The Third Sunday of Advent-Year C

The Very Rev. Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Third Sunday of Advent Year C December 15, 2024 A letter to James Francis McLaurin upon the occasion of his baptism. Dear James, Today is your baptism day. It is the official beginning of your life in the faith, the day when your parents and godparents and all of us are recognizing that God has, even before your birth, claimed you as God’s beloved, and we are all saying “yes” on your behalf. We are all promising that we will help raise you to live your life as God’s beloved, even as we try to live our lives as God’s beloved alongside you. And our baptismal covenant gives us the framework of how to do that. (It’s why we renew it, periodically, throughout the year, when others are baptized and on special Sundays.) On this third Sunday of Advent, our gospel reading gives us a baptism sermon from Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist. John is out in the wilderness and the people are flocking to him to be baptized. John tells them that in baptism and beyond, they will find themselves converted to living life differently. They should no longer hold fast to the priorities of the world but rather they should seek to live out God’s priorities which are justice, mercy, compassion, and equity for all God’s people, and that when they live out these priorities, they will be revealed in the fruit of their actions. John tells his listeners to repent, and even though it’s strange to think about as we baptize you today, sweet baby James, baptism is a call to both conversion and to repentance. Conversion is setting our feet on the path that Christ has trod before us: a path of humility, a path of compassion and mercy, of healing and reconciliation. Conversion is setting our feet on the path of love and following it through hills and valleys, over mountains and through deserts. It means committing to living and walking the way of Christ in times of hardship and in times of plenty. In your baptism, James, we acknowledge that this path is not always easy. We need each other as fellow travelers on the way to give encouragement, support, and even correction. Because we also acknowledge that each of us will stray from this path, over and over again, throughout our lives. And it’s not just about how we stray individually, either. At times, we will all stray together, as a whole people, and we will step or fall off the path of justice and mercy, equity and compassion. And so, we have the call to repentance, that whenever we “fall into sin” or step off the right path, we will turn away from following our own selfish desires or the demands that the world whispers or shouts in our ears that we should seek, and that we will turn back toward God. Repentance means turning away from all that divides us from each other and from God and turning back again to loving God with our whole heart and mind and strength and loving our neighbors as ourselves as we try to live the way that Christ has showed us. Advent is a time when we recognize the many ways we both inadvertently and purposefully fall into sin, and we heed this call to turn back toward God, to make our hearts ready for God’s return in Jesus. Our whole lives are made up of this dance of falling away from God because we have sought the own devices and desires of our own hearts and repenting and returning to God. And the good news is that no matter how many times and in whatever fashion we fall away, nothing can keep us from being God’s beloved. As we say in your baptism today, we are “marked as Christ’s own forever.” No matter what. And that truth inspires us to live our lives as God’s beloved, to bear fruits worthy of repentance, to show people know that we are God’s beloved by the way that we love. Because that is what it means to live life as God’s beloved. Today, sweet James, is the third Sunday of Advent which is also Gaudete Sunday, and Gaudete means rejoicing! We light the pink candle, which is the church’s color for rejoicing; we hear readings about rejoicing, even as we are called to repentance. It may seem strange, but they are two sides of the same coin, repentance and rejoicing. So today, I will close with a blessing that was written by the writer Kate Bowler and shared in her Advent Devotion titled A Weary World Rejoices. It is both prayer to God and blessing that is especially appropriate for you and us on your this Gaudete Sunday which is also your baptism day. It’s titled A Blessing for Our Part in the Bigger Story. Blessed are we, gathered already into the plot, part of the epic story you, [God,] have been writing from long before we were ever born. Thank you that we are not separated into lives of loneliness but joined together as those who were loved into being. We are made for meaning and a purpose that only our days can breathe into action. Pull us closer to the bigger story that reminds us that our ordinary lives are the stuff of eternity. You fitted each of our days for small efforts and endless attempts to pick ourselves up again. In our triumphs and embarrassments, we need to be told again (sigh) that we are not just everyday problems. We are a story of extraordinary love.” i May you always remember, sweet James, that you are a part of God’s story of extraordinary love. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+ i. https://courses.katebowler.com/courses/advent-devotional-2024/lessons/week-3-2/topics/day-15-2024/

The Second Sunday of Advent Year C

