Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory

Text: Mark 9:2-9 
Transfiguration Sunday

The day before I left for my pilgrimage to Palestine, I went to the theater and watched the new movie “Selma.” It tells the story of Martin Luther King Jr and his march on Selma, AL during the civil rights movement. It’s a fascinating film about an important time in our history. I was especially fascinated by the portrayal of King. He is portrayed as a man really deeply struggling with his role in the movement and he has this strong sense that he may not live much longer.

The movie ends with King reiterating his conviction that freedom is coming for his people.

Perhaps the most powerful part of the movie for me was a song performed by John Legend and Common, called “Glory.”

One day when the glory comes
It will be ours, it will be ours
Oh one day when the war is won
We will be sure, we will be sure
Oh glory (Glory, glory)
Oh (Glory, glory)

Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin' of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory

 

It was this song that kept playing over and over in my head as I read our gospel for today and was thinking about this sermon.

Our text is the story of Jesus revealing his glory. Jesus, the poor wandering rabbi of the gospels, reveals himself to three of his disciples in glory. And he stands with a cloud of witnesses, with Moses, the ancient liberator of his people, and Elijah, the great defender of the poor. And a voice from heaven acknowledges him as the Beloved Son.

Amazing, right? Jesus revealed in glory. In the Holy Land, we visited the Church of the Transfiguration, built on where some scholars believe this happened, on Mt Tabor.

But we usually read this story as if it stands alone in the text. And it doesn’t. In every gospel this story is told, it occurs just after Jesus warns his disciples of his coming death.

Jesus has built a movement. A movement proclaiming a better kingdom, a movement of healing, a movement of liberation for the poor of Galilee. He is not stupid. He knows what happens to Galilean troublemakers. It is not much of a stretch to imagine that Jesus expected to die, expected to be arrested, expected to be executed.

Just a few verses before our text this morning, Jesus turns to his disciples and begins to teach them that he will suffer, that he will be rejected by the religious and political leaders of Jerusalem, and that he will be executed. The disciples, of course, are frightened and upset.

And so Jesus turns to them, and to the crowd around them, and says; “If anyone wants to follow me, he must take up his cross.” Now, lets be really clear. Everyone knows what Jesus means here. He is not talking about bearing burdens—a cross is a method of execution, a method used frequently in ancient Palestine by the Romans to keep people in line. Jesus is saying—in essence—be willing to go to the electric chair, or face lethal injection.

So. Jesus is revealed in glory. Only after he tells them not only is HE going to die, but that if they keep following him, they just might die too.

It’s a fitting text for this last Sunday of Epiphany, as we begin Lent, is it not?

First, Jesus calls his disciples to follow him on the way of the cross.

In Palestine, I got to walk the actual way of the cross, on the stones Jesus probably walked on the way to the cross. That was a powerful time for me.

But what kept coming to me was how many people have walked this way of the cross, walked the way of suffering and death.

Jesus was not the first or the last person crucified. What we have in Jesus is God joining a long line of people who have walked the way of suffering and death. God becomes one of us and dies at the hands of cruelty and evil and empire like one of us.

Like King and so many of the men and women and children that marched with him in Selma. Marched for freedom from empire and cruelty. In Selma, a number of people are killed during the march and its aftermath.

Like so many young black men and women today, in Ferguson or NYC.

In our Bible study in Aberdeen, the group asked me to gather dirt from the Holy Land and bring it back. So I did, and I gathered that dirt as we walked up to Jerusalem, on the way of the cross.

This Lent, on Good Friday, we are planning on walking through Aberdeen, walking our own way of the cross, acknowledging the suffering and death that people experience here and now, today.

All over the world, people still walk the way of the cross.

Here, in our county, we still walk the way of the cross.

And, yet, as soon as Jesus speaks of the cross, of coming death, he takes his most trusted disciples, goes out on a mountain, and reveals his glory.

Because, after the way of the cross comes glory.

Because, life comes out of death.

Because, freedom will come.

Because the Christian story does not end at the cross, but in glory.

