Before I'd Be a Slave

Text: Matthew 10:28

“Whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

These are hard words, are they not?

I think we often misinterpret them. The first thing we should keep in mind is that Jesus’ talk about a cross is literal.

Jesus's words are not meant to be symbolic. Not meant to represent our everyday life burdens. Jesus is not talking about staying in a bad situation or a bad marriage and accepting our suffering.

Jesus is not glorifying suffering. Jesus is not telling us to be happy in suffering.

Jesus is not telling us to keep our head down and take whatever comes to us with grace. All these different ways we have interpreted this passage—that is not Jesus’ point.

A cross was, quite simply for Jesus and for everyone who was listening to him, a symbol of execution. Today, we might say the “electric chair.”

What Jesus is asking is—

What are you willing to die for?

That, my friends, is a scary question.

I took the title of my sermon from an old gospel spiritual:

Oh, freedom, Oh, freedom,
Oh freedom over me.
And before I`d be a slave
I`d be buried in my grave
And go home to my Lord and be free.

"Before I'd be a slave, I'd be buried in my grave." Willing to die for freedom. We have a long tradition in our history—as a church and as a nation too—for being willing even to lay down our lives to be free. We often quote the words from Patrick Henry: “Give me liberty or give me death.” Harriet Tubman, that courageous woman who led dozens of people out of slavery 150 years ago in our country, said; "I had reasoned this out in my mind; there was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death… I should fight for my liberty as long as my strength lasted."

Harriet's words are rooted in the message of Jesus.  “I have come,” remember those words Jesus says in Luke 4, “to proclaim liberty, to proclaim freedom to the oppressed.” To give us freedom. Soul freedom. The knowledge deep within ourselves that no matter what anyone said or did to us, we would know that God loved us and that God was on our side. Actual freedom too. Freedom from oppression and slavery and poverty.

So, what are we willing to die for?

When I read these words, as I’ve prayed on these words, I think of how we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. A cloud of people, of ordinary everyday people like you and me, in our history who were willing to die for Jesus and for Jesus’ message.

I think of Harriet Tubman again. A woman who was born a slave in the American south and was determined to be free, because she knew that she was a child of God and she was determined to demand her dignity and her freedom. But she didn’t just work for her own freedom. She operated the underground railroad, leading her friends and family to freedom out of slavery, risking her life over and over for the freedom of her people. She was called the Moses of her people.

“Before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave.”

I think of the words of Martin Luther King Jr, who said; “I choose to identify with the underprivileged. I choose to identify with the poor. I choose to give my life for the hungry. I choose to give my life for those who have been left out of the sunlight of opportunity. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way. If it means sacrificing, I’m going that way. If it means dying for them, I’m going that way.” And he did, didn’t he?

I think too of a whole host of ordinary men and women who have been committed to Jesus mission. Have you ever heard of John Wycliffe? In England, hundreds of years before the printing press, a group of young preachers under Wycliffe transcribed the Bible and they travelled, like Jesus’ disciples, from town to town and village to village, reading people the Bible. Telling them, these thousands of serfs and peasants, living in unimaginable poverty and under unimaginable oppression, that they were loved of God. Telling them that they were people of dignity and worth. Many of these young preachers were persecuted and executed, especially as people began to rise up and demand their liberty.

“Before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave.”

You’ve seen the pictures from Brazil and the protests around the world cup? Well, this protest has been led in part by a group called Movement of Homeless Workers. This group had its root in several movements that began several decades ago, when men and women around Brazil started reading their Bibles together and asking questions. About what it meant to be free. About what it meant to claim their dignity as children of God.

“Before I’d be a slave, I’d be buried in my grave.”  

So, what are we willing to die for?

It has been said that only those who know what they would die for know what they are really living for.

In our world—in this time and this place—what are we willing to die for?

We live again in a world growing increasingly dark. In a world increasingly struggling. In a world where people don’t always have enough to eat or a place to sleep and many of us are only a paycheck away from that.

Are we willing to take up Jesus’ message of good news—of freedom for the oppressed?

Are we willing to stand on the side of our friends and neighbors who are struggling?

Are we willing to ask what freedom would look for us now? To do what those English peasants and those Brazilian groups did—to read our Bibles together, to read the gospel together—and then act on it? Claim our dignity and the dignity of our neighbors?

If we know what we are willing to die for, my brothers and sisters, we will know what we should be living for.

Dancing with the Trinity

Texts: Genesis 1; Matthew 28:16-20

So, its Trinity Sunday. A few of you facebooked me and joked that I should explain the Trinity to you all this morning. So I’m going to start off with an apology. I won’t be explaining the Trinity this morning.