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg The Second Sunday of Advent-Year C December 8, 2024 We don’t really get to see Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, in today’s readings. But we do get to hear from him; and that’s pretty extraordinary given his story. Zechariah is a small-town priest. He’s at work, in the holy of holies, offering prayers and incense on behalf of the gathered people. Maybe he’s praying for himself, for his wife Elizabeth, for God’s people Israel? Or maybe he’s preoccupied—wondering what Elizabeth is making him for dinner that night? Suddenly, unexpectedly, an angel appears and tells Zechariah not to be afraid. The angel assures Zechariah that God is going to give Zechariah and Elizabeth a son who God will raise up to be a prophet like Elijah, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. And his job will be to “make ready a people prepared for the Lord.” But Zechariah scoffs and questions Gabriel saying, “‘How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.’ (Don’t you appreciate how he shows a little diplomacy for his wife’s age? You can tell he’s been married a while.) And the angel, who seems to get his feathers ruffled a bit with Zechariah’s scoffing replies, um, excuse me! “‘I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. But now, because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occur.’” So Zechariah is silenced for at least nine months, and in that silence and space, something changes in Zechariah. Because when John is born nine months later, Zechariah is suddenly able to speak again, and the first thing he does is to sing a song that is overflowing with joy. Just as John grows inside Elizabeth, being nurtured by her while waiting to be born, joy grows in Zechariah in his season of enforced silence. And he gives birth to joy in his song that we all read together this morning. This past week, I read a meditation on Advent 1 by the biblical scholar Diana Butler Bass. She was writing about how Advent is a season that focuses on both justice and joy, and here’s what she writes about joy: “Joy is not happiness, even though the two are related. Joy is delight, gladness, and pleasure — a deep inner wellspring of contentment and comfort. It is a disposition, an outlook, and maybe even a purposeful practice. Happiness is what we feel in relation to external conditions; joy is experienced regardless of circumstances. A wise maxim says, ‘We pursue happiness, we choose joy.’” She continues, “Neither justice nor joy are easy. Indeed, they can be elusive. We need new eyes to see them, renewed hearts to experience them, and willing hands to act on them in the world.” i. Perhaps the silence gives Zechariah the space to see, experience, and act on joy in new and different ways, giving him the opportunity to see where he can choose joy in his own life and recognize the presence of God’s joy in God’s people Israel. Because Zechariah’s song isn’t just about the wonderful gift that has been given to him and Elizabeth; it also is recognizing how God’s work, God’s dream is being brought to fulfillment in a way that will benefit all people. There’s simultaneously an individual and a cosmic scope to Zechariah’s song and to his joy. In our epistle reading for today, the apostle Paul also knows something about choosing joy, and he does this in less than ideal circumstances. When Paul is writing his letter to the Philippians which is overflowing with joy, he is actually imprisoned, which shows us that we don’t have to be happy or even comfortable to choose joy. In fact, Paul’s joy seems to find its roots in gratitude, in remembrance, and in reflecting on his intimate relationship with the people in the church of Philippi along with a commitment to his work in spreading the good news of Jesus Christ while he tries to give them the tools they will need once he is gone. So, how do we choose joy this Advent? First, we have to be able to recognize joy in our lives, to name it when it shows up, and to embrace it. For each of us, joy will look and feel and taste differently. But ultimately, joy is “an intense feeling of deep spiritual connection, pleasure, and appreciation.” ii Joy is often something unexpected, often a surprise. Joy is a sense of well-being, and sense that things are as they should be. In his poem “Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves,” poet J. Drew Lanham writes, …Joy is being loved up close for who we are. …Joy is the day off, just because. Joy is the kiss of that one, or the just verdict delivered by twelve. Joy is the everything, the nothing. The simple, the complex. Joy is the silly, the serious, the trivial. The whale enormous, the shrew’s small. Joy is the murmuration, then the stillness. Joy is the inexplicable coincidence. Joy is what was meant to be. The mystery of impossibility happening. The assurance of uncertainty. Joy is my seeking. Your being. It is mine for the taking. Ours to share. More than enough to go around, when it seems nowhere to be found. iii As one of our Wednesday healing service community shared, joy is the current that runs underneath and through our lives, like Nat King Cole’s Joy to the World playing in the background while she was doing her dishes. One of the spiritual practices proposed by Kate Bowler in her Advent Devotion A Weary World Rejoices this week is that when we discover joy in our lives, then to give ourselves permission to hum Joy to the World in acknowledgement.iv Once we start to see and acknowledge joy in our lives and the world around us, then, we are called to seek, to choose joy. We do this through nurturing connections with others; through time in silence and with God; through spending time in nature which can nurture and feed our joy; through expressing gratitude, even in the midst of hardship; through God’s reorienting of us after things don’t go as we had planned. Joy is a sense of connection with a story that is so much bigger than our small selves. Joy is the current that runs throughout our lives. This week, may you have new eyes to see it, renewed hearts to experience it, and willing hands to act on it in the world. i.From Diana Butler Bass’s Substack page, The Cottage: Sunday Musings: Advent 1 - by Diana Butler Bass ii.Brown, Brene. Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and The Language of Human Experience. Random House: New York, 2021, p 205. iii.Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves – J. Drew Lanham iv.The Weary World Rejoices Individual Download - Kate Bowler p 23

The Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 26th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28B November 17, 2024 Years ago, before I went to seminary, I created and organized enrichment programming for senior citizens and adults with mental disabilities at the Stewpot soup kitchen in inner city Jackson, MS. Many of these folks lived in the personal care homes in the area, on small, fixed incomes, and they would get turned out onto the streets during the day with not much to occupy their time. Stewpot gave these folks a place to go, and it was my job to give them something to do. One of these participants was a woman named Cheryl. Cheryl was crazy as a betsy bug. Her favorite thing to do art therapy, and I’d often sit beside her and listen to her talk about all the famous people she knew and how they’d interacted with her life recently (often in really unhealthy ways). One day, Cheryl showed up with a beautiful, gold butterfly necklace. She was clearly proud of her necklace, and I complemented her on it, telling her how pretty it was and how I also liked butterflies. She cocked her head at me for a moment, and then she surprised me by pulling the necklace over her head and wordlessly offering it to me. Well, I was mortified. Here she is with this cherished piece of beauty in an otherwise drab and impoverished life. I was there to help her, and she was trying to give me her necklace. I told her I couldn’t possibly take it, and she became more and more insistent, and in that moment, I realized that she needed to be able to give the necklace to me, and that I needed to be able to accept it. So, I did. Even after all these years, that story reminds me that there’s a strange dance between hope and gratitude, in giving and receiving. We see it in our Old Testament reading for today. Hannah has longed for a child for many, many years. She goes to the temple to pray, and she asks God to grant her a child. But then, get this! In that same prayer, she promises that if God grants her a child, she’s going to turn around and give that child right back to God, raising him as a Nazirite, someone who was dedicated to the service of God, giving him away just as soon as he is weaned. In the midst of her hope, Hannah offers a promise of gratitude in this pledging of her long-awaited child to the service of God. And I can’t help wonder which came first for Hannah, gratitude or hope, giving or receiving? For they are so closely intertwined in her story. For Hannah, the incarnation of her hope becomes her child Samuel, and she willingly and gratefully turns him back over to God. It’s a huge gift that no one even asked of her. When we hope, we acknowledge that we are, in fact, powerless. And at the same time, when we hope, we become active agents in the world. We often think of hope as an emotion, but it’s not; not really. Hope is a cognitive-behavioral process; hope is an action. And it is when we connect with our gratitude, that our hope is further fueled, more deeply inspired. Today, our annual giving campaign is drawing to a close. The theme for this year has been “Rooted in Hope” and the passage we chose to support this is from Jeremiah17:7-8: Blessed are those who trust in the Lord… They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. At the beginning of the campaign, we asked you to consider: What are the ways that the roots of your faith are nourished, and what role does the spiritual community of St. Thomas play in that nourishing? I would also encourage you to think today about hope and gratitude. What are the hopes you can name for your life and for this community? What is that gratitude that you can also name? How are those interconnected? My hope for St. Thomas in the coming year is that we will be a place that creates space for belonging for everyone; that we will nourish and encourage each other in the spreading of the good news, that though the presence of the Holy Spirit, each of us will be transformed, more and more, into the image and likeness of Christ. My hope for St. Thomas is that we will take our discipleship of Jesus seriously, committing to it faithfully in new and exciting ways. I am so grateful for all the ways that we are already doing this work together, and I am eager to see what God has in store for us next! I am grateful for our Wednesday healing service conversations, and for the ways we gather in a circle with kind hands outstretched to pray for each other and the needs of the world. I am grateful for all the glorious music we make together—singing and bells, organ and piano, and so many other ways. I am grateful for wise women who laugh and who invite us to see diminishment not with discouragement but with joy; and I am grateful for people with the gifts of making things more hospitable. And I am grateful for you who show up and get things done. I am grateful for all the ways that we share our joys and our sorrows, for the ways that we teach and learn from each other. I am grateful for our children and grandchildren and all the ways that surprise me and give me hope. I am grateful when we step out and try new things, and I am grateful for tried and tested ways of being community. There is so much that I receive from each and every one of you, and I am so grateful for you and for St. Thomas. The butterfly has long been used as a symbol of the resurrection. For me, it’s also always been a symbol of hope. And when I see them, they spark my gratitude. What are you grateful for here at St. Thomas? What are you being called to give and what are you being called to receive in this next season in the life of the church as a part of your gratitude and as a part of your hope?

The Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 25th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27B November 10, 2024 A letter to Sullins Hughes and Tinsley Watson upon the occasion of their baptisms. Dear Sullins and Tinsley, Happy baptism day, babies! And what a joyful day it is! You are gathered here with your families and your friends, with your church family, and in just a few moments, your parents and godparents will make an important statement on your behalf. As you all stand together before God and this gathered congregation, your parents and godparents will acknowledge that God has created each of you and has claimed you as God’s beloved since even before your births. In your baptism, we are all accepting God’s claim on you as God’s beloved, and we are promising to uphold you in living your life as God’s beloved. We all are promising that just as we try to live into our baptismal covenant, the framework of what living life as God’s beloved looks like, we will teach you to live this way, too: proclaiming the gospel by word and example; seeking and serving Christ in all persons; loving our neighbors as ourselves; striving for justice and peace among all people; respecting the dignity of every human being. It’s not easy living this way, and it’s why we need each other: to offer encouragement, forgiveness, and hope when need it most to continue on this path of faithful living as God’s beloved and disciples of Jesus. Two of our readings offer interesting perspectives on your baptism today, sweet Sullins and sweet Tinsley. In the Old Testament reading of Ruth, Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi leave Ruth’s home of Moab to journey back to be with Naomi’s people the Israelites. Now Moab and Israel were two neighboring nations who shared the same language, and much of the same history—they were essentially cousin-nations. And throughout much of their existence, they were at war; they did not get along. There was a deep enmity between the two peoples. So for Ruth to leave Moab and journey with Naomi back to Israel was a real challenge. There was a risk that she would not have been welcomed there. Naomi has encouraged Ruth to stay with her own people, but she refuses, and so she travels with Naomi to a place where she is a stranger in a strange land, where people will look down on her because of who she is. In today’s reading, we see Naomi working with Ruth to catch Ruth a husband and to secure the future of these two vulnerable women. The story of Ruth and Naomi is a story that emphasizes the loyalty and fidelity that can be found in familial relationships, and you both know something about being firmly ensconced in a loving, extended family. In fact, each of you bears a name that ties you firmly into the line of your family, even as your names are unique enough to give you space to forge your own paths. Interestingly enough in today’s passage, we see how Ruth and Naomi’s family becomes enlarged even beyond Ruth’s marriage to Boaz, as the women of the neighborhood act as surrogate family for Ruth and Naomi, even going so far as to name Ruth’s child. It’s an important reminder for all of us today that when we become a part of God’s family, our family expands to include all of God’s beloved—even those people we wouldn’t normally choose, those who we might consider to be stranger or even enemy. All are included in the family of God; all have been created as God’s beloved. And together we have so much to offer others, even the stranger, (especially the stranger) as God’s extended family. In our gospel reading for today, we see two parts to this reading. In the first part, Jesus in Mark’s gospel is offering a critique of his own religion—specifically calling out the hypocrisy and the ways that the religious elite take advantage of vulnerable people. He lifts up the widow, who is one of the vulnerable, and points out her generosity as a commendation of generous living and a critique of those who harm her because of their own greed and selfishness. We would do well to be mindful that Jesus’s critique is just as pertinent to Christianity today as it was to the Judaism of his day, as we renew our baptismal covenants today and we see clearly all the ways that we fall short of being faithful followers of Jesus. We are mindful of the ways that we choose ourselves over the needs of others. We remember all the ways that we have been hypocritical in saying one thing with our mouths and doing