiliation, patriotic Americans in general, and humanitarians and people of all faith traditions have to ask ourselves, “How have we come to this?” How have we come to this time and place in which so many people question so much? Furthermore, how is that we have come to this time and place when many not only question or flat out reject scientific truth, but they do so to their own detriment and the detriment of others?

Answer: I think many of us have been “Trumped.” We have been trumped into someone else’s self-serving agenda; because we are suffering so much and feeling so vulnerable, and it’s easier to blame someone else or something else than it is to face our own needs and our sense of loss and grief. We don’t like feeling weak. We don’t like losing. We don’t like living this American nightmare. We want to be living the American Dream!

So, many of us are sucked into someone else’s lies, which only builds someone else’s power, and only serves someone else’s future. And, when we do, the symbolic boil of our suffering is lanced, the infection is released, and for a few minutes, we may feel a sense of relief. But, then, sadly, the relief does not last long, because the cause of our suffering has not been appropriately addressed, and the process repeats itself.

Social scientists and historians alike will be busy for a long time studying, mapping, and describing how Donald Trump hijacked the American airwaves and manipulated a significant number of U.S. citizens into believing his lies, fanning his xenophobic agenda into flames, and drinking his toxic Kool-Aid.

They will be reviewing and analyzing this mess for generations to come--and they should. And when they’re done, I hope that we and our posterity will have learned from what we have endured, and I hope and pray that we will find a better way for all of us. But how?

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Consider the mess that unfurled in our nation’s capital this past Wednesday, as Congress began to count the Electoral College votes and that ugly mob stormed the Capitol building. That scene was and is a crucible for showing us just how much work we have to do in order to name and dismantle racism in our nation and world, and how much work we have ahead of us.

Some folks just want to pin all of last week’s drama on Donald J. Trump, but blaming this all on him is way too simple. He is one in a large number.

Every person who has benefited from white privilege, every person who has enjoyed the fruits of oppressed laborers’ work, and every person who has naively thought that what happened last Wednesday couldn’t have happened has some serious work to do to understand white privilege, to discover how we got in this mess, and to begin to make amends.

Donald Trump couldn’t have incited the mob that busted into the Capitol if there had not been like-minded individuals in that hoard. Furthermore, that mob could never have made it into the Senate chambers and Nancy Pelosi's office if there hadn't been sympathizers amongst the Capitol Police.

Think about it, when’s the last time you’ve seen news footage of the Capitol Police backing away from a crowd, opening doors for vigilanties, or taking selfies with people who were breaking the law? Never. Compare that behavior with the way that AIDS activists, Immigration Reform advocates, and Black Lives Matter demonstrators have been treated over the years? See the difference? I bet you do.

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