Listening to Our Children

The Feast of Holy Innocents: Matthew 2:13-18

Merry Christmas! The gospel we just read really puts you in the Christmas spirit, doesn’t it? I asked that we read the passages for the Feast of Holy Innocents today—and as I’ve been preparing this sermon over Christmas, I started wondering if that was really a good idea. Its pretty dark stuff, isn’t it?

That is something I have been noticing about our Christmas readings and stories this season, though. They are not all peace and joy, are they? I mean, a baby born in a cold stable in the middle of a traveling nightmare? I’m sure Mary was not in the best of Christmas moods. And, then, in our readings today, that child is threatened with death and his parents flee with him, refugees and immigrants into Egypt. Sure, there are the happy shepherds and the singing angels too. But there is also a cruel king and the cruelty of poverty.

Christmas is a real mixed bag. That’s true for a lot of us, isn’t it? The holidays are hard for a lot of us. It is the time we usually—but not always--get to spend time with family and eat good food and take time off from school and work. It is also the time we remember loved ones we have lost, the time we see the empty chairs at our tables. It is sometimes the time we remember what could have been and it is sometimes a time where it is easy to feel lonely. And, sometimes, honestly, it is tense and boring and you just want the holidays over with.

So that dark story of today—the day we remember the children slaughtered by Herod. There is no other historical record of the children of Bethlehem being slaughtered outside of Matthew, but there is a lot of historical evidence of the cruelty of Herod the Great during his time as the Roman crowned “king of the Jews”. He is best known for the murder of his own sons—there was a saying at the time of Herod that it was better to be Herod’s pig than his son.

I don’t think we can imagine what it might have been like in Bethlehem under Herod. Sitting in this church, it is hard to imagine what it would be like to be a mother in Herod’s Judea. To fear for your child. To fear that they would die of starvation in the land of bread. To fear that they would be murdered by soldiers. To fear that they would never grow up.

That world can seem very far away.

And sometimes it can seem really close. This day was once “the Children’s Mass” in medieval churches.  It was also the subject of the many gospel mystery plays in medieval England. The song we often sing during this season is “The Coventry Carol”—the theme song of a travelling play in Coventry. It was written to be the song of the mothers of Bethlehem saying goodbye to their dying children. “By, by, thou little tiny child…” It’s a haunting song, a song that keeps running through my head this advent season. For mothers in Coventry, during civil unrest and civil war in England, singing about their dying children must have seemed very close indeed.

There is something that makes me uncomfortable about this day and how we remember it, though. We call it the feast of Holy Innocents. We paint pictures of pretty children in the arms of pretty mothers. We pray only for “the innocents.” We have this ideal in Western culture of the innocence of children—or at least some children.

In the time of Herod’s Judea, this was not true. Children were not viewed as innocents, but as subordinates in a culture dominated by Roman hierarchy. The life of a child was not valued, nor was that life considered innocent. And, lets be honest. The children of Bethlehem were the kids of peasants, the kids of nobodies, the kids of tax collectors (the ancient equivalent of drug dealers perhaps), the kids of slaves, the kids of thieves. Dangers to his throne, to his power. Thugs in the making. Who really cared if they died? Who said they were innocent?

We live in a time, I think, where we only sympathize with lives lost if we believe they were innocent. It is easy for us to sympathize with the two police officers who were killed last week, to sympathize with the tragic loss of life and loss to their children. But we don’t have much sympathy for those we consider non-innocent.

And the kids I work with on the streets of Aberdeen are not innocent. That is, in the eyes of society—they steal and they fight and they deal—all to survive, yes, but that means that they are not innocent. If they end up spending more time in jail than out, or if they end up in the hospital, or if they end up dead, no one really cares too much. We always find a way to say that they deserved it. They were punks, or thugs, or undesirables anyway.

I’m gonna speak as the young person I am for a minute, a young person who is white, and who didn’t have to steal to eat growing up, who is the granddaughter of two police officers. I’m not sure my parent’s generation understands just how scary and just how hard it is for young people, and especially for those still in their teens. We, even those of us who had a pretty good childhood and didn’t have to steal or run drugs, we wonder if we have a future. We wonder if we’ll ever find a decent job. We wonder what kind of world we are going to have to live in. And when we look around us at the world we’ve inherited, it scares a whole lot of us.

This has been the year of young people starting to speak and to voice their pain. This has been the year of record numbers of young men and women fleeing across our southern borders as corrupt governments and warlords take over parts of central America. This has been the year of young black men and women taking to the streets, many of them junior high and high school students, and saying #BlackLivesMatter. It has been a year, perhaps more than any other in the U.S., when young men and women have cried out their fears for the future. And their hope too, their hope and longing for a better world.

This has also been a year, perhaps as every year is, of dead kids in our streets. Or on our borders. In the last fifteen years, 6000 bodies have been found in the desert between Mexico and the U.S., and many of them were children. And about 500 people a year die of police violence according to incomplete statistics, and too many of them are black children and teens. And then there are the names of the children and teens and young adults just in the past few months: Mike Brown, Tamir Rice (only 12 years old), Akai Gurley, Kajieme Powell, Keith Vidal, and we could go on.  