another with our actions. Jesus gives us the widow today as an image of what faithfulness and what generosity can look like, when we are seeking to serve God over ourselves. The widow can inspire us to ask ourselves the question: What does it mean to live a generous life? What might my life look like if I were to try to live it more generously? Maybe it means giving more to those in need? Maybe it means seeing injustice and working to remedy it? Maybe it means giving people the benefit of the doubt instead of making assumptions? What might my life look like if I were to try to live it more generously? It is the call of the family of God, and it is a question that we, God’s beloved, should wrestle with throughout our lives, and we will help you remember it and wrestle with it as well as you grow here in the life of your faith. You will teach us, Sullins and Tinsley, and we will teach you. And together we will fail, and learn, and grow, and try again, offering forgiveness and hope and the promise of the resurrection life as the family of God’s beloved. I’m so grateful you are joining us! Your sister in Christ, Melanie+ The Big Question this Week: Who are the vulnerable people in the family of God who I need to pay attention to, to open my heart to, to give the benefit of the doubt? How am I being called to live a more generous life?

The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B October 27, 2024 This morning, we’re going to engage with the gospel story in way where I will invite you ponder aspects of your own life with some guided questions.i Feel free to close your eyes as you listen, if that is helpful. Bartimaeus is a beggar, blind and alone while surrounded by a sea of people. How are you like Bartimaeus today? What are the things that are keeping you from seeing Jesus? He hears of Jesus and for the first time in a long time, he begins to hope—hope that someone will truly see him, help him, show him a way out of begging toward wholeness and belonging. What tiny bud of hope blooms in you? Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, “Mercify me!” And the crowd tells him to be quiet; don’t make a scene; know your place. What are the voices who tell you not to change, not to hope? And he almost listens to them, obeys them, not taking the chance. Because sometimes it’s just too painful to hope. What part does your own voice play in your silencing, in the silencing of your hope? But that tiny bud of hope has fully flowered in Bartimaeus and can no longer be ignored, so he calls out again, this time even louder: “Mercify me!” And Jesus stops. And he turns. But Bartimaeus can’t see any of this. And Jesus tells the crowd to call Bartimaeus. The very ones who had held him back, suddenly shift to help him saying: “Take heart! He is calling you!” And in that moment, Bartimaeus has a tremendous choice: to stay there in the safety of his cloak—his blanket, shelter, source of income, his place of home-or to leave it behind so he can answer the Lord’s call. What comforts do you cling to that you think sustain you, that you need to throw off so you can move forward as Jesus calls you to grow, to change, to deepen, to be healed? Where might Jesus be inviting you to step forward, to move toward him in trust, even when you cannot see the path before you? Bartimaeus makes his way to Jesus, and Jesus asks him: “What do you want me to do for you?” What do you want Jesus to do for you? How would you answer him? Bartimaeus doesn’t ask for Jesus to make him not be a beggar anymore; he goes deeper, asking Jesus to “open these eyes, Lord, long closed.”ii What do you need to see differently? What are your impediments to seeing, to trusting? (Or what blocks you from seeing, from trusting?) What lies below the surface of your longing? Dive deep for it, like a shiny penny in the deep end of the pool, your hand outstretched to claim it. Jesus tells Bartimaeus that he can go home now; his faith has made him well; his trust has saved him. Where is the healing, the hope bubbling up from within you? When Bartimaeus regains his sight, he doesn’t go home. Instead he follows Jesus on the way, along the path of discipleship toward Jerusalem and the cross. What new direction will your faithfulness to Jesus lead you into next? i. This is inspired by a reflection titled Choosing Life in the book Finding Jesus, Discovering Self by Caren Goldman and William Dols. ii. This is from a line in David Whyte’s poem “The Opening of Eyes.”