But, I am going to talk about what I think is important about the Trinity. Why I think its important to our understanding of our faith.

In our first reading, we read that beautiful poem, the first account in the Bible of creation, of God creating the heavens and earth. When we read that great poem, I think that we are conditioned to think of God is a certain way. As some king in the sky, who is creating and orchestrating everything. “You, tree, go there.” “You, human, go there.” Whoops, time for a storm. God as acting alone, some sovereign deity pushing buttons in the sky.

There is another way to think of God, and the Trinity helps us with that. In the Trinity, God is not alone; God exists in relationship. God exists in relationship, between Father, Son, Holy Spirit, between Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, existing in all of life.

There’s a great big Greek word early church theologians used for the relationship of the Trinity: Perichoresis. It’s a word that can mean a lot of things, but I like to think of it as “a big hug”. Or it can mean a dance.

It is my favorite metaphor for the Trinity: a dance! Its funny, because I can’t dance and I’ve got too left feed. But I love the idea that Pentecost is an invitation for us to take the hand of Jesus, of God, of the Spirit, and dance! It’s the dance of life—the dance of abundant life —that we are invited into. The dance into a restored creation.

So, in light of this idea, lets look at our gospel text for this morning.

Jesus, in this very final passage of the gospel of Matthew, is saying goodbye to his disciples. He’s come home, to Galilee, and he is giving his closest disciples his last farewell. He shows up with a command and with a promise.

There is the command first. “Go, make disciples of all nations.” Invite other people to follow me, baptize them, and build a movement. Invite everyone to join us, to join God, to join Father, Son and Holy Spirit, in a divine dance. And what kind of dance is this?

The Jesus Movement started in Galilee with a bunch of tired out farmers and fishermen and tax collectors. Jesus taught them that they were worthy; Jesus helped them recover their dignity and self-respect. Jesus taught them to live in a new way—with love and dignity, relating to the world in a new way. Jesus, in essence, was mobilizing the Galilean and then the wider Jewish community, mobilizing them for liberation.

Mobilizing them to take back their dignity. Mobilizing them—the tax collectors who had made a killing off of other people’s desperation, the farmers who didn’t have enough to eat, the fishermen who were tired of paying more taxes than they could bear. The women who were so often invisible in that culture.

Mobilizing them to stand up against an empire that brought death—actual death as the empire crucified so many of them, and social death as the empire told them they were nobodies, slaves. Mobilizing them to hold their heads high. To claim their status as children of God.

2000 years later, we are still invited into that dance, toward liberation, toward freedom, toward fullness of life.

We get to dance away from our culture that tells us to look out only for ourselves. To dance away from a world that tells us we are not good enough or smart enough. To dance away from a culture that often glorifies greed and power, at any cost. To dance away from hatred and cruelty.

We get to dance toward each other. Toward God. Toward dignity and self respect. Toward loving our neighbors. Toward life.  

In our community, in our time, what does that look like?

Since I know you all so well, I am going to share with you something that is weighing on my heart this week.

Recently, I have noticed, in both Aberdeen and Elma, more and more efforts to bar people from public space. To make people invisible. In both places, there are many young people who either live on the street or spend a lot of time on the street. Recently, I heard a city official in Elma refer to these young people as “undesirables” and, as more and more cities are doing, they are coming up with strategies to keep people out of town. To ask people to leave.  

That broke my heart. That is how our society chooses death. We look at our young people—people who on the harbor have few options for jobs, people who are struggling, people who have few places left to go, most kids who have grown up here—and say “we don’t want you around. We don’t care what your struggles are—we just want to pretend you don’t exist.” They are us—our neighbors, our young people, our future. If are going to join God’s dance, we must reject this way of death.

Jesus’ message instead invites our young people to join in the dance of God. To celebrate their worth and their dignity. To fight for their right to life. We, the young people of the harbor, must claim our future. We, the 800 children who experience homelessness in our county, long for life. We, the hundreds of young adults who are told they are worthless, we long for dignity. And, sometimes, all we can say is what a man told me a few weeks ago; “At least Jesus is on our side.” Jesus is on his side and we are all called to join Jesus in demanding life. In dancing for life. In welcoming our neighbors. In affirming our common dignity. In choosing life.

And, as we choose life, we remember the second part of our text—the promise.

Jesus left us with this great promise: “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.”

I am with you when things get hard, when there is nowhere left to go, when cities choose a way of death, when the struggle is hard.

I am with you when things change, when life gets hard. When sickness comes. When uncertainty comes. When it seems nothing is getting better. When ankles are sprained and health fails. I am with you.