I want to say something. I don’t want to preach about this. There is a part of me that just wants to forget all about this. But it’s the cry of Rachel, weeping for her children, that drives me to say something. I can’t forget the sobbing of Mike Brown’s mother when the announcement of no indictment was read and she said; “They never cared. And they ain’t never gonna care.”

See, our victims are not innocent. Mike Brown was smoking weed and had mouthed off to an officer. Tamir Rice was a big kid and was playing with a toy gun. We always find a way to say that they deserved it. They were punks and thugs.

They were also teenagers. And children.

Here, in our majority white town, in our majority white churches, we don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about. Especially not about race. But what about my Latino uncle who tells me that he is harassed while brown all the time in LA? Or my cousin’s little boy who is already learning what it means to be black in America? We need to listen to the young voices all over this country who are saying the same thing. That racism is real. That young black people are targets.

We are uncomfortable talking about it. A friend and fellow priest of mine in Seattle put up a banner on their church that said “Black Lives Matter.” And on Christmas, it was torn down and vandalized. We are uncomfortable and even hostile when talking about race.

On this feast of Holy Innocents, on this day of Children’s Mass, though, we as a country are going to have to start listening to our young people. And the cries of their mothers.

It can be scary to listen. It can be scary to see the rage and the anger of young people who have nowhere to go and no better life waiting for them. It can be scary to see the level of grief and brokenness. Herod, in his fear, responded with violence, and we’ve seen that too as some of our cities and towns look like military zones. But God, God listened. God listened and I have to believe that God cried and raged too.

 So, I am inviting us to listen, on this feast of Holy Innocents, on this day of the Children’s Mass—to listen to Rachel weeping for her children. And to listen to our young people. To listen to our kids. In Aberdeen. Did you know that the largest demographic in Aberdeen are kids under the age of 25? And in Ferguson and NYC. In Monte and Elma, and in San Antonio and Nogales. Lets remember the angel’s call; “Do not be afraid,” and let us listen for the hope of a new and different world. It was God who became a child who came to save us. Let us hear God now in the voices of our children.

Christ, the Derelict King

Christ the King Sunday
Text: Matthew 25:31-46

As you all know, I’m just getting started to get settled in Westport. Its lovely—and my little place is close enough to the ocean that I hear it all night.

I’ve started to meet and talk with people and get to know people. It’s a lovely little community, isolated, small, a little discouraged like the rest of the harbor. One of the things I am always listening for is how people talk about other people. Of course, we have all heard the conversations around immigration this week and the anger at “the illegals.”

And I’ve noticed that Westport, like all of our towns, has a word for people who are poor or who are experiencing homelessness. Derelicts. Now, of course, most people in Westport are poor, just like at least 50% of the harbor is poor. But we always reserve our words of derision for people who are more down and out than we are. In Aberdeen, its “the takers.” In Monte and Elma, its “the undesirables.” In Westport, it seems, its “the derelicts.”

And I started thinking. The word derelict refers to something abandoned—an abandoned home, an abandoned car, an abandoned ship. In this case, perhaps it refers to abandoned people in abandoned places.

Sometimes, on the harbor, like lots of other small towns, it can feel like the world is passing us by. Abandoned in this global race for money and power. Abandoned, after the world no longer needs our timber or our fish or our labor.

So, on to the gospel text this morning. None of you are probably surprised that our gospel text is one of my favorites. We use this text a lot to talk about how we should care for people in need and do the work of God in the world.

But I think its more than that. It is Jesus saying—the poor, the suffering, of the world? They are me. I am them. I take their side.

It seems fitting to me that this is Christ the King Sunday.

Christ, the Derelict King.

Christ, the King of the Abandoned.

The King of prisoners and derelicts, of sex workers and illegals.

Not the king of empires, whether the empires of Rome or old Europe, or even our own American empires.

The King instead of the common people, of the poor. The King of the hungry and sick. The Abandoned King of Abandoned People.

Matthew’s Jesus loves the language of apocalypse and of judgment. And so the Jesus of Matthew today draws us a picture. This Abandoned King, the ragged rabbi who calls himself a king, paints a picture of he himself judging the nations. Just imagine for a moment—this ragged, wandering rabbi who was born into a two bit town with a bad reputation, this preacher who will be arrested in just a day or two and executed—he claims that he will judge the nations.

And he doesn’t tell a story just of individual people who will go to heaven or go to hell. We like to read it this way, but that is not Jesus’ point. It’s the story of Jesus, the ragged rabbi, standing before all the people, all the nations of the world and entering into judgment. Those who have cared for their people, those who have healed the sick and fed and cared for their people, those who have visited and freed their prisoners—they have done it to Jesus himself. But those who have oppressed their people? Who have imprisoned them, who have left them hungry and naked, who have left them to die? They, they will be judged. God will not let them get away with harming others.

