Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr – First United Methodist Church Schenectady

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January 19, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

Two
years ago, our niece got a new game for Christmas: Harry Potter,
Hogwarts Battle. We usually spend New Years together, and it is a
great 4 person game, so Kevin and I got to break into the game with
our niece and her mother. It is now fair to say that this is our
favorite game, and the four us clocked A LOT of hours playing it.

Beyond
the really fun Harry Potter connections, and the truly excellent game
design, I think we all love it so much because it is a collaborative
game. The players are all working together towards a goal, so in the
end either everyone wins or everyone loses. Which also means that no
one of us ends up as the winner while the rest of us have lost.
Truthfully, I really like board games, and most of the ones I play
have winners and losers, and I’m generally OK with that, but there is
something really great about a collaborative game. It is especially
engaging because each choice we make impacts each other player, so we
have to pay attention to what each person needs and what each
person’s strengths are, and how each person can make the best use of
their strengths.

The
game is hard, and we lose sometimes. Really, we lose about half of
the games we play, and we sometimes give up a game before playing
just because the starting conditions are too difficult. But the
collaboration makes it interesting enough that even losing isn’t THAT
bad. (Most of the time.)

I
find it interesting that the collaborative game is so much fun. When
I was growing up our church had a copy “The Ungame” which was
mean to be a fun game that was collaborative rather than competitive,
and while I fully support the creators and their intentions it was
the least fun game imaginable. Yet,
there is so much already in our capitalistic society that is
inherently about winners and losers, and zero sum games, and
competing against each other – and I’m really, really glad that
there are now super fun games that don’t buy into that model.

Collaborative
games seem more like the model of working for the common good. Maybe
it is just because I was born and raised in the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania, but the moment when I finally actually noticed the word
“commonwealth” and thought about what it meant was eye-opening
for me. I think of the common good and commonwealths as other ways
of speaking about the kindom.

Over
the past 3+ years we’ve talked about Intersectional Justice and
Intersectionality a lot, but just in case the ideas are still fuzzy
for you, here is MFSA’s definition of its “intersectional
organizing principal.”

All experiences of marginalization
and injustice are interconnected because the struggle for justice is
tied to concepts of power and privilege. Intersectional organizing
recognizes that injustice works on multiple and simultaneous levels.
Because experiences of injustice do not happen in a vacuum, it is
imperative to: develop the most effective strategies to create space
for understanding privilege; organize in an intersectional framework
led by marginalized communities; and build effective systems of
resistance and cooperation to take action for justice. Practical
intersectional organizing always focuses on collaboration and
relationship building.

To
bring that a little bit more into reality, intersectionality means
acknowledging that working on ONE issue and making as small as
possible so you can make some gains really doesn’t help that much.
For example, it is said that 101 years ago women gained the right to
vote in NY state, that misses that it only applied to white women.
That came from a choice to empower white women at the expense of
women of color and was NOT intersectional organizing. There have
been a LOT of times organizing has worked this way, most of the time
it has worked this way, and it has done a lot of harm.

During
an anti-white supremacy training, I was taught to think holistically
about power. That is, we all know what traits are most associated
with power in our society: white, male, rich, straight, English
speaking, cisgender, citizen, with a full range of ableness,
educated, tall… etc, right? In each case, there is an opposite to
the description that is disempowered. I’m expecting you are
following thus far. Well, because the people who have the traits
connected to power control the resources, they use most of them! And
then, it turns out, the people who are DISCONNECTED from power end up
fighting to get access to the scraps of resources that the powerful
are willing to share. There are two
REALLY bad parts of this – first of all, to get access to those
resources usually means playing by the rules of the ones who have
power, and secondly, those without power are usually set up to fight
AGAINST EACH OTHER for access to those scraps.

That
is, when white women decided to try to get the vote for themselves,
and not seek voting rights for all women, they made a decision to
play by the rules of how power already worked, and to distance
themselves from people of color to try to get what they wanted and
needed. And, this happens time and time again.

Intersectionality
is about seeing the wholeness of the power dynamics, and the
complicated realities of people – who all have power in some ways
and lack power in others – and holding the whole together while
working for good. It is really, really hard.