Jesus, in our text, is reminding his disciples of this. Even as they look toward the way of cross, even as they face death, they hold on to the hope of triumph and glory. The kingdom of God is coming, no matter what empires do, no matter if we live or die.

Some of you might have heard the news recently that the current pope, Pope Francis, is working to make Oscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador, a saint.

Oscar Romero’s story and his writings have had a profound impact on me. He became archbishop in El Salvador during a time of civil war, in the late 70s, during a time when poor communities were being targeted by the government and numerous people were dying.

It was a time when the Roman Church was largely silent and even complicit in the mass suffering of the people of El Salvador. I have a friend who was in El Salvador at the time, and her stories are chilling.

So, Romero did a dangerous thing. He openly stood up to the government. He openly took the side of poor communities. And, in 1980, Romero was shot by a government agent while celebrating the Eucharist during Lent.

A few weeks before he died, he said; “This Lent, which we observe amid blood and sorrow, ought to presage a transfiguration of our people, a resurrection of our nation… Those who have Christian faith and hope know that behind this Calvary of El Salvador lies our Easter, our resurrection.”

Romero knew, even as he walked his own way to the cross with his people, the hope of the transfiguration.

We struggle sometimes to hope. We struggle to hold on the hope of transfiguration, of glory.  

I have people tell me all the time; “Nothing will ever change here. Don’t get your hopes up. Things have been bad for a long time.”

Can the kingdom really ever come?

Jesus, in our text today, points us to the long journey toward freedom, toward the kingdom of God, following Moses, following Elijah, waiting for the glory of the Lord revealed in the face of Jesus Christ.

Remember that last sermon given by King, the night before he died? His hope that his people, that African Americans in the US would find freedom.

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!

"And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

Like the disciples, King had been to the mountain and seen the glory of the Lord. And he had a rock solid hope that as he walked the way of the cross, quite literally, his people would see that glory too.

So, my brothers and sisters, as we prepare for a Holy Lent, as we prepare to at least symbolically walk the way of the cross with Jesus, lets not forget the Transfiguration. Lets not forget that our eyes have indeed seen the coming of the Lord and that he is coming in glory to give freedom and liberation to his people. To us.

Welcome to the story we call victory
The comin' of the Lord, my eyes have seen the glory.

Remember you are Dust

Ash Wednesday. We say; “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It is a day we tangibly remind ourselves of our mortality.

We all need to remember that, right?

When we imposed ashes under the bridge today, I was struck that everyone who asked for ashes deeply, viscerally understood mortality. It was a day of crisis, as are many days in this work. One woman asked for prayers for her daughter who had just lost housing and was struggling with an eating disorder. Another woman’s granddaughter had just died in a car crash. One guy was healing from a broken back and another was considering a visit to the ER for a growing infection. Death is a specter never far away on the streets and people encounter mortality often.

One woman began to sing her sorrows; “We are dying under the bridge in Aberdeen.” She told of death and sorrow, addiction and pain and her song pleaded for the world to take notice of the forgotten folks on the street. Her hoarse voice, her tears—I only wish I could have recorded what she sung.

We all need to hear the words; “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” But, under the bridge, people already know that.

The people who forget our common mortality—and by extension our common humanity—are usually those of us in positions of power. When I walked past the police station and city hall today, I thought; “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

In situations of oppression, when people begin to lose hope, there is hope in words that remind us that no human person or institution lasts forever. That oppression itself cannot last forever.

I thought of the towering wall running through Palestine, the wall that I just witnessed imprisoning a whole people. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I thought of the great edifices we have built to wealth and greed in this country. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I thought of all the prisons that dot our country, more numerous that colleges in some places, incarcerating our young people and draining hope from poor communities. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

 

This Ash Wednesday, I am thinking of death and of mortality. But I am also imagining prisons and concrete walls and jails and temples of wealth crumbling into the dust. And imagining the poor of the earth triumphant.