I have to say, I find this really good news.

For me, anyway, this judgment is good news.

It is good news that the people who sleep under bridges and along our rivers will be honored and protected.

It is good news that Christ the derelict king will take the side of his people.

It is good news that our tiny towns are not abandoned by God and that God will judge those who have abandoned us.

This is good news.

Every day, I watch people struggle to survive. Struggle to just stay alive in this county. And I watch people die.

And people struggle for a reason. We struggle because this town and these places are abandoned, with so few jobs left. We struggle because health care is so very limited to more and more people. We struggle because land and resources are all in very few hands. We struggle because housing is so poor that people live without running water and electricity, in places overrun with bugs and rodents, and the people who own those places do not improve them and we do not hold them accountable. We struggle because those in power are ok with the way things are. We die because—who cares about derelicts and undesirables and takers and illegals anyway?

It was Thomas Jefferson who said, in what is otherwise a very problematic quote; “I tremble for my nation when I reflect that God is just and his justice will not keep forever.”

And, so, how does God do this? How does Jesus’ justice come?

 Some explosion in the sky?

A bolt of lightning?

I don't think so. I think it happens through us.

Through those who refuse to forget. Who refuse to give up. When we sit down at table together. When you bring us meals. When we demand to be noticed.

Have you been noticed the story coming out of Fort Lauderdale these past few weeks? In Fort Lauderdale, FL it is illegal to feed people on the street. This old guy has gone to jail twice because he refuses to stop. I joked with our team the other day—would they be willing to go to jail? Yesterday, one man called me and said; “I want to you know, I’d be willing to go to jail.” That is how judgment comes. Churches across the country are starting to open their doors and offer sanctuary to immigrant families and individuals in danger of deportation. That is how judgment comes.

When the “takers” take back their power and demand life and dignity. When we begin to hold our leaders accountable for the common good. When we refuse to allow our neighbors to be hungry or live in poverty. That is how judgment comes. Not vengeance—but justice.

The men and women of the harbor—they are Jesus’ people. They are Jesus, living among us, here and now. Christ the Derelict King fights for his Derelict people, here and now. Through us.

And so we are not abandoned after all. God is with us, working through us. Together, we demand judgment and justice. And when we do, the voice of that ragged rabbi rings down to us from 2000 years; “When I was hungry, you gave me something to eat, when I was naked you clothed me, when I was sick you visited me, when I was in prison you came to me, when I was a stranger, you welcomed me. You are doing this for me.”

I Arose, A Mother in Israel

Sermon: Pentecost 23
Text: Judges 4-5

 Do you ever feel too small or too powerless to change your circumstances? Do you ever feel like you can’t do what you know you are called to do?

That is pretty much the situation of the people of Israel in our first reading. We only get part of the story in our reading. This is an ancient story, long before the time of Israel’s kings. The people of Israel in this story are peasants—small farmers and Bedouins, or shepherds. The story is focused on northern Israel, the area that will later be known as Galilee in the time of Jesus. And at this point they are under the rule of King Jabin of Hazor, a powerful Canaanite city state in the region.

And they are pretty sure that absolutely nothing is going to be able to change their situation. That they are far too powerless to change anything, much less go against the powerful king of Hazor, who is oppressing them and robbing them. Even their military leader, Barak, is sure that there is nothing they can do.

And along comes Deborah. Deborah is the only female judge in Judges and the only female military commander recorded in the Hebrew Bible. She is a prophet and she is also a local judge in what appears to be most of northern Israel. She would have heard all of the complaints and disputes of the tribes and would have made decisions for the northern Israelite tribes.

And she is the hero of the story—she and another woman mentioned later in the text, called Jael. These two women are convinced that enough is enough. That God will protect their people as they reclaim their freedom and their liberty. They will not listen to those that insist that they are weak and powerless. Instead, they inspire a whole people to reclaim their liberty and to stand up against King Jabin..

It’s a pretty amazing story. Deborah rides into battle with her people and they defeat the Canaanite king and reclaim their own land. And Jael defeats and kills the Canaanite commander. It’s a little like reading one of those grand old hero stories. Its like an old western with two female leads.

In the next chapter, the people of Israel sing a victory song to Deborah and Jael. Some scholars think that the song is actually one of the oldest written pieces of literature in the Bible.

Honestly, I’ve always loved the story of Deborah. I love her strength and her courage.

The people sing…. “The peasantry prospered in Israel, because you arose, Deborah, arose a mother in Israel” “Most blessed of women be Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, of tent dwelling women most blessed.” The people are saved by two women-- an upstart judge and a Bedouin shepherd.

One of the reasons I’ve loved the story of Deborah and Jael is because this story played an important role in my life. I grew up in a Christian tradition that excluded women from leadership in the church. Being a woman and a leader in the church just wasn’t an option.

