Monday, July 13, 2015

Be The Church: Sermon from July 12, 2015

You can listen to this sermon here.

Scripture

Amos 7:7-17


Good morning, church.

You know, at first I thought Pastor Budd asked me to preach just to get out of this week’s lectionary.  That would be a wise decision on his part...  Because, really, who would want to preach on this scripture?  It’s pretty terrible.  But then I thought - maybe there was some divine wisdom in his actions.  Because Budd knows I’m drawn to the prophetic in scripture, and the prophetic tradition in our shared history.  When you look deeper at this scripture, you realize the connecting theme is resistance to prophets.

You see, Mark here is foreshadowing the experience of Pilate and his powerlessness against the system he’s required to uphold when confronting Jesus.  Herod was a Jewish leader, a part of the Jewish elite that was chosen by Rome to rule over the Jewish sect of people in Roman times.  He was awarded his power by a system, owed his allegiance to that system, and wore his privilege as abundance.  He threw lavish parties, extravagantly rebuilt two Galilean towns, and rubbed elbows with the Imperial family.  Herod Antipas was a ruler for the history books. 

But the promises Herod made to the system came back to haunt him.

Herod had a fascination with John the Baptist.  Even though John condemned him for his marriage to his brother Phillips’ wife, scripture tells us Herod liked to listen to John’s proclamations.  He jailed him in order to contain him – to appease his wife and to appear as if he was taking action – but there’s no indication that Herod intended to harm John the Baptist. Like Pilate, who cried, “he’s innocent, why should I put him to death?”, Herod found John harmless. Until his wife got the best of him by taking advantage of his extravagances with power.

Reluctantly, Herod fulfilled her wishes and brought her John’s head.  Like Pilate, he felt powerless when the system demanded his allegiance. 

How often, as beneficiaries of a system, do we find ourselves victims of the system?  Herod and Pilate were bound by the rules they endorsed, rules that worked for them, even when it meant hurting themselves.

There’s a saying – God comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.  God does this through prophets.  Amos, in our first scripture, was a reluctant prophet plucked from his life as a shepherd to deliver a message to Israel: repent. 

When Israel’s leaders responded with outrage, Amos defends himself.  ‘I didn’t ask for this job. I’m not part of your prophetic line. I’m not some legacy prophet.  God called me from my life with my sheep to deliver this message to you.’

Does Israel heed the message?  No, they exile Amos and, consequently, fall into the trap God fears. 

Prophets speak uncomfortable truths, and in the Bible we see they are often met with resistance.  We are always most upset with prophets when they seem to be questioning our way of life, rather than those with whom we disagree. 

It is especially uncomfortable when we might be part of the system itself. 

Friends, today I’m not here to bring a comfortable message.  Today I’m going to ask you to listen to an uncomfortable message, soak it in, hold it in your hearts, and reflect on where you hear God’s voice.

I had the privilege of attending part of General Synod, along with Pastor Dave and 5000 other UCC delegates from across the country. As a national church, we worshipped, prayed, listened and learned from each other.  The church as a whole issued prophetic resolutions of solidarity with  Native Americans to change the name of theWashington Redskins, with Palestinians to divest from the Israeli Settlements, and engaged in the uncomfortable conversation around how important race, gender and sexual orientation is in the nomination of our new, white male heterosexual General Minister John C. Dorhauer.  But most importantly, we respectfully loved each other through the whole of that public conversation.

At General Synod, I attended a workshop called “The Power of Story: Countering Narratives and Risk in the Age of Trayvon Martin” presented by Dr. Leah Gunning Francis, who is faculty at Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis and who has been active in the turmoil in Ferguson. Dr. Gunning Francis is writing a book on changing the narrative about young black males by seeing them through the hopes and concerns of their mothers.  Attendees were invited to listen to the shared experiences and uncomfortable conversations of mothers raising young African American sons, with the intended goal of showing churches how to construct a new, affirming narrative for black boys.  

You see, all parents dread “the talk”.  But in African American households, there are two versions.  One is the awkward, teenage, birds-and-the-bees conversation.  The other is about how to behave around authority figures – specifically police – and has been the same lesson young black men have been taught for generations.  It goes something like this;


This is one of the realities that we just don’t see as white people.  For me, the police are there to help. We met him as ‘officer friendly’ in grade school.  We were told we could ask them for directions, or let them know when we thought people needed help.  We smile and nod when we see them on the sidewalk, at festivals, or out in public. And more often than not, we get a smile in return.