I am with you. You are surrounded by the Holy Trinity. Surrounded by the love and care and comfort of God in Christ through the Spirit, of a God who exists in relationship.

When the lights seem to go out. When the world seems to get darker and more frightening. When it feels like the end of the world as we know it. When those in power fail us. When systems of greed and power overwhelm us. When our young people seem to have no future. I am with you.

And, so, this day, let us remember that we are held in the arms of a God who dances in relationship. Let us remember that we live surrounded by the life of God in creation, that God cared for each of us. And, my brothers and sisters, lets dance! Even with two left feet.

Pentecost 2014: The Spirit Comes in Dreams

“I have a dream.”

“I have a dream.” Don’t you think of Martin Luther King, Jr when you hear those words? A man who dreamed of a world of opportunity and hope, a world where his people would be free, a world that confronted the evils of racism and of materialism.

“I have a dream.”

Pentecost is a time for dreams. In our reading, as Peter stands before the crowds gathered in Jerusalem, he quotes from the prophet Joel;

In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.

 

The Spirit is the bringer of dreams. The Hebrew word for Spirit is Ru’ah, a feminine word—the power that was present at creation hovering over the face of the water, the force that in Psalm 104 gives life to all things. This Spirit—she comes in fire, she comes bringing dreams, bringing life, bringing creative power.

This is Pentecost, of course, the day we celebrate the birthday of the church. The church was born in a dream. A dream of the disciples to spread Jesus’ message, to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth.

The disciples had found their dignity, found their hope in the message of Jesus. These Galilean fishermen and tax collectors and women, people who were never meant to amount to anything much—they heard the words of Jesus that said; “Come, follow me. You are my witnesses, my ambassadors. You are called of God to bring the word of God.”

And they dreamed. They dreamed of a gospel that was spoken in many languages, that communicated to all people and all nations that they were loved of God—to Arabs and Jews, to Galileans and Ethiopians, to that list of nations we read of in Acts 2. They dreamed of the story of Jesus told to all people, the story of God who met us in the person of Jesus, who lived among us and loved us, who preached good news to the poor, who died on behalf of his people, who rose again in power, victorious over empire.

They dreamed of people rising up in dignity to care for one another, to build the church—to build a movement of people coming together to meet each other’s needs, to forge a new world. A world where every person was acknowledged as a child of God.

So what do you dream?

There is so much that holds us back from dreaming, isn’t there? Some of it is fear of change. Transition and change is uncomfortable. But I think it goes deeper than that.

Sometimes what holds us back is fear of hope. It is dangerous, it is risky to imagine new things. It is safer to stay without hope than to risk hope, especially if that hope might be dashed. Haven’t you ever done that in your life? Decided you were not going to take the risk because you were too afraid of how much it might hurt if it failed? How hard it would be to open yourselves up to hope, only to find your dreams fall down around you?

It is safer to stay in the upper room. It is safer to stay in hiding. It is safer to say; “look, Jesus, I know you want to call us and you have this mission for us,” but I’m just going to keep fishing, thank you very much. It is hard to open ourselves up to hope.

There is another reason. We live in a world that can constantly eats away at your dignity, at your self-respect, a world that tells you over and over that you are not good enough. Sometimes we start to believe this ourselves; that we are not worth it. We don’t deserve to hope.

That is where the Spirit comes in. Bringing Life. Courage. Hope.

Again I ask you; what do you dream? What dreams is the Spirit stirring in your heart, my brothers and sisters? What kind of dreams do you have for your community?

Do you dream of a cure for cancer, or dream of honoring all those we have lost, as you just have done in Rely for Life?

You who just graduated or you who know someone who has just graduated, what do you dream? We need your dreams—this community, this world needs your dreams.

I remember, just before I went to seminary, I visited Oaxaca, one of the poorest states in Mexico and met with communities there. It was a struggling place—indigenous communities desperately trying to survive in the midst of globalization. Getting poorer and poorer, with more and more people forced to migrate. What struck me, however, was not how much they struggled. It was how much they hoped. It was the elders of the community who came up with ways to revitalize their water systems; young people who started farming collectives or community art programs; the women who created training centers. Everywhere I went, I saw people daring to hope. People who took that risk—who dared to choose life. Who dared to choose to live into the life that Jesus promises; “I have come that you might have life and you might have it more abundantly.”

What would that look like here, in our community? What would Pentecost look like here in Aberdeen, on the harbor?

What would the text read? We’re even a people of many languages just like that ancient Pentecost beginning. We are a community that comes from many places—people who speak or once spoke German, and Swedish, Norwegian, French and Finnish, Spanish and Trique, and the old languages of our First Peoples, that languages that some of my Native friends try to teach me.