 

Sermon: Holding Hope in the Ashes of Empire

Text: Mark 1:29-39

One of the reasons I was told I should go to the Holy Land is because it makes the text comes alive. And it is true. Its pretty amazing to read the text and have gone to see the synagogue in Capernaum that Jesus spoke in during the first part of his ministry.

You know, Galilee is a beautiful place, especially by the Sea of Galilee where Jesus spent most of his ministry. The gospels always talk about how Jesus goes out, away from the crowds and away from people, to pray. And I did a lot of that by the Sea of Galilee—wandering away to listen to the birds and sit with the trees and ancient stones. It honestly wasn’t a whole lot different than sitting by the lake in Montesano—I always learn that all lands are holy. Even where we live.

Perhaps what struck me most on this trip, though, was the current reality of people in Palestine. I talked to Palestinian Christians and Palestinian Muslims, who all said just how difficult it was to live under occupation in that land. I saw 25 foot concrete walls dividing the land and keeping people imprisoned. I saw military roads and checkpoints everywhere and people in Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, told about how impossible it was to travel because the Israeli government does not allow Palestinians to travel without special permits.

The story that probably touched me most was talking to a man named Bassam Aramin. He told about growing up as a Palestinian in Hebron, one of the oldest cities in the Middle East. He talked about being in school and watching soldiers shoot his friends. He told about how he joined other teens to resist military occupation and how he was arrested and tortured in Israeli jails. And then he told about how he started a peace organization, and not long after, how his 11 year old daughter was shot walking home from school by an Israeli soldier patrolling the town. He now travels the world telling his story, begging the world to recognize what is happening to his people.

 It was not an easy story to hear. Everywhere we went, especially in the West Bank, I felt this palpable sense of despair among the people. “We are in prison on our own land,” everyone would say, “what can we do?”

I could not help thinking through all of this trip: this is the kind of world Jesus began his ministry in. In another time where that region was also under military occupation. Jesus would have heard and experienced all the same stories.

“What can we do?” That was the question.

And then we met people who were doing a whole lot.

There was the dynamic vice president of a Lutheran Palestinian college, Nuha Khouri, in Bethlehem. They are inviting and funding Palestinian young people from all over the region to come to their school and study art and culture and urban design. They encourage these young people to find hope and resistance in art. To write their stories. To design new ways to express themselves as a Palestinian people. Nuha was born in Bethlehem, educated in the US, and had a brilliant career ahead of her. Instead, she came back home, with all of the occupation, unable to even travel to Jerusalem, only a few miles away, and to teach young people behind the wall.

There was Hassan Ashwari, a dynamic Palestinian woman and part of the new Palestinian government who speaks out forcefully for her people and demands justice and a just peace.

There was a woman who hosted us in east Jerusalem who had friends in Gaza, a part of the country so completely cut off from the rest of the world that most people cannot even get past the military blockade. This woman constantly tells her friends’ stories and smuggles in supplies and money.

All of these women, all of these people—I was struck that they were holding hope for their people. That in the middle of despair, in the middle of a bleak future, they were charged with holding hope for their people. For acting as if the kingdom of God is indeed coming, as Jesus promised.

Like Peter’s mother in law, right?

Its easy to miss this woman in the story, isn’t it? Only one little line. Jesus heals her and she gets up and starts serving everyone. It can honestly sound a little stereotypical even, can’t it? A woman just gets up out of her deathbed and decides to start cooking.

But I wonder. You know, this is Mark. And Mark is always in a hurry when he tells the stories of Jesus. (Did you notice that there are three short stories in our text this morning?)

And Mark makes it really clear that the kingdom of God, which is coming, which is here, is not some kind of ethereal thing. Its not spiritual.

Its about real life and real bodies and real food and real healing.

And Peter’s mother in law—we don’t even get her name—Peter’s mother in law gets that. She gets that the kingdom of God is about cooking food, and creating community, and serving each other. Its about repentance—that is it is about turning around. Turning from despair to hope. Turning from the bad news of empire to the good news of God’s kingdom.

She was holding hope for her people in a really tangible way.