The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 21st Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 23B October 13, 2024 A letter to Ollie and Ian Hartley upon the occasion of their baptism. Dear Ollie and Ian, Today is a big day in your lives and in the life of this church; it is the day that you are being baptized. Your dad tells me that ever since you first attended St. Thomas, you have known that this is your church, and I think that just as you’ve known you belong here, we’ve known that, too. And today, that becomes official! The other day, we met and talked about baptism, and I told you some really important things that I’m going to say again here today so that you can remember them, and we can all help you remember. Before you boys were born (9 and 6 years ago), God created you and made you good. God has loved you since even before you were born, and God has said of each of you, “you are my beloved.” You are and always will be God’s beloved, and nothing can change that. Today, all of us together are saying along with you: Yes! Ollie and Ian are God’s beloved! (And y’all are saying it too: Yes! I am God’s beloved!) You are saying that you want to try to live your lives as God’s beloved. Your family is saying that they will help you live your lives as God’s beloved. And we your church are saying that we will help you live as God’s beloved. It’s wonderful being God’s beloved, but it’s not easy. That’s why we need each other so much. We help each other remember what it means to live as God’s beloved, and we encourage each other to do that. Living as God’s beloved means that we treat everyone with love, kindness, respect; we work to try to treat other people how we ourselves want to be treated. It means that when we make mistakes and hurt someone, we try to make things right with them. It means that we commit to gathering together regularly for worship and praying together and listening to bible stories and having communion. And it means that we try to share the good news of God’s belovedness with everyone we encounter out in the world beyond this place. You’ve seen some of that already in the lessons you learn in children’s chapel, in Vacation Bible School, and in your friendships with the other children here. We’ll help you and you’ll help us to remember that we are always God’s beloved and this is the heart of what it means to be the Church. You’ve already helped me remember this just this week. When you asked me if you could dunk your whole heads in the baptism font at your baptism, it helped me remember the call to belong to God isn’t always neat and tidy but sometimes is messy and demands our whole body, our whole selves. When you asked me if I thought the church would cheer for you after you are baptized, I thought, well, we certainly should, because how better could we show you how joyful we are about your belonging. Our job today and beyond is to help you remember that you belong to God—and there is absolutely nothing that can ever change that. From this day forward, you will be “marked as Christ’s own forever.” We see the truth of this in our readings for today—when Job has lost absolutely everything, Job still belongs to God; God is with Job even when Job can’t feel God. When the young man comes to Jesus, eager to prove himself, telling Jesus he already follows all of the commandments, Mark tells us Jesus looks at the man and loves him, and then tells him to go sell all that he owns and follow Jesus. Jesus is reminding the young man that no matter what he might give up or lose, nothing can change the fact that he is beloved of God. That is essence of what it means to follow Jesus. And so, Ian and Ollie, yes we will cheer today after you are baptized. And we’ll cheer for you and support you all along the way, just as you will do for us. Welcome to the family of God! Your Sister in Christ, Melanie+ The Big Question this Week: Imagine what it might be like if you gave away or lost your income, insurance, savings, home, and possessions. Who would you still be? What would you have left? How might this imagining invite you to see your life, your worth, and your relationship with God differently? Or think about a time in your life when you suffered a life-changing loss (relationship, job, person, possessions). And think about the questions above in light of that experience.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 21B

The Very Rev Melanie Dickson Lemburg 19th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 21B September 29, 2024 Once upon a time there were two neighbors who had adjoining farms. They were good neighbors. Members of their families had married over the years, and they’d all had a good relationship. They tended to lean the same way politically and they had shared the border between their farms peacefully for over half a century. One day Randolf visited his neighbor Floyd’s farm and thought he recognized one of his pigs among Floyd’s. Randolf convinced himself that Floyd must have stolen his pig, and no one could convince him differently. So Randolf complained to the authorities, and they organized a trial. In order to be fair, the judge appointed the jury to be equal parts from each family-six from Randolf’s and six from Floyd’s. The great surprise came when one of Randolf’s family members decided against him, tipping the jury in favor of Floyd’s claim that the pig had always been his. Randolf seemed to accept the results, although it must have been a humiliating experience, and life went on. A year and a half later two of Randolf’s nephews