Sermons
Welcoming and Loving in Difficult Times
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305Pronouns: she/her/hershttp://fumcschenectady.org/
By Michele Cole
03/12/17
You know, one of my
favorite holy days is Ash Wednesday, odd as that may sound. I can’t
really explain why that is, except that there’s something very
grounding about being reminded that we are from the earth and to it
we shall return. It’s a reminder that we are a part of the big
cosmic dance that includes all living things as well as inorganic
creations like rocks and sand (particularly beach sand!
) Or maybe it fulfills some kind of need to take a step back and
really look at how I live in and relate to the world outside myself.
I know these days I love to hear Pastor Sara read the litany from Yom
Kippur when she preaches in the joint ecumenical service; it’s
beautiful and life affirming. The downside to Ash Wednesday, at least
for me, is that it’s the beginning of Lent, which I’ve never
liked very much. As many of you know I grew up Catholic, although in
talking with others I find it was much the same elsewhere during that
time. I was a very imaginative and sensitive child and my very
traditional parish emphasized during Lent what was wrong with me, and
what I needed to do to be worthy. I was taught, or at least I
believed, that I was so bad that Jesus had to die because of me; and
so of course I felt very guilty that I helped to kill God. This isn’t
a judgement on the religion in which I was raised. This is how it
was, and I took it all in.
However, that’s not the
end of the story. As I was reading an online article on the United
Methodist Church’s General Board of Discipleship website a light
bulb went off in my head. I realized that the focus of Lent has
changed since my childhood, and indeed began changing across
denominational Christianity a few decades ago. Rather than a time of
grimness that we just need to suffer through, the theology and
practice of Lent has changed its focus to embrace a quiet time of
reflection and preparation. This shift in perspective brought us back
to the days of the early Christ followers, when they saw Lent as a
time of preparation for the sacrament of Baptism. For them, Lent was
the home stretch, as it were, when converts to Jesus’ Way received
their final faith formation before they entered the sacred covenant
with Christ and Christ’s church. This time was not all inward
focused, however; community members and soon-to-be members were
expected to look outwardly as well, tending to those in need. Lent
culminated in Easter, but also in baptism into a new way of living
for oneself and others.
I also learned that for
this Lenten season, the Methodist Church has decided to focus on
living out our baptismal calling, with a look each week at a
different baptismal question. Now, before you decide this sermon is
going to be as dry as dust, please hear me out! Maybe it will be, but
I’m finding it quite interesting how all of this is coming
together. You see, this week’s question is – “Do you accept the
freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and
oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?” Quite a
well-timed question, as it fits in rather nicely with the Scriptural
passages I chose for today and, unfortunately, with the tenor of
world events that have been happening recently.
Our second reading for
today recalls the sheep and goats parable that is told just before
Matthew’s recounting of Jesus’ passion and resurrection. Given
the timing as the last instruction before the end, it can be thought
of as holding special emphasis as the final word on Jesus’ social
teachings. Let me put a little context around it, as I pulled most of
it out. This comes at the end of Matthew’s chapter 25, where Jesus
has been cautioning His followers about the coming of God’s kingdom
and what their attitudes and activities should be. He has already
told them to be alert, lest God come when they are not prepared, and
also to be bold, not cautious, as they go about spreading the Good
News and growing the number of disciples. Now he is taking those
teachings to a new level; not only are they to be concerned about
their own day to day living, but they are to notice and enhance the
lives of the neediest among them. This is not just a morality tale,
though, of how we are to act … it is also a tale of how we are to
BE in the world and what attributes we are to cultivate in ourselves.
For if you read the rest of the story, you will see that neither the
sheep who were kind to the needy nor the goats who were not, did it
because Jesus was alive in the marginalized. They didn’t realize it
was Him. Those who reached out expressed their compassionate care of
each other, their desire to help another in a time of great need. The
goats had no such compassion and in fact, by saying “we didn’t
realize it was you” betrayed their cynicism; had they known it was
Jesus certainly they would have done something for Him. For their
neighbor, not so much.
So ultimately this is a
love story, a story where we are the lovers, where because we are
loved we can in turn pass it on. It is a story that reminds us in
fairly clear language what we, in our love for each other, are to do.
Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, welcome the
stranger – while I imagine that we’ve heard these words many
times before, they are taking on new meaning today, in a world that
seems to get meaner and harder with each news cycle. I admit to being
somewhat of a Facebook junkie, and I spend some time each day reading
story after story about one group pitting themselves against another
more marginalized group, as if there is just a finite amount of love
and kindness in the world and it shouldn’t be spent on ‘them.’
More people are being overtly demonized, with more dire consequences,
than in any time in my memory. It’s easy enough to do, and there
are certain segments of our society now that seem to relish the task.
I was reminded of this when I saw Wicked last weekend, which was
fabulous by the way!
I don’t know how many of you know the story but in a nutshell, it’s
a story about the ‘wicked’ witch of the west and how she came to
be wicked. And it turns out that it wasn’t her doing at all. She
was not ‘the bad one,’ but rather the victim of ‘othering.’
She was different from birth, with a different color skin from
everyone else, and so she was ostracized. She developed a talent for
doing spells and went to see the Wizard of Oz, who turned out to be
just a man, not really a wizard. She realized that he’d come into
power on a lie, and was in the process of eliminating all diversity
in the land of Oz. She argued with him and refused to join him;
instead she ran away. At which point the ‘Wonderful Wizard of Oz’
began to systematically demonize her, spreading rumors about her
evilness and telling lies about bad things that she had not done. By
the end of it, the people of Oz were thoroughly convinced that she
was bad to the bone, an evil wicked witch, even though her whole
reputation was built on lies. She was trying to do good, but the
castle was twisting everything she did, until finally she was no more
…
Which brings me back to
the present time, and the demonization of the ‘other,’ whether he
is an immigrant, or she is a refugee child fleeing from destruction
in her homeland, or they are a family of Muslims who are seeking
safety from an extremist organization that wants them dead. How are
we to think about the rhetoric that is flowing over us like so many
words, telling stories about the people who are leaving all they know
to come to where they hope is a safe place, guided only by their
hopes and the love of God who wants all God’s children to be safe.
Let’s take a moment to look at the lessons in the first reading,
when God called Abram and Sarai out of the land of their birth to
venture into a new land where their descendants will number like
stars in the sky.
Abram and Sarai were the
ultimate strangers; at a time when there were no Motel 6s or Google
Earth maps, they trusted God and went where they were told. They were
promised that they would be safe, that they would be led to a new
land, and that they would be a blessing to the world. This story
doesn’t say how they were treated along the way, whether they were
hassled or confronted, or whether they encountered the hospitality
that is so critical to so many stories in the Old Testament. What we
do know, though, is that they made it through to each place they were
led. They brought their customs and beliefs to a foreign land and
worshiped their God, and apparently were left alone to do this in
peace. And of course from them was born the Jewish people. This isn’t
just a creation story, though, detailing how the people of Israel
began. It is also a metaphor for how we are supposed to live, and to
think about others who are strangers in our lands. As Timothy F.
Simpson has pointed out in the online forum Political
Theology Today, this story is intended both
to make us think that we should be them (that is, that we should be
following where God leads, and trusting in God’s promises), but
also that we could be them. That like Sarai and Abram if we follow
where God leads we could be traveling to places we’ve never been
before, meeting people unlike us and bringing blessings to whoever is
there before us. This heightened sensitivity, or empathy, for the
stranger takes us in a couple of directions. It can lead us to put
ourselves in their place, encouraging us to treat them as we would
wish to be treated if we were far from home and family. We are also
led to recognize the blessings brought into our communities by those
whose talents and perspectives are different from our own. We are
called to be inclusive, to recognize the humanity of the stranger, to
be welcoming …
Welcoming … it can be
very hard for us to do, especially when those we greet look or act
differently from us, or from how we think they should. Heightened
tensions in the United States and around the world are resulting in
policies targeting Muslims and brown skinned people, murders of
people with brown skins or turbans, anti-Semitism resulting in bomb
threats and cemetery desecrations, and more murders of trans women of
color. In the absence of facts, ‘alternative truth’ is leading
Americans to fear and hate immigrants, refugees and anyone outside of
our comfort zone. Yet all is not yet lost, even though sometimes I’m
not sure I recognize our country anymore. Amid yells of “go back to
where you came from” we have to be the people of welcome, of
abundant love. We have to recognize the humanity of those who others
demonize, and share our humanity with them. We must model for the
world what we would like the world to become, and represent not only
the wanderer but also the One to whom we belong. If that sounds vague
I’m afraid it is, because each of us has a different talent to
share, and more or less time to exercise it. Each of us has a
different perspective on current events, and how we would like to
influence them. What I’m really suggesting is that we need to be
awake to what is going on around us at all levels of our society, and
to be ready to respond in whatever way makes the most sense for each
of us. As we seek to reach out to the least of these, and welcome the
strangers among us, we often need to look no farther than next to us,
or down the street, or sometimes even no farther than our own mirror.
