The 5th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 8A July 2, 2023 So… nothing like a biblical story about potential child sacrifice to get your week started off right! As you might imagine, we had some spirited discussion about our Old Testament reading from Genesis for today in our Wednesday healing service conversation. Perhaps you’ll be relieved to know that none of us sat easily with this reading for this week, and we raised more questions than answers around it: What is God up to in this story? Does God show change or growth throughout the stories of scripture? What might God ask of us that we treasure? Others spoke knowingly about what it is like to sacrifice something or someone that we love when we feel that is what God is asking of us. We spoke about relationships between children and parents and we talked about what obedience to God looks like in our lives even now. I closed our time with this reflection from Unfolding Light by Steve Garnaas-Holmes, and our Wednesday congregation instructed me to read it to you this morning. Unbinding my Isaac God tested Abraham. and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” So Abraham went… —Genesis 22.1-3 God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? Isaac is the physical embodiment and fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah. He’s what Abraham has longed for and holds most dearly in his life. God tests Abraham’s faithfulness or obedience to God by asking Abraham to give up what has the potential to be an idol for Abraham, an impediment in Abraham’s relationship with God. Can you think of a time when you have been asked to relinquish something that you cherished? That relinquishing feels like a death, like a willing leap off a spiritual cliff. And yet, we experience, again and again, new life on the other side of that letting go. In the Romans reading for today, Paul points out that the choice isn’t between slavery and freedom but the choice is to whom one will be enslaved. Will we be enslaved to that which separates us from God or will we know the freedom that is found in obedience to God through Christ? God offers to Abraham and us a call to risk a change, an invitation to examine our relationships between what we hold most dear, if we have made them into idols, an invitation to examine if what we hold most dear has, in fact, become a stumbling block for us in our relationships with God, an impediment in seeing how the Holy Spirit is calling us into deeper life in God and in each other. Sometimes it can be surprising what we uncover when we imagine how what we hold most dear can be or has become a stumbling block between us and God. Here’s an example. While I was on vacation, I had a dream that I was trying to convince a Dutch billionaire to invest in my new project where I use pickleball to draw people into community and into the church. I’ve started playing pickleball this summer with some local ladies once a week; it’s a group of novice pickleballers who my friend Helen has pulled together, and I love it! I’ve enjoyed learning a new sport and playing the game, and I’ve loved making new friends. In my dream, I was presenting a convincing argument to this Dutch billionaire about how we were using pickleball to create meaningful community and change lives, and that it would be a good tool for the Church to use as well. I was telling the billionaire how the (capital C) Church was struggling with creating authentic and engaging community, and how I worried that the Church was broken. I texted my friend Helen about my dream. (Helen is also a priest.) And I realized in our text conversation that perhaps my dream was pointing out to me how even the church can become an idol, a stumbling block in our relationship with God. How God might be inviting us to relinquish and risk to adopt new ways of being together and carrying out God’s mission in the world. It’s a sobering thought for me. I’ve spent 20 years of my life working to build up God’s church. What might it look like for me to hold it a bit more loosely? God, I confess I ask others to be my sacrifice. What I have been given to tend, and those I have been given to love, I have used. Without thought I have ascribed it to you, as if it is how you have arranged the world. I have abused my power and privilege, and neglected how my benefit has caused others to suffer. I have justified it in your name. I repent. Hold my hand. Stay my knife. Open my eyes. Give me grace to unbind my Isaac, to set free what I have intended to use, to renounce my entitlement to comfort that costs others. God, I myself am Isaac, bound by my own self-serving. May my selfishness be my sacrifice. Unbind me, and set me free.i. What are the people, places, things, memories, ideas that you hold more dearly than God? How might God be calling you to hold those more loosely? How might God be inviting you to be unbound and set free? i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/27/unbinding-my-isaac/

3rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A

3rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 6A June 18, 2023 I want to share with you a mediation that I read this week that I’ve been contemplating. After I read it, I’ll share with you some questions to consider and another lens to look through. Sent by Steve Garnaas-Holmes Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. —Matthew 10.7-8 You are given power and authority and sent, not to proselytize, not to enact “Christian” legislation, but to heal. In your workplace, in your community, in your family. How can you possibly do this? Because you are given power and authority. You are given love, which casts out fear— slowly, to be sure, but it does cast out fear. You won’t cast out all the demons of greed or racism, or cure the whole epidemic of loneliness or despair. But you will love, even one person at a time, and maybe your witness will move crowds. But remember you are an empty vessel; it is not your power but God’s. And though your vessel is small, that power is infinite. Go, then, and peace be with you. i. One of the questions I want you to consider today is where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? This week, I read an article from the Barna Research Group that was published this past May. According to their website, Barna’s goal is to “reveal the cultural and religious trends affecting your life everyday.” This article is titled Openness to Jesus Isn’t the Problem—the Church Is. (I know, right?! Ouch!!) Here’s the gist of the article: “When we asked Americans whether they have a positive or negative opinion of Jesus, seven in 10 (71%) say they view him positively…Beyond Jesus, when it comes to views of other Christian groups or entities, positive opinions wane. People of no faith are neutral or leaning negative [when it comes to how they view Christianity as a whole]…Among those of no faith, even Christian individuals are not viewed so favorably. Further, the data… shows why people may be reluctant to hold Christian beliefs, with the top reason today being ‘hypocrisy of religious people.’” According to the data, the biggest divergence in the perceptions around Christianity between Christians and non-Christians is found in three areas. 1. 48% of surveyed Christians say that Christianity is a faith that they respect. When non-religious people were asked if Christianity is a faith they respect, only 15% agreed. 2. When Christians were asked if they considered Christianity to be hypocritical, 23% answered they thought it was. Of the non-religious people, 49% said Christianity was hypocritical. 3. And finally, when Christians were asked if Christianity was judgmental, 22% said they thought it was. Of the non-religious, 48% thought that Christianity was judgmental. ii Wow, that’s depressing! Did y’all know this? Are y’all living with this reality already? What on earth are we supposed to do about this? I think we need to reflect on this again in light of the question I posed earlier: where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? Maybe the first healing we need to be attentive to is our own? I was at the gym the other day, and while I didn’t say anything or act on it, I sure was judging the two men I saw who did not wipe down their workout machines. I was judging them in my heart, and you know what else? I was judging their mamas, too! (Why? You can say it with me: “Because they must not have raised them right!”) I can say all day long that I’m not one of “those kind of Christians.” “It’s the evangelicals. They give us all a bad name!” But when I’m being really honest, I know that I am judgmental, that I am hypocritical. And just maybe I need to seek out Jesus’s healing for that in me before I get sent out to offer his healing out in the world? When we’re at our best, it’s what we do here. We gather, we pray, we confess, we receive pardon, we take in the body and blood of Jesus who heals us, and then we are sent out into the world to proclaim the good news of his healing and to be agents of his same healing, not through our own power or gifts or charisma, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is with us always. I invite you to think about that as I read the mediation one more time and close with your questions for reflection for this week. Sent by Steve Garnaas-Holmes Proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. —Matthew 10.7-8 You are given power and authority and sent, not to proselytize, not to enact “Christian” legislation, but to heal. In your workplace, in your community, in your family. How can you possibly do this? Because you are given power and authority. You are given love, which casts out fear— slowly, to be sure, but it does cast out fear. You won’t cast out all the demons of greed or racism, or cure the whole epidemic of loneliness or despair. But you will love, even one person at a time, and maybe your witness will move crowds. But remember you are an empty vessel; it is not your power but God’s. And though your vessel is small, that power is infinite. Go, then, and peace be with you. What do you need to ask Jesus for healing for this day in this place? Where in your life, your world, your family, your work, are you being sent by Jesus to be a messenger of his healing? i. https://unfoldinglight.net/2023/06/13/sent/ ii. https://www.barna.com/research/openness-to-jesus/

The Second Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5 Year A