got into a fight with one of the trial witnesses who had testified against Randolf, and they beat the man to death. “Over the course of the next decade the two families were at war; there was vicious stabbing, a string of vigilante shootings, posse raids, and a Supreme Court case. A house was burned to the ground. A man was hanged. Women were beaten. All told about 80 different people got drawn into the feud across the region.” This is the story of the infamous dispute between the Hatfields and the McCoys on the border between Kentucky and West Virginia. And it is a quintessential example of how regular people can get drawn into the forces of high conflict that are very difficult to escape. One of the key aspects of high conflict is the invisible force that encourages us as humans to sort ourselves into groups or categories. This is actually a biological imperative that has been necessary for our survival as a species, this impulse to sort into groups can be both helpful and harmful. It is helpful in its encouraging us to protect the other members of our group. It is harmful in that it nudges us into an us versus them mindset, collapsing complexity. We see these forces at work in three of our readings for today—the Old Testament reading of Esther, the Psalm, and the gospel. The book of Esther reads like a soap-opera. “It tells the story of Esther who becomes Queen in Persia after she wins a beauty pageant that the king puts on (after having set aside his previous wife who refused to show off her beauty at his request). Esther, who is a Hebrew, follows the counsel of her uncle and guardian Mordechi, and keeps her faith a secret from her new husband. Meanwhile, political machinations unfold between Haman, the king’s right-hand man and Esther’s uncle. When Mordechi refuses to pay homage to Haman because of his faith, Haman hatches a plot to kill all the Hebrew people in Persia. In an epic plot twist, which we see today, Esther orchestrates the salvation of her uncle and her people and ensures the assassination of the dastardly Haman.” It’s a classic us-versus-them, good-versus-evil conflict in which the underdogs are saved, and the bad guy with all the power gets his comeuppance. And then there’s the psalm. Do I need to even say anything about the pslam? It’s all about how God has protected God’s people from their enemies, siding against the enemies in their us-versus-them conflict. Our gospel reading for today is a continuation of Mark’s gospel that we’ve been reading over the past few weeks. This week picks up right after last week, when the disciples have been arguing about who is the greatest among them, and Jesus takes a little child into his arms and tells them they must all be like the little child. When today’s reading begins, we can assume that the little child is still sitting there in Jesus’s arms, as the disciples begin to complain that they have seen someone doing deeds of power in Jesus’ name who was not one of his followers. The disciples are leaning into their group as Jesus’s in-crowd, falling into the trap that we all fall into, but Jesus’ flips it all upside down by responding that “whoever is not against us is for us.” Ok, that’s not what they were expecting. Isn’t the line supposed to be “whoever’s not for us is against us?” That helps with the clearly defined lines between us and them; it makes things so much simpler to be able to identify who’s in our group and who isn’t. Whoever isn’t against us is for us? Well, how on earth are we supposed to draw lines with that? But Jesus pushes his disciples and us even beyond that, emphasizing that a key aspect of discipleship is how we keep or make peace. It can be overwhelming to think about keeping or making peace once we find ourselves in a high conflict situation. It doesn’t even have to be a Hatfield/McCoy type feud. It can be overwhelming to think about how to make peace even in the midst of ordinary life, in the midst of our current election year with all of its dramatic polarization. Can you think of a time when you found yourself in a polarized or intractable situation? How was it resolved? Was it peaceful? What could a peaceful resolution have looked like? So many times, in the midst of disagreements, when we find someone we care about on the “other side,” it’s easier to say, well, let’s just agree to disagree. And while that may preserve the relationship, it does not really promote true peace. It (maybe) allows us to stay on our own sides and be friends across the fence, but it does nothing to shift the forces that work to drive us apart. So what, then, can we do? Well, one of the first things that we can do is to pay attention to a lesson from this trying weekend, as we have watched and (to some degree) experienced how Hurricane Helene has devastated whole communities across the southeast. We can remember our common humanity. There’s nothing like a disaster that can bring people together. Is there a way that we can put aside our differences right now and find a way to work together as humans? Other things that we can do is to work to bring complexity back into the equation. Embrace curiosity. Resist caricatures. Look below the surface of what is being presented to what may be going on. Ask questions and really listen to the answers. Assume nothing. This week, I invite you to think about those places in your life where you have drawn lines between “us” and “them.” Ask God to help you to begin to be curious about those divisions and to help you to begin to discern a way forward that leads to peace for you and others.