It
is probably also why I teared up when reading Isaiah this week. The
passage quotes God as saying, “It is too light a thing that you
should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore
the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.“ The way I
heard that was, don’t just work for the benefit of a few, even if
they are the ones you identify with – work for the well being of
ALL. And all, in all places, including enemy nations!!

Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is best known for his transformational
work on racial justice, work that make our country noticeably better.
Yet, at the end of his life, he had broadened his work, and was
organizing around poverty. As several of the past year’s
Intersectional Justice Book Club books have pointed out, the powers
that exist in the United States have VERY INTENTIONALLY used race to
divide people, in large part so that impoverished white people and
impoverished people of color wouldn’t start working together against
their common oppressor. Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign was
designed to bring people together for their common good, and truly
for every’s good. As King once said, “In your struggle for
justice, let your oppressor know that you are not attempting to
defeat or humiliate him, or even to pay him back for injustices that
he has heaped upon you. Let him know that you are merely seeking
justice for him as well as yourself.” Because, truly, oppressing
anyone harms both the oppressed AND inherently, the oppressor.

Today,
other’s have picked up Dr. King’s mantle, and there is an active Poor
People’s Campaign underway. While their “Fundamental Principals”
are expansive – there are 12 – they are a coherent whole and I
couldn’t edit them down. I want you hear, and be filled with hope,
and maybe even be motivated to work with this campaign, so here they
are:

We are rooted
in a moral analysis based on our deepest religious and
constitutional values that demand justice for all. Moral revival is
necessary to save the heart and soul of our democracy.
We
are committed to lifting up and deepening the leadership of those
most affected by systemic racism, poverty, the war economy, and
ecological devastation and to building unity across lines of
division.
We
believe in the dismantling of unjust criminalization systems that
exploit poor communities and communities of color and the
transformation of the “War Economy” into a “Peace Economy”
that values all humanity.
We
believe that equal protection under the law is non-negotiable.
We
believe that people should not live in or die from poverty in the
richest nation ever to exist. Blaming the poor and claiming that the
United States does not have an abundance of resources to overcome
poverty are false narratives used to perpetuate economic
exploitation, exclusion, and deep inequality.
We
recognize the centrality of systemic racism in maintaining economic
oppression must be named, detailed and exposed empirically, morally
and spiritually. Poverty and economic inequality cannot be
understood apart from a society built on white supremacy.
We
aim to shift the distorted moral narrative often promoted by
religious extremists in the nation from issues like prayer in
school, abortion, and gun rights to one that is concerned with how
our society treats the poor, those on the margins, the least of
these, women, LGBTQIA folks, workers, immigrants, the disabled and
the sick; equality and representation under the law; and the desire
for peace, love and harmony within and among nations.
We
will build up the power of people and state-based movements to serve
as a vehicle for a powerful moral movement in the country and to
transform the political, economic and moral structures of our
society.
We
recognize the need to organize at the state and local level—many
of the most regressive policies are being passed at the state level,
and these policies will have long and lasting effect, past even
executive orders. The movement is not from above but below.
We
will do our work in a non-partisan way—no elected officials or
candidates get the stage or serve on the State Organizing Committee
of the Campaign. This is not about left and right, Democrat or
Republican but about right and wrong.
We
uphold the need to do a season of sustained moral direct action as a
way to break through the tweets and shift the moral narrative. We
are demonstrating the power of people coming together across issues
and geography and putting our bodies on the line to the issues that
are affecting us all.
The Campaign
and all its Participants and Endorsers embrace nonviolence. Violent
tactics or actions will not be tolerated.

This
campaign is DEEPLY good news. I encourage you to look them up, their
demands are even better (but ever longer) and well worth the read.
There are a lot of opportunities to volunteer with and support the
Poor People’s Campaign, and I’d be happy to connect to to those who
are organizing – as would your Intersectional Justice chairs.