So, for years and years, I had this call eating away at me. This nagging sense that I was missing what I was called to do in my life. A fire burning in my bones, as Jeremiah says.

And it was stories like the story of Deborah that made me think. Made we wonder if God really could call a person like me.

I remember, so, so clearly, visiting my sister on a military base in England. While I was there, I took a pilgrimage through northern England, riding the train, walking, and asking, begging God to show me a way forward. I ended up in Ely, a tiny town with a giant cathedral. As I walked on a path that had been walked by thousands of pilgrims for hundreds of years, I came upon the story of the cathedral. A young woman had founded it back in 670, a woman who had fled an abusive marriage and decided that God was calling her to start a mission station in Ely. And there I was, almost 1400 years later, feeling the same call.

This sense that I wasn’t going to be able to get away from what God was calling me to do kept growing on me. That I was not powerless. That I was indeed called to ministry.

It was a long journey, but I came home and, about six months later, started the discernment process in the Episcopal Church.

I was at our diocesan convention last week and was able to share a little about my ministry. And, as I was sitting in a room full of representatives from all of the Episcopal churches in Western WA, I thought about all of the places that have affirmed and supported me on this path. Like you all.

All the people who reminded me that I was not powerless. All of the people that reminded me that God could call someone like me.

And that has become a cornerstone of my own ministry. To remind us all that we are not powerless. That God calls each of us. That no matter how powerless we feel, no matter what the world around us thinks of us, we are beloved, we are powerful, we can have hope and a future.

In Aberdeen, we too often feel powerless. Problems are too big. We’re just a small town shafted by a rotten economy. We are powerless to address our housing crisis. Powerless to rebuild our economy. Powerless to stand up and say enough is enough. Powerless to speak up when people are getting hurt. Powerless to demand the common good and better life for everyone, not just town beautification. Powerless to demand anything anymore. We are tired. We are weary.

In ourselves or maybe even in our parish, we too often feel powerless. Like our gifts don’t matter. Those of us who have been knocked around by life, or maybe have experienced abuse, we can feel pretty powerless. Or maybe we’ve just been told too many times that we are.

And I want to call this for what it is. I want to use a non-churchy word. Bullshit.

The God who came to us in a tiny two bit town with a bad reputation—that God cares about us, here and now.

No matter what you have seen in life, you are valuable and loved.

No matter how insignificant you feel, in our tiredness and in our weariness, we are powerful because we are in the hands of a powerful God.

That’s really why I love Deborah.

She refuses to believe that the odds are against them.

She refuses to give up.

She refuses—even when the military leader of the tribes, even when Barak doesn’t think it is possible—she refuses to believe that her people should just give in.

She refuses to let her people give up.

She refuses to let them believe they are powerless.

So, my brothers and sisters, you are loved. You are powerful. Your gifts matter. Your talents matter. Your dreams matter. Every one of us. You are called to simply believe that you are in the hands of a powerful God.

We are called to simply believe that we, in our longing for goodness and beauty and peace and hope, we—every single one of us— are powerful in the hands of a powerful God.

Reading the Magnificat in Aberdeen

I asked our Bible study group if it was ok if I blogged some of our discussion and they were enthusiastic about sharing our conversations. “We want people to know what we are doing!” So, for those of you who want to know what one of our Bible studies look like, this is last Sunday:

Every Sunday, we meet for Bible study. There are usually 10-12 of us, people from many different backgrounds and experiences, most of us poor, some of us homeless. We always begin with sharing who we are and lighting candles around the table with our prayers for hope and healing and peace. We read our text and the table is open for discussion.

Until Advent, we are reading various texts in the Bible that address poverty and discussing what these texts mean for us.

Yesterday, we read Mary’s song in Luke 1:46-55, commonly called the Magnificat in liturgical churches. We ask two questions in our Bible studies. The first is simple: What strikes you in this passage? What jumps out at you?

·         Mary must have really had a hard time. As an unwed mother, she would have been frowned on. But look at her—she is praising God!

·         Mary is from Nazareth, a little town in Galilee. And people said of Nazareth—“Can any good come from Nazareth?” It was a town with a bad rap.

·         God chose Mary because she was humble and because she was poor.

·         These promises are for all generations and for all peoples.

·         All of these promises haven’t happened yet—the powerful are still on their thrones and the poor are still poor.

After we read the text for a second time, we ask a second question: What does this passage mean for us, here and now, in Aberdeen in 2014?

·         God brings the rich down to earth—God rejects arrogance. God wants us to be humble. We talked about how its so easy to be arrogant.

·         Sometimes rich people think they have special blessing and we are taught that God blesses people with wealth. If that is true, then poor people have done something wrong and are being punished. But, in this passage, God cares about the poor and blesses the poor.

·         God loves everyone. But God has special care for people who are poor.

·         Some of us shared our experiences of poverty. Poor people realize that their riches are in heaven.

·         Its hard to get through the eye of a needle.