2nd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 5A June 11, 2023 “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” Jesus is quoting Hosea 6:6 in our gospel reading for today: Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ But I also know this passage as one of Matt Devenney’s favorite bible verses. It’s strange that I know that this is one of Matt Devenney’s favorite bible verses, but I never actually knew Matt Devenney. Matt was the Executive Director of Stewpot years before I got there. By the time I started working at Stewpot in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, the soup kitchen in inner city Jackson had expanded dramatically and had moved from the gas station across the street to the former Presbyterian church whose fellowship hall had been transformed into the heart of the soup kitchen where people from all over Jackson would gather to enjoy a daily, hot meal. Stewpot’s executive director had been a friend of Matt’s, and sometimes he talked about him, while pointing to the photo of Matt holding his young son that watched over us all from a prominent place in the lunchroom. On June 19, 1991, the 33 year old Matt Devenney had confronted a man named John D. Smith who had a gun with him where everyone was gathering outside for lunch. In an effort to protect the community, Matt had told John that he couldn’t be there with a gun. John was not unknown to Matt. Matt had been working with him, trying to help him as John had been discharged from the Army with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, and had received treatment in both a state hospital and a veterans' medical center. After Matt confronted John, John began moving away across the street, and Matt moved toward him. Some of the witnesses suggested that Matt was trying to protect the group of men gathered behind him in case John decided to fire into the crowd. John shouted at Matt that he couldn’t stop him from having a gun because he was the governor of Mississippi, and then he turned and shot Matt in the chest two times at close range. John was arrested later that day. Matt died, leaving behind a wife and a two year old son. Matt was buried wearing a medallion that had been given to him by his sister. On the front is an image of Jesus on the back are the words of Matthew 9:13: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” i I was working at Stewpot 10 years after Matt’s death, and in my three years there, I learned as much or more as I learned in my three years of seminary. Matt’s legacy of tending toward mercy had created a community that was a glimpse into the kingdom of God: a place where all can come to be fed, where all sit together around the table, where people come to serve and be served and where there is mutuality in those relationships. As I would eat lunch with those folks every day, working with them, creating friendships and relationships, I realized that they had so much less than me, and yet that had so much more gratitude for the gift of each new day. I learned that every single one of us is able to give or show mercy and that every single one of us is in need of mercy, from God and from our fellow children of God. We fool ourselves when we think we don’t need mercy, and this is what Jesus is trying to teach us and the Pharisees in today’s gospel: “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” We are, each and every one of us, made in the image and likeness of God, and each and every one of us falls short of the glory of God. None of us is truly righteous, and every one of us is in need of mercy—lovingkindness, forgiveness, grace. When we believe that we are not in need of mercy, when we think we have it all together or all figured out is when we harden our hearts like the Pharisees, who were faithful religious people just like us, and we begin to question who deserves mercy and a place at Jesus’s table. So, what does it mean to show or to receive mercy? Many of us think of showing mercy as giving to those who beg from us, and there is certainly mercy wrapped up in that. But what if seeking and showing mercy is broader and wider than giving to beggars? What if showing mercy means inviting the new kid to sit with you at lunch or expanding your circle of friendship beyond its normal or natural bounds? What if mercy means being patient with someone when you are running out of patience to give? What if mercy means putting yourself in someone else’s shoes in daily encounters, or offering someone the benefit of the doubt before rushing to judgement? What if mercy means being honest but tempering that honesty with kindness? What if mercy means looking for the humanity in others and responding to that? Can you think of a time when you felt called to show someone mercy? Can you think of a time when you were in need of mercy or someone gave it to you without you having to ask for it? “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” i. Some of these details are found in the Sojourner’s article titled A Teacher of Mercy by Joyce Hollyday: https://sojo.net/magazine/october-1991/teacher-mercy

First Sunday after Pentecost/Trinity Sunday Year A