But as the #BlackLivesMatter campaign has made clear, this is just not the same reality for black people. Week after week, a new African American name, too often dead, enters the national discussion through social media. The system rushes to justify it’s actions, the media uses the word ‘thug’ or criminal history’ and we are, once again, haunted with the suspicion that the system is just not fair.

During this workshop, the term 'white fragility' came up.  Has anyone heard this term?  It was coined to describe the discomfort of white people in talking about race, which triggers a range of defensive moves and emotions, and results in argument, silence or leaving the conversation.

I stumbled upon a blog this week that unpacks this concept of ‘white fragility’ with such clarity that I just want to share it with you directly.

An African American writer named John Metta delivered this reflection to Bethel Congregational UCC in Washington State last week.  Metta points out that black people think in terms of black people - a collective “we”, seeing every innocent death as personal because “we know viscerally that it could be our child, our parent, or us, that is shot.”  In contrast, 

“White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals. You are “you,” [while] I [John Metta] am “one of them.” Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.

[he continues,] “What they are affected by are attacks on their own character. To my [white] aunt, the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist. Without being able to make that differentiation, White people in general decide to vigorously defend their own personal non-racism, or point out that it doesn’t exist because they don’t see it.”

It is an uncomfortable truth, my friends, to acknowledge you benefit from a system that you don’t always endorse.  It is downright difficult to recognize that the system has winners and losers – and you find yourself on the winning side, and therefore complicit  – even when you didn’t choose to be.  Especially when you don’t know how to change that system.  But engaging the issue without resistance is a start.

I offer to you that changing the system requires us to “Be The Church.”


Being the church means radical hospitality and radical compassion. Being the church means to love one another first, regardless of color, clothing, outward appearance, history or circumstance.  Being the church requires us to get out of our comfort zones, to acknowledge injustice or an unjust system, and to raise our voices.  Being the church requires solidarity with those in pain. Being the church is to live with God’s love streaming from your hearts – and your hands. But not only that –being the church requires us to see with God’s eyes and hear with God’s ears.  Can we see God in each and every person we meet in the world?  Can we open our hearts to what we hear – to listen quietly, to fight the white fragility and the urge to be defensive… can we hold these stories in our hearts and then reflect to find where God’s voice is speaking?

A few summers ago I was here at FCC with my parents, during the Summer Sing-along (which is a great tradition, by the way!)

Now, having grown up here, most of the songs I know come from years of singing with Eva and the choir and congregation. But there was one requested song that I found familiar and was singing full-throated…while getting lots of strange looks from my mother.  It’s slightly musically complicated, and as the melody twisted and pivoted, I somehow knew it and she did not.  Later, after a little digging, we figured out the song was “Lift Every Voice and Sing”, considered the Black National Anthem, and one I sing regularly at Chicago Theological Seminary in worship.  The words of Lift Every Voice beautifully articulate centuries of struggle and solidarity that is rooted in black church life.

I bring this up because this week has been launched as a “Week of Righteous Resistance” by a group associated with #WhoIsBurningBlackChurches.  If you haven’t heard already, 8 historicallyblack churches across the South have had fires in the last few weeks, and 5 have been confirmed as arson.

Why are so many black churches burning?

In his eulogy for Reverend ClementaPinckney, the State Senator and leader in the #BlackLivesMatter movement who was killed in the basement of his own Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, President Obama explained this better than I can.  He said:
Over the course of centuries, black churches served as “hush harbors” where slaves could worship in safety; praise houses where their free descendants could gather and shout hallelujah -- rest stops for the weary along the Underground Railroad; bunkers for the foot soldiers of the Civil Rights Movement.  They have been, and continue to be, community centers where we organize for jobs and justice; places of scholarship and network; places where children are loved and fed and kept out of harm’s way, and told that they are beautiful and smart -- and taught that they matter.  That’s what the black church means.  Our beating heart.  The place where our dignity as a people is inviolate….That’s what the church meant to black folk.”   
Can we Be The Church in the same way? How can we take the love and fellowship we feel here and extend it to those who don’t live far away, but whose lives are far different from our own?
A week after Synod, the UCC joined in the effort to provide financial assistance to rebuild these churches through the Disaster Ministries Emergency Fund.  Nationwide – not just through the UCC - morethan $160,000 has been raised to help these congregations rebuild – and an additional $67,000 has been pledged from Muslims during Ramadan.
This is an amazing show of solidarity and love, and I am proud of our national church for stepping up.  
Church, the world needs you to Be The Church, now more than ever.  God needs us to be the church, to be the prophets rather than resist the message. I pray that we will go forward with courage into the uncomfortable places in our communities, in our families, and in our hearts. 


Amen.

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