·         In this town, the poor are of no importance. It seems like city leaders don’t care about us. That we are just a nuisance in the way of redevelopment.

·         I pointed out that most people in Aberdeen are actually poor. More and more, people are becoming poor, all over the country. We talked about how this is a growing reality for all of us.

·         If these promises are for all people, how can we address the things that divide us, that divide Spanish and English speakers in this community, for example?

·         Its still hard for single mothers in our community. But, in this text, God chooses a single mom to bring Jesus in the world. God doesn’t judge like we judge.

 

·         We talked about the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. We talked about female images of God in the Bible.

 

We closed our time together with Eucharist, naming our hope of living in a world where the poor were valued and no longer exploited, where all were fed and none went hungry.

Sermon: "See How They Love Each Other!"

Texts: Matthew 22:34-46, 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8

 

People often ask me, when I tell them about my work, about my ministry—“Aren’t you afraid?”

And I always have the same answer—“No, I am not afraid. I feel tremendously privileged to get to know the brave men and women who are struggling to survive here in the county. I’m honored to know the people I call friends.”

And every word of that is true.

But the truth is, I am also afraid.

Every day, I am afraid.

I am afraid that the three little babies who came to the church door the other day with their parents—I am afraid that they do not have a safe place to stay tonight or enough to eat.

I am afraid that the old man who looks like my grandpa and who is sleeping out in the cold—that he will not get the care he deserves and that he will die alone—and no one should die alone.

I am afraid that the young woman who is carrying a child—that, as hard as she is trying to do the right thing, that she will not be able to find a stable, safe place to raise her baby, a place that even has running water and electricity.

I am afraid that the talented kids I meet—the artists and the musicians and the writers—that they won’t be able to grace this community with their talents because they are struggling too hard to survive or they end up spending too much of their time in jail.

I am afraid that the kid who is hanging on by a thread to hope—that he will give up and overdose just to escape the pain.

I am afraid that people living in the apartments buildings of downtown Aberdeen will go without heat this winter as they pay most of their paycheck toward rent for buildings that are never maintained.

I am afraid that the gal with chronic health issues will die before she gets the help she needs.

The worst thing in the world is to watch those you love die.

I am afraid, my brothers and sisters, I am afraid. Every day.

I’m afraid that this violence of poverty, this violence of houselessness, this violence of want—will continue. I’m afraid of the realities that divide us.

Those of us with homes and those of us without homes—those of us who have jobs and those of us who can’t find work—those of us who are English speakers and those of us who are Spanish speakers—those of us from “good” families and those of us from “bad” families.

I am afraid most of all that we won’t learn how to love each other in time. That we won’t remember Jesus’s commandments—

“Love God with all your heart, mind and soul. And love your neighbor as yourself”

I am afraid, my brothers and sisters, I am afraid.

 

In our second reading, Paul is also afraid. Paul is known to us as perhaps the founder of Christianity. The man who traveled throughout what is now Turkey and Italy, building the Jesus Movement. He’s a complicated guy, Paul is, but he also a person of great passion.

The letter we read this morning was one of the first letters he wrote, to the community of Thessalonica, a Greek trade city. Paul had spent time in the city, building a congregation of people there. He had come to Thessalonica from Philippi, where he’d been beat up pretty bad and spent time in jail. In Thessalonica, he didn’t fare too much better and eventually was run out of town by the city council and some of his followers there were beat up by a mob.

So, now Paul is worried. He is afraid for the community he had grown to love in Thessalonica, so he writes to them, pouring out his heart.

He writes that he didn’t only want to share the gospel with them—the good news that God is with us in Jesus—but he says he wanted to share his very self. He was willing to suffer—to get beat up—eventually even to die as he does years later—for those he loved, for the people he loved.

He knows that the Thessalonian community is facing great struggle. Living under the Roman empire, facing opposition from the religious leaders, and from the city council, he know they were a suffering community. They were grieving people who had died, they were struggling to survive.

And so Paul writes them out of his fear for them, out of his love for them. He writes to tell them of his love. And he writes to encourage them. He tells them in the rest of the letter—the only way you are going to get through this, the only way you are going to win in the end—is to love each other.

To take care of each other. The only way to live and survive under empire was to love each other. This was Jesus’ message—this was Paul’s message.

And the Thessalonian community did suffer.

And they learned to love.

They become one of the significant communities following Jesus in that first century. They became known for their love. Love in the face of violence. Love in the face of suffering.

You want to know my dream for this community, my dream for the harbor?

Its that we will become known for our love. That we will follow Jesus so faithfully in this town, that we will hear the words of Jesus so closely in this town—that we will learn to love each other. That we will be known for our love.

Love in the face of suffering, of violence.

And lets be clear. Love is not some warm, mushy feeling. Love is one of the most courageous things we do. It means that we put our lives on the line for each other. That we look after our children and our young people. That we treat each other as full human beings, with respect, knowing that-in every person is the image of God, no matter who they are or where they came from or what they are dealing with. It means that people get the support they need to become the full children of God that they are. It means that no one goes hungry and no one shivers in unheated apartments. It means we make the commitment to each other and our communities that, to the best of our ability, no one dies alone.