First Sunday after Pentecost-Trinity Sunday Year A June 4, 2023 What would you think if I said to you, “Well, bless your heart!?” It can mean any number of things, right?, depending on the context. I could say it to you to comfort you. I can say it to you pitying. I can say it to you as a joke, or even making fun of you. I had a friend in seminary who was Canadian and most recently from Minnesota who found herself befriended by many of the Southerners in our class, and she spent months making a study of “bless your heart,” seeking to understand the myriad of ways that it was used and invoked in conversation by the rest of us. And what she learned is that it’s all about tone. i In the book The Lives We Actually Have (which is actually a book of blessings), Kate Bowler and co-author Jessica Richie write about blessing in the introduction: “The act of blessing is the strange and vital work of noticing what is true about God and ourselves. And sometimes those truths are awful. Like, blessed are those who mourn. I mean scripturally it’s true. Jesus said it. But does any of that feel true when our worlds are ripped to pieces? No. Or, blessed are the poor. Again, it doesn’t feel true at all. But in the act of blessing the world as it is and as it should be, we are starting to reassemble what we know. Maybe, God, you are here in the midst of this grief. Maybe, God, you can provide for this specific problem or be discoverable when I’m buttering this toast.” They continue, “For that reason, [another author] calls the act of blessing a kind of spiritual “placement.” This goes here. That goes there. We are beginning to fit this moment into the larger order of things, the divine story of God’s work and purposes. I find that language of placement and re-placement to be incredibly satisfying. Blessings put our spiritual house in order, even when our circumstances are entirely out of order.” I love that understanding of blessings as something that help us name our realties and help us order or re-order our lives. In our reading from 2nd Corinthians for today, Paul is concluding that letter and he is invoking the power of the divine relationship including the characteristics of the relationship of the Trinity: order, mutual agreement, and peace. And he offers the people of the church of Corinth God’s blessing in a trinitarian blessing that is unique to all of Paul’s letters: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.” So what’s really happening here? The church at Corinth is Paul’s “problem children.” He’s already written them one letter where he is letting them have it because he has heard that they are divided up into factions. In first Corinthians, he urges them toward unity and to remember the faith that he taught them when he was with them. In second Corinthians, Paul has gotten wind that these folks known as the “super-apostles” have moved into town and are influencing the Corinthians. The super-apostles are questioning the absent Paul’s credentials, and so he defends himself and reminds the Corinthians to not be led astray by false teachers of the gospel. Perhaps Paul is trying to remind the Corinthians about the nature of God who is social and relational, that we are made in the image of God, so we are social and relational also? Perhaps because he has such difficulties with the Corinthians, Paul is urging them to draw upon the full resources of God for this troubled chapter in their life-reminding them that the love of God is available to them; that the grace of Christ is already theirs, and that the Holy Spirit is actively working to connect them with Paul, with each other and with the followers of Jesus all around the world. There are echoes here of Jesus’ promise in Matthew, that he will be with his disciples and us always, even to the end of the age. The gift of the Trinity, the divine relationship, is that we are all always connected—the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always in relationship with each other and us; we are connected through the Holy Spirit as the body of Christ that transcends time and space, this life and the next. In our Wednesday healing service, we reflected on a time when we received an unexpected blessing from someone. The common threads in those experiences were when a person we encountered (sometimes a stranger, sometimes someone more intimate) named something about us or about the world that helped us re-order our understanding of ourselves or the world, helped connect us deeper to others, and helped us be more at peace. This is the ultimate gift of blessing and it is the ultimate gift of Christian community—why we need each other--to help uncover and discover truths about God and ourselves that we couldn’t find on our own. I invite you to reflect on this notion of blessing this week as well. Think about a time when you received an unexpected blessing and how that changed what you know about yourself or the world around you. And be open to paying attention to ways you might be called to receive or to offer blessings from others this week. Today as we mark the end of Rev Aimee’s time with us, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the unexpected blessing she has been in our lives here in this place over the last five years. Some of my colleagues thought I was crazy hiring a United Methodist deacon, but it worked, so HA!!!! She has freely shared her gifts of ordering things, of creating connections; she has helped us be more aware of pop-culture and the world around us. I mean, let’s be honest….how many of us finally broke down and watched Ted Lasso because Aimee wouldn’t stop asking if we’d watched it yet? She definitely brings the fun, and we are grateful for all the ways that she blessed us and helped us learn more about the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the fellowship of Holy Spirit as she walked this way with us for a season. i. Here’s an interesting article from Southern Living that helps unpack more the phrase “bless your heart”: https://www.southernliving.com/culture/bless-your-heart-response