Working
towards justice for all is really, really hard work. It can even be
overwhelming, but as Isaiah says, God is out for the well-being of
the whole world. Before you get overwhelmed though, let me remind
you that God has a LOT of partners in this work and no ONE of us is
called to do all the work. In fact, we’re called to trust each other
and each other’s work, and to carefully discern what our work is to
do. Love exists, its power can spread, justice is possible, and good
people are at work. We are meant to be a light to ALL the nations,
and with God at our backs, we can and we will. And it is possible
because of collaboration. Thanks be to God. Amen

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
 https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

January 19, 2019

Sermons

“Meditation of My Heart” Page based on Leviticus 19:9-18 Psalm…

September 30, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

What sort of world do we want to live in? What world are we trying to create? This is a central question of faith, and the answer has sacred names. It is often called the kindom of God, it is also known as the beloved community. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King said, “Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”¹ I believe that this vision goes back to the beginning of our faith tradition, and is the the vision of the Torah itself. (The Torah is a name for the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.)

Today I want to look at that vision for the world, and build on it into the vision we see God seeking to build from the world as we know it today into what it could be. The vision we’ll see was one that detailed how society should be set up, specifically outlining how to to create a just system where even the vulnerable can thrive.

Not everyone sees this vision in the Hebrew Bible. Many Christians have been taught to distrust the vision of the Hebrew Bible. The Torah is often interpreted into English as “the law” and that has gained disfavor in many Christian circles. Paul wrote in Romans 7, “But now we are discharged from the law, dead to that which held us captive, so that we are slaves not under the old written code but in the new life of the Spirit.” (Romans 7:6 NRSV) Those following his ideas have seen the law as old, as dated, as dead – and thus definitely not as life giving.

I think we miss a lot when we simplify that much. “The law” is a series of rules, regulations, and expectations about what it would take to develop a stable community that values human life. They’re profound, intentional, and life-giving.

The Torah vision emerges out of the core conception of the Divine in the ancient Jewish faith – that God was a God who cared about how people treated each other. God wanted the people of God to create a community where all of God’s people could survive, and thrive! This was notable in a time when most communities conceived of gods and goddesses who cared only for how humans treated the gods and goddesses – related to worship and sacrifices. Instead of a concept of God that is self-serving, the Torah vision sets out a series of rules and regulations about how humans are to treat each other, under the impression that this is what God wants from them. God is pleased when people care for each other. This is the foundation of our faith tradition, and of the Torah vision for good living.

As we see in several of the 10 commandments – don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, don’t covet what your neighbor has – how neighbors get treated is central to how a stable and supportive society is formed. Of course, we also see in the 10 commandments that how God is understood matters – don’t have other gods, don’t make idols, don’t take the name of the God in vain, and even I would argue, remember the Sabbath day. These two facets coincide with the great commandments as found in the Hebrew Bible. Leviticus 19:18b, “but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.” and the Shema, found in Deutoronomy 6:4-5, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.” On these two foundations – care for each other and love of God, ancient Israel was built.

According to John Dominic Crossan, the vision was one of distributive justice, and we see that as staring with the Sabbath. Sabbath is a distribution of rest, that applied to both Israelites, and foreigners. It applied EVERYONE, and came every week. That prevented people from being dehumanized by constant work. One day off out of seven means that there is an identity other than work. The Sabbath laws were also about distribution – distribution of rest and thus humanity! The Sabbath rules also, in a way, applied to the land. Fields were mean to lie fallow every 7 years. The Jubilee year was also an extension of Sabbath. Leviticus explains this in chapter 25:

“You shall count off seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the period of seven weeks of years gives forty-nine years. Then you shall have the trumpet sounded loud; on the tenth day of the seventh month—on the day of atonement—you shall have the trumpet sounded throughout all your land. And you shall hallow the fiftieth year and you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you: you shall return, every one of you, to your property and every one of you to your family. That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you: you shall not sow, or reap the aftergrowth, or harvest the unpruned vines. For it is a jubilee; it shall be holy to you: you shall eat only what the field itself produces.

In this year of jubilee you shall return, every one of you, to your property. (Leviticus 25:8-13, NRSV)

This brings us to the the distribution of land, that land that