More than anything, my brothers and sisters, it means sharing in joy! Sharing in life together. With love, with true love in action, comes joy. No one in this town is a problem to be fixed. No one in this town is anyone less than a child of God.

When we live like this is true, we find joy, we find prosperity, we find hope.

Is it possible that Aberdeen, WA, that the harbor could be that place? That the world could look at us in these changing and difficult times and say—see how they love each other! Like the ancient Jesus Movement of Paul? Like the Thessalonians?

I see a lot of love in this town, my brothers and sisters. I see it when Mary V talks to high schoolers about their dreams. Or when someone gives their last dollar or turns the other cheek, which is awfully hard to do. I see people encourage each other and love each other every day.

But I see the violence of poverty, the violence of need, the violence of abandonment every day too.

And I dream, my brothers and sisters, I dream. I dream that we can live out our faith in love and joy in this town, this harbor I love so much.

I have to tell you something. Paul talks about his deep love for the community of Thessalonica. As I have continued work here on the harbor, the place I grew up, I have grown to love this place. So. Much.

It is because I love this place I am afraid.

And it is because I love this place that I dream. Let us so transform this town, this harbor—so that all the world might see and might say—“See how they love each other!”

A Confession

It has been said that confession is good for the soul. And, as a pastor in community, I find that I sometimes need to make a public confession. Its not to beat myself up. Or the wallow in some kind of self-pity or guilt. Just a simple statement of fact, an admission of failure, and a resolve to turn around.

I have been deeply moved by the events that have unfolded in Ferguson, MO over the past few months. I am particularly moved by the voices of young black men and women, voicing their despair, their experiences of violence and fear, their wild hope for a better future. Some of their experiences of poverty and violence are similar to the experiences of young women and men all over this country, across racial difference. And, yet, we do not talk to each other.

As a white gal in a majority white town, I can choose to ignore the racial divides among us.

A wake up call for me was a conversation I recently had with a young Latina woman in this community. As I struggled and fumbled with my very rusty Spanish, she told me about her experiences of racism. And she challenged me: she asked me if my work was just for whites or if it was for Latinos too.

I haven’t been able to get that conversation out of my head. I haven’t been able to get away from the realization that it is so easy for me to ignore the experiences of my Latino and Native and Black brothers and sisters in this community. To come up with excuses about how busy I am or how bad my Spanish sounds or how divisive these things are.

The young woman I spoke with was a prophet in this community. She was challenging power and challenging the systems of racism in our society. And I needed to hear her words.

So, this is my confession. And my commitment. To listen. To continue to build relationships with the Native peoples of this community. To intentionally talk about racism in our community and to intentionally listen to my black and Latino brothers and sisters. To prioritize this work.

Because confession is all about repentance, is it not?

Grace in Real Life

Texts: Exodus 16:2-15; Matthew 20:1-16

When I was reading through our passages this morning, one word kept coming to me. Over and over. The word Grace. Grace.

Imagine this. Your whole life has been spent in slavery to the Egyptian Pharaoh, building his great cities, the land on which you live taken from you, your children taken and killed. Now, you have been freed by the God of Israel and you flee to the desert. You are a group of people without resources and without friends. You have run out of food, out of water—you are desperate. And you are angry too—how are we going to eat, God? How are we going to make it?

And what does God say? Does God say; “Well, you need to earn your bread.” “You silly people, why didn’t you go a different way—the southern desert, really?” “You are living the consequences of your choices.”

Nope. God just sends food. Lots of food. God sends quail. And bread falls from heaven to feed your children.

Grace.

Imagine again. In Jesus’ story, in our gospel reading, you are standing at the corner of the marketplace, that streetcorner where workers gather, hoping to get picked up by someone who needs a job done. You all know where that street corner is, right? You don’t have a steady job, you are squatting in a house near the village with your family. And you are waiting all day—hoping, hoping to get something so you can go home with food for your kids tonight. You are probably are not the strongest of the bunch—you are not as young as you used to be and your health is not what it used to be. Wages are not good anyway—a denarius was the average daily wage for a soldier or a worker and it put you right at subsistence level—just enough to feed a family for a day. As the day goes on, you know you won’t make enough even for that today. So you wait and you wait and you get picked up, finally, toward the end of the day, by the guy who owns the huge vineyard and needs his grapes picked. You figure—hey, an hour or two of work is better than nothing.

And what does Jesus say about this guy? That he is lazy and should go find a better job? “Why didn’t you try harder to get picked up earlier?” “Something is better than nothing?”

Nope. The landlord in Jesus’ story shows a tiny bit of mercy. He pays you for a whole day’s work, even though you’ve only worked a few hours. Your fellow workers are a little tiffed, and you can’t really blame them, but you, you get to feed your family tonight.

And that word comes to mind again: grace.

