@EUCC Sermons

Good morning, Rainbow People! If you’re like me, you may find the gospel passage today just a little confusing. Amen? So I’m going to start with a summary of the pericope.

The way that Mark tells the story, Jesus had just appointed twelve disciples and commissioned them to cast out demons. Then he headed home for supper; but his evening meal was delayed by a crowd of paparazzi, fair-weather friends, and some detractors who had gathered around his house.

Some of his detractors accused Jesus of being out of his mind, which was a nice way of saying “crazy.” Others, like the Jewish scribes, who had come down from Jerusalem, said that he was possessed by Beelzebul, the Philistines’ god, who was the prince of devils.

Neither charge was complimentary, but Jesus was not deterred. He countered these allegations with logical arguments, explaining that he could not be both the devil and the one who casts out the devil. He was either one or the other.

And, he called the people who said that he was possessed “blasphemers,” which meant that they were guilty of an unforgivable sin. This, he explained, was so, because they were equating the work that God was doing through him with the work of the devil.

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The first is personal humility, and it is the turn key for all other forms of humility.

To exhibit personal humility one must realize and demonstrate that I am not the center of the universe. The world does not revolve around me. I do not know all that there is to know, and I do not have all the answers or all the tools needed to solve every problem. I am willing to approach group problems inductively, mindful that I likely have as much to learn as I do to impart to others. I’m willing to examine my own assumptions, receive constructive feedback, learn, adapt, change, evolve. I am willing to share power, to receive as well as give.

Personal humility is something that we strive to teach children at an early age, but it is a lifelong process--a spiritual practice--that requires time and intention and persistence.

A second form of humility that is much in need today is cultural humility, which is the ability to maintain an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented (or open to the other) in relation to aspects of cultural identity that are most important to the person.

Cultural humility is different from other culturally-based training ideals because it focuses on self-humility, rather than on simply acquiring knowledge or awareness of other cultures. This practice was identified and first cultivated in the physical healthcare field and adapted into other helping professionals and helps caregivers learn more about the experiences and cultural identities of others, in order to increase the quality of their interactions with clients and community members.

When we express cultural humility, we acknowledge that our culture is not the only way, or the better way--ours is simply a way.

A third form of humility that I’ll mention today, since this is the culmination of our stewardship campaign is philanthropic humility. One must exhibit both a personal posture of humility and cultural humility to effectively exhibit philanthropic humility. Donors who exhibit their generosity in this way ask persons and organizations in need of resources what they need and how they would go about resolving whatever issue they are addressing with their project. Donors don’t assume that they understand the problem being addressed or the best way to tackle it. Instead, they listen, they learn, they collaborate, and everyone is blessed as a result.

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According to Luke, the eleven were together in Jerusalem, with the one hundred twenty, including Peter, and despite his tainted credentials, the other apostles affirmed Peter’s recommendation that all nominees be people who had been continuous followers of Jesus since his baptism. (This idea eventually was overturned by Paul, but it prevailed in the early days of the Christian community.)

Given this criteria, only two names surfaced: Joseph called Barsabbas and Matthias. According to the minutes of the meeting in Acts, chapter 1, the nominating committee prayed for the spirit’s guidance, and then they drew lots. That’s right, they said a prayer and played the lottery.

How crazy is that? No strategic planning, no succession planning, and no training for his successor, they just pulled Matthias name out of a hat and he got the nod to fill the vacancy.

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Jesus was a master of metaphor and one of the great practical theologians of all time. He used metaphors and images to get his messages across to primarily illiterate audiences in a manner that was clear and memorable.

His reference to himself as the vine and his followers as the branches, in today’s gospel story, are a case in point. Jesus lived and served in wine country, so the image of vines and grapes and the way he applied the metaphor to himself and his people was instantly clear to all who had ears to hear.

The metaphor expresses the intimate and integral relationship between himself and his followers, who embodied a spiritual extension of their relationship with God.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me, and I in them bear much fruit…” (John 15:5a)

Jesus uses the term “abide'' multiple times in today’s gospel lesson. Abide is a term that is rarely used outside of church circles. What does it mean?

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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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