In
the Matthew passage, the point is made that Christ has aligned
himself with the ‘least of these’ and in so doing, is found in
all of us. I would argue that when we think about bringing compassion
and love to each other, we should also pay attention to how we can
care for ourselves. It can be hard to do, I know, because I’m
working on it myself. It can be very easy to look after everyone else
but ignore our own very real needs for love, connection, compassion.
Right now I’m very concerned about how many people are hurting,
both the targets of nastiness and those of us who care about them and
for them. The 24 hour news cycle is producing lots of anger, despair
and hopelessness as it seems we go from one painful episode to
another. Many of us are simply exhausted and are struggling to make
sense of what’s happening around us. It’s in times like this that
we are called to nurture ourselves, to bring that same abundance of
compassion and love to ourselves that we give to each other. It’s
ok to recognize that our energy isn’t limitless and our passion
needs feeding before we can feed another.
This brings me to another
challenge that I’m struggling with; I don’t have an answer for
it, I just want to put it out here for your consideration. I’ve
talked a lot today about loving the least of these, and reaching out
to our neighbors, especially those who are being oppressed and
marginalized by society. But, that leaves out a group of people whom
we may not want to consider but who I feel we must. What about those
folks who are doing, saying and believing things that we find
absolutely abhorrent? Those whose attitudes we believe to be
completely wrong and even contrary to the Good News that we listen to
and love? I don’t know if you remember, but Sara preached about the
question I raised at the Connection gathering a few weeks ago,
wondering how peace and anger can co-exist, how we can be peaceful
without losing the edge that draws us into social action. I am now
raising a similar question, but one that may make us a little more
uncomfortable. At least it makes me squirm. I’m trying to figure
out how to love someone who I would much rather hate, or at least
detest a lot. Who I may actually think is dangerous to me or to our
society. I don’t mean that squishy kind of love that Kay Jewelers
sings about, but instead the robust love that we are told to bestow
on each other just for being a child of God in whom Jesus lives. What
does that love look like when its object is someone we don’t like?
How do we manifest it in our lives, and how do we come to terms with
it ourselves? I also wonder if, by saying that there are people who
by their words or actions don’t merit my love and concern, am I not
being just like those very people who hate others and wish ill for
them? Does the guilt or innocence of the person impact my Christian
love for them? Just a few of the questions swirling around in my
head. I’d welcome a conversation about them sometime if anyone
wants to take that one on!
Our readings for this
morning provide guidance as we consider the baptismal question I
posed earlier … “Do you accept the freedom and power God gives
you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they
present themselves?” If we are to answer yes to this question, we
must follow the direction we receive from God to welcome the stranger
among us. To feed, clothe, visit and care for the least among us
with an abundant compassion and love that reaches out because our
neighbor is in need, recognizing that Christ lives in everyone we
touch. To care for ourselves because we see the Christ in ourselves,
and to provide us with the strength and determination to keep
reaching out where we are needed. And finally to love without measure
not only those who are loveable, or those who we ‘should’ love
but also those who think differently from us or who have different
values. Because to resist evil and injustice do we not need to
counter it with love as well as with action? As Martin Luther King
Jr. said in his 1963 book of sermons Strength
to Love, “Returning hate for hate
multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of
stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies
toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when Jesus says
“Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and
ultimately inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an
impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies– or else?
The chain reaction of evil–hate begetting hate, wars producing
wars–must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of
annihilation.” These were timely words in 1963 when Martin
Luther King Jr put them to paper. They are equally of timely today.
May we find it in ourselves to love our enemies, even as we struggle
for a world where all are treated fairly and welcomed without
hesitation.
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305