What do we dream, my brothers and sisters, what do we dream?

I dream of a fire lighted in our community. That we come together as a community and care for each other. That we build a new future for ourselves. That we claim our dignity as children of God. That we treat everyone with dignity, following through on our baptismal vows to “respect the dignity of every human being.”  

Let us dare to dream here on the harbor. Dare to imagine a transformed community. Dare to love and trust our neighbors. Dare to embrace all of who we are.

Let us pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit in our midst!

Christus Victor: Christ the Victorious

This is an edited version of a sermon preached on Ascension Sunday, at the Montesano Church of God.

This is the time in the church year when we celebrate Jesus’ ascension. We’ve walked with Jesus toward the cross, as he is executed by Rome for posing a threat to the empire. We have stood with the women at an empty tomb and rejoiced at the resurrection. Now, we are transitioning from Easter to the time of the church. The disciples are transitioning from a time when they have had Jesus physically present with them to a time when Jesus is leaving them—and leaving them with a mission.

When we read the story of the ascension, what strikes me most unmistakably, is the power of God that is revealed in Jesus. We have seen Jesus live among his people in the tiny two bit towns of Galilee—born in a barn (literally, folks), poor, hungry, without a place to lay his head. We have seen Jesus arrested, imprisoned, executed when the religious leaders and Roman governor see him as a threat—the crucified God, as my favorite theologian says.

Now we see Jesus fully reveal the power of God. Now we see the risen, victorious Christ ascend to stand at the right hand of God. Jesus who tramples his enemies, who tramples death itself, who laughs in the face of his enemies. Who, in the words of Colossians, “disarmed the rules and the authorities and put them to open shame.” Jesus won. The empire, those who opposed him, the powers of this world—LOST.

What Jesus’ Power is Not

You know, there was a time that I was uneasy with talking about a powerful God. For several reasons: Sometimes preachers talk about God’s power as if its all about wrath and judgment—that God’s gonna get you if you don’t believe just the right thing or do everything right.

There is another reason. I visited this chapel in England, one of the oldest in the country. In that chapel, there is a huge stained glass image of Jesus with a crown on his head and a sword in his hand. The Jesus of empire. The Jesus of Constantine. Jesus standing at the head of armies and empires. We know, from Jesus’ own words that this is not the kingdom of God.

Why We Need a Powerful Jesus

Then, I thought about where the term Christus Victor really comes from. The concept first showed up in the art of Roman Christians in their burial sites in the catacombs. It would be inscribed on the tombs of people who had died unjust deaths, inscribed with palm branches as a symbol of victory. Because these men and women—many of them slaves, poor persecuted and oppressed—believed in a powerful, victorious God revealed to them in Jesus. It was an act of defiance—that Jesus was stronger than the empire that oppressed them.

But Jesus is not on the side of empire. I had a conversation with a man the other day. He’s been homeless for awhile—working, but unable to afford housing. We had a conversation about how difficult it has been for him to find a place to stay. Finally, he sighed and said; ”Well, at least Jesus is on my side.”

How God’s Power is Revealed

So, Jesus is revealed to us as King of kings and Lord of lords. More powerful than the Roman governor—more powerful than the Roman Caesar, than the high priest in Jerusalem. How amazing, how revolutionary this must have been for the poor fishermen and tax collectors and women who followed Jesus.

Remember what Jesus said as he was leaving his disciples in Acts? “You will receive power.” I am with you. My power is your power.

When we face hardship and difficulty, Jesus is on our side. When we face death and loss, Jesus is on our side. When we face poverty—because some of us have done that too—when we lose everything, Jesus is on our side. And Jesus is powerful. More powerful than empires. More powerful than the forces of evil in this world.

And Jesus’ call—our mission—is to be witnesses of that promise.

It is my call too and it is my particular call to witness to this promise of the streets of the harbor. The statistics are grim here—a 25% poverty rate. A teen outreach organization is putting together data from the school districts and they have counted 800 children homeless on the harbor. There are probably about 400 people actually living on the street—though the final numbers are not in yet.

We, here on the harbor, and everywhere else for that matter, need a resurrected and ascended Savior. We need the one who defeated the powers of death and promised us “I come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” Sometimes abundant life is hard to come by—especially on the street. We need hope of victory. And the God who set the children of Israel free in the desert, the God who was raised from the dead is on our side!

Because Jesus ascended and sits and the right hand of God a new kingdom is ours.

 

Because Jesus ascended and sits at the right hand of God...

We will rise again—not just individually, not just in the hereafter. But here and now, in our communities too. Abundant resurrection life is ours NOW, given to us by the power of a resurrected Savior.