Because the kingdom comes when Palestinian young people paint their experiences and when mother in laws make dinner and when healing comes to a people.

Revolution comes, change comes when people write their defiance on the walls that imprison them. When they tell their stories. When they demand justice. The kingdom of God comes with real people and real bodies and real healing and real hope.

Sometimes we think that serving meals or distributing clothes or talking to people or praying for people is some way of doing our duty to society. Or helping people.

But it really isn’t. Or it doesn’t have to be.

Getting a building cleaned out and painted, like we have been doing in Westport. Making a meal, like you all just did today. Sitting down and having a conversation with someone you just met. Dreaming of a future. Studying the bible together. Visiting someone in jail. Teaching kids.

These don’t just have to be a way that we help each other.

They can be a way that we work to realize the kingdom of God together. These are revolutionary acts. They can be the ways we repent, we turn around and embrace hope for our world, our county, our towns. Ways we proclaim we do indeed believe the good news. Ways that we say we will not live as empires tell us to. That we will live a different way, a way that gives dignity and hope to our people. That we will build new communities and new hope out of the ashes of empire.

And it may take a long time. But we will do it. A Palestinian pastor in Bethlehem, Mitri Raheb said this; “When we don’t know what to do, we go out and plant olive trees. We plant olive trees so that our children will have shade to play in. We plant olive trees so that they will have oil to bind up their wounds. And we plant olive trees, so that when peace comes, when the wall comes down, we will have branches to wave to the Prince of Peace.”

  

Walking the Way of the Cross with Aberdeen

When I told our Bible study I was going to the holy land, I was asked to bring back dirt from the Holy Land, dirt that we could spread on the streets of Aberdeen.

For two days in Jerusalem, we walked the way of the cross. We began on the Mount of Olives and walked down to the Kidron Valley. The next morning, we walked the Via Dolorosa, the way of the cross, ending at the ancient Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the site of the Resurrection.

I walked these two days specifically keeping Aberdeen, keeping the harbor in my heart-- and collecting the dirt that they asked for. Walking this way of the cross and holding the suffering and despair of my people.

We began at the top of the Mount of Olives and at a church that happened to be just across from a Palestinian home that had been bulldozed by the state. This, unfortunately, is frequent.

A demolished Palestinian home

The day was sunny and beautiful and I imagined Jesus and his disciples walking up the Jerusalem on a similar day—singing as was the custom, but also aware of coming execution. The Mount of Olives was truly covered in ancient olive trees and as we walked, I prayed for the Harbor. I imagined how often we feel that we are dying, that we are losing hope. I thought about how, as a pastor, I am called to hold the despair of our people.

One of the ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane

 

When we stopped in the church and garden of Gethsemane, I sat for a long time in prayer.  I was feeling the weight of all that was on my heart, the weight of too much sorrow, just as Jesus did. And, suddenly, I thought: “Jesus refused to simply endure. Refused, even in the garden, even in his agonizing decision to stay and die, to give up hope. He still walked toward liberation, toward the freedom of his people, toward resurrection. Even as he faced death.”

 

Looking at Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives

 

And, so, as we remembered Jesus who set his face toward Jerusalem, I began to feel and to hold hope as well, hope for the future of the harbor, hope for the future of our young people, hope for our liberation, our freedom, our resurrection.

First century stone steps leading up the hill into the old city

 

On the hill leading up to Jerusalem, archaeologists have uncovered ancient steps leading up to where they believe the high priest’s house would have been located. A church has been built there, called Peter Galicante, and under the church is the ancient foundation of the house and where Jesus was likely held and imprisoned overnight before his trial. I spent an hour at least in that place in prayer. I was overwhelmed by the thought of Jesus’ suffering, as a person who had stood up to empire and to religious authorities and I could not forget the prisons I had visited. The many I knew who have been scarred by their experiences in prisons. The suffering of people under empire. The suffering of people I know in Aberdeen, on the harbor, living under empire as well, living without access to basic needs, living always with the threat of jail. I wept for my people there in that ancient prison and I prayed for courage there too, courage to stand with those I love.