Its interesting, isn’t it? Sometimes we think of the Bible as a book about heaven, about spiritual things. About our souls. Sometimes grace is explained as some kind of forgiveness of personal sin so we can get to heaven.

But think again about our stories. Our two stories. They are about real life. About bodies. About hunger. About survival. About feeding your family. About trying to find work. About worrying about money. The Bible, and Jesus, is obsessed with talking about real things. Real life.

And so grace too is about real life.

We sometimes say grace is getting what you don’t deserve. What you haven’t earned.

Actually, grace never asks what you deserve. What you’ve earned. If you are good enough. If you are deserving enough.

Grace simply gives. Grace is God’s belief that, simply because you are created in God’s image, simply because you are human, you deserve love, and care, and life, and joy.

That simply because we live, because God loves us, because we are created in God’s image—we deserve to live a full and abundant life.

Simply because God loved them, the children of Israel deserved abundant food.

Simply because the worker standing on that corner desperately trying to get work, simply because he was a child of God, he deserved to go home with enough money to feed his family.

That, my brothers and sisters, is grace too. Grace in real life. Grace in the here and now.

We live in a world where everything we need to live has strings attached, right? Food, clothing, shelter—we live a world that asks questions like this:

Do you deserve it?

Have you worked hard enough?

Are you really, I mean really, a good enough person?

Have you ever asked yourself that? Have you ever had this strange feeling that you don’t deserve to be happy or to have enough? Have you ever felt not good enough?

This is how the world around us teaches us to think. Its how the Egyptians thought—the Pharaoh didn’t believe his slaves deserved good lives, deserved to have their children safe, deserved to be free.

Many landowners in Jesus’ time didn’t believe that the people of Galilee deserved enough to eat or deserved their own land or deserved to live as well as they did.

They were just slaves.

They were just expendable workers.

And then God comes in. With grace.

Grace that always took the side of the people that society said did not deserve it. Grace that saved escaped slaves from hunger and grace that fed a temp worker’s children.

Grace given freely and without strings attached.

 So, I want you to listen very, very carefully.

If you feel like you don’t deserve goodness in your life. If you can’t find a job in this job forsaken place, if you are struggling to pay the bills, if you can’t make a living wage, if you are lonely and alone, if you are told or believe you are unworthy—grace is for you. God is for you. Can I get an Amen?

What does grace look like for this parish, for Aberdeen in 2014? Where do you see grace? Where do you long to see grace? Where do you long for grace in your own life?

I have to share something with you, brothers and sisters. As I do outreach, as I walk the streets of Aberdeen, there is an awful lot of suffering in this town. I want you to know, people are literally dying out there, all the time. Living in shacks, camping out, people are struggling to just survive, longing simply for a place to belong. Every day. Its enough to break one’s heart—to walk through this town. It sometimes is enough to rip my heart out. We need grace in this town. Grace in real life.

After this service, some of you will join me with others of our brothers and sisters here in Aberdeen for Bible study. We will light candles and pray together for our struggling town. We will talk about what Jesus’ life has to do with us, here, today. And then we will share a meal together—we will cook together, we will talk together as neighbors. When I witness this, when I witness how the community feeds each other, how the community prays together, I catch a glimpse of grace. Real bodies. Real food. We talk about struggle and hopelessness here in Aberdeen a lot, right? Well, Sunday afternoons, I do catch a glimpse of hope and of grace. We catch a vision of what a world might look like where all were fed, where all were honored, where grace is a way of life.

Where do you see grace, my brothers and sisters? Where do you see grace in real life?

Let us pray.

 

"I Have Heard My People's Cry"

Texts: Exodus 3:1-15, Matthew 16:21-28

 

So, I had lunch with the Aberdeen police chief this past week, along with Pastor Marc from next door. On my way there, Pastor Marc joked; “I hope they don’t arrest you!” They didn’t, of course. Actually, we had a really good conversation about poverty in Aberdeen.

But Marc’s comment reminded me that, sometimes, it can be dangerous to follow Jesus. Now, I have no particular intention of being arrested and I doubt the Aberdeen police department has any intention of arresting me.

But, these past few weeks, others have been in harm’s way. An African American Baptist pastor, who I knew of when I was in Boston, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, has been in harm’s way this past month. I was particularly drawn to his story because he also grew up in a rural area and also ended up in Boston. He spent his teen years in St Louis County and this past month, he decided, like me, to go home. He went home, of course, at the worst possible time—since we all have seen the news in Ferguson. The place Michael Brown was shot by police.

He’s been posting on facebook regularly, as he has stood with the young black men and women of Ferguson and listened to them, listened to their pain, listened to the pain of a community. Now I know that Ferguson seems very far away from us. A whole world and a whole culture away. We see little news snippets here and there, but it still seems pretty far away. I was struck as Rev Sekou talked about the situation in Ferguson, particularly because the economic situation in Ferguson is almost exactly the same as it is here on the harbor, in Aberdeen. Both towns have the same poverty rate—25%. Both have similar rates of unemployment, the same median income (36,000), and the same atmosphere of hopelessness and violence, especially for young people. We might have more in common than we think with our brothers and sisters in Ferguson.

I’ve been struck especially because Rev. Sekou has put himself in a lot of danger; he talks about facing violence and the fear of having guns pointed at him and his community. He had a radio conversation this past week where he said; “We want to celebrate these young people who will not bow down. I and the clergy here will defend them, even with our lives.” In other words, Rev. Sekou loves his people, loves his town enough to risk his life on the streets to stand with and work for the healing of his people.

That is the message Jesus confronts his disciples with in our text this morning. It comes at a turning point in Jesus’ ministry. He has ministered in Galilee—the place he grew up—the home of his people. He has preached good news to the poor and he has healed the sick and he has proclaimed the coming kingdom of God.  Now, he makes the decision to go up to Jerusalem, along with his Galilean followers for Passover.

He knows what that means. He knows what he is up against. And he begins gently preparing his disciples for it. Peter is clearly terrified.

Jesus knows that, when he enters Jerusalem, the center of power, the center of Roman authority in the region, he will be arrested. And everyone knows what happens next to revolutionary Galileans. As Jesus contemplates Jerusalem, he sees in his mind’s eye what every single Galilean would have known at that time. There were times when the roads leading from Galilee to Jerusalem were lined with crosses. Jesus knows he is going to die.

When Peter begs him to reconsider, begs him to be safe, begs him to take care for his own life—Jesus turns to him and tells him; “Actually, if you are going to follow me, if you want to see this all the way to the end, you’re going to have to be ready to “take up your cross” too.”

Now, when you hear “take up your cross”, what do you think? It has become popular in Christian circles to say “take up your cross” and bear your suffering. That to take up your cross is to be patient and deal with hard stuff in life.

That is not what Jesus is saying at all. Every single person who heard him would have immediately thought—darn, Jesus is asking us to be ready to die. Jesus is saying—be ready to die.

We live in a world, Jesus says, where people who are powerless are dying all the time. Rome kills our people, my people all the time. If I am going to join them, if I am going to stand on their side, I will have to be willing to die as well.

We live in a world where kids like Michael Brown die all the time on the streets of our towns and cities. On the streets of Grays Harbor, I listen to stories of death all the time—high suicide rates, people dying far too young because they don’t have access to medical care, so much death.

Why is Jesus willing to die? Jesus is willing to die because Jesus loves his people. Loves us.

Were you listening to our first reading? Moses is visited by God who tells him; “I have heard my people’s cry.” I have seen their suffering. I have seen their slavery. I have heard their cry. And I am sending you to risk your life, to set my people free.

Jesus, God in human flesh, God with us, comes to us and he hears our cry. Jesus is God’s response to the cry of God’s people.

He hears the cry of the Galileans who suffer under Rome. He hears the cry of desperate and heartbroken people in Ferguson. He hears the cry of a world suffering so much.

I want to tell you a little about the cries that I hear on the streets of Aberdeen and the harbor, in my ministry. I sat down with a group of folks, telling them that I was meeting with the police chief and was there something they wanted me to say. To a person, they said; “We just want a home. Where are we supposed to go?” I spoke to a young man who spoke of his longing for a job so that he could keep his housing and build a stable life. I spoke to an elderly man who cried over all of the people in his family who have died young—of desperation or despair or untreated health issues.

Over and over, people say; “We once helped build this community; we once had jobs here. But now all of these buildings and homes stand empty and we camp along the river.” Over and over, people say; “How can I help? How can I find work so that I can pay for electricity and running water in my apartment?”

And God has heard their cry. Because I believe the gospel, because I believe in the God of liberation and freedom, I believe that God has heard their cry.    

And so our calling is to stand with them. To stand together as a community. To listen to each other’s cries. Our cries for healing and for belonging and for love. Our cries for community and homes and stability. Our cries for hope and for a future.

We all cry to God at one point or another. As we face health problems or the loss of those we love. As we face job loss or can’t find a job. As we face all of the things that this world throws at us.

And God hears our cries, my brothers and sisters. And Jesus loves us. Loves us enough to die for us. Loves us enough to put his body, his life on the line for us.

And this is how we show love for one another.

Because, when we come together, when we stand together, when we cry out together—liberation is a coming, my brothers and sisters.

When we cry out together, God hears, and we find hope and a future. Hope for our lives, hope for our kids and grandkids, hope for our land, hope for our towns, hope for the harbor.

Jesus—willing to die on behalf of his people—calling us to be willing to die for each other, this is how freedom comes. And we dream, my brothers and sisters, we dream—of people having enough to eat, of streams in the desert and our land coming alive again—we dream of beautiful homes and enough work, we dream of healed people. We dream because Jesus says that, if we are willing to lose our lives for the ones we love, we will truly find LIFE together. We will LIVE.