Sitting outside where some believe Jesus was held overnight before his trial



I lit a candle for all those I know in jail

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a quiet night in the old city, we woke up to another beautiful day. Beginning in the Church of St Anne, we began walking the 14 Stations of the Cross. Weaving in and out of markets and up the steps of the old city, on the same stones Jesus would have walked, we followed Jesus’ journey from the prisons of empire to the site of his execution.

Jesus meets his mother. I thought of all the mothers I know who have lost their children. I thought again of Mike Brown’s mother and her cry; “They aint never gonna care.” Jesus falls. I thought of all the people I know with severe injuries on the street without access to healthcare. Simon carries the cross. I thought of all the men and women who take care of each other in Aberdeen, who step in when there is no hope and show love and kindness—people who have nothing who check in on their neighbors, people who watch out for each other. Jesus is crucified. I thought of all the people who die, who are crucified on an altar of greed, who are forgotten and alone.

Finally, we reached the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, believed to be built over the site of Golgotha and the tomb. Hundreds of pilgrims from all over the world swarmed the place and long lines formed to kneel at the foot of the cross. Every language was spoken and five different church traditions cared for the church. I knelt and then I lit a candle, there at the foot of the cross, for Aberdeen, for the harbor and its people. There, in an ancient land, in the company of millions of pilgrims from hundreds of years, I brought our prayers, our hopes, our longing to the foot of the cross.

A candle lit for the harbor at the foot of the cross

Sometime in these coming months, we will spread that dirt on Aberdeen, as we hold our despair and as we hold our hope and our longing for liberation.

Holy Land, Holy People

Sea of Galilee at Sunrise

Sometimes when you return from a pilgrimage or a journey of discovery, it can be hard to find the words to explain your experiences. There is a deep need to express what you have seen and heard and an equally deep sense that no words can do it justice. Especially if you have borne witness to great suffering, words can seem overwhelming inadequate, even impossible. There is a sense that all witness must be silent, because when words are spoken they cannot say all of what must be said; there is also a sense that all witnesses must speak, in order for the world to hear what they have witnessed.

In my visit to Palestine, I went with two goals: first, a religious goal, to see the land that Jesus walked and to see the place where the Jesus movement started, where good news was preached to the poor. The second goal was to see the reality, on the ground, of the Palestinian people and, as a Christian cleric, the reality of Palestinian Christians.

I saw a land of great beauty. A land that is as ordinary as any other place—and as holy as any other land. I touched the rocks and sea and stones that Jesus may have and I wept where he likely was imprisoned before he died. I saw the words he first preached in Nazareth inscribed in a church there, in the lovely Arabic script; “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, to proclaim good news to the poor.”

The altar at Christ's Church, Nazareth

I worshipped on a holy land.

And, yet, it was the words of Bassam Aramin that struck me as the most powerful spoken on the trip; “We are more holy than any holy land.” 

It is easy to simply follow the prescribed order of things—to remain a tourist on a tour with other Christian clergy—to goggle at the plethora of churches built over every possible site and peruse the hundreds of gift shops with souvenirs and tokens. To turn away from the suffering of the people on a land called holy in the name of worshiping the holy.

That is the easiest thing to do.

It is harder to listen to Bassam Aramin, a Palestinian living under occupation who told a story of his imprisonment and torture in Israeli jails as a young man and the death of his 11 year old daughter, shot at a checkpoint coming home from school. Harder to listen to the shopkeepers of Bethlehem, behind the great Wall dividing the land, who all said the same thing; “We live in a prison. What are we supposed to do?” Harder the listen to Rev Nael Abu Rahmoun, pastor of a church in Nazareth, who said; “We are all forgotten here.”

 

The wall that divides Bethlehem

 

Holy lands are easy to see. But we often turn away from the suffering of holy people.

As I continue to reflect over the coming weeks, I am going to tell my story of encountering a holy land, but I am also going to tell of encountering the suffering of holy people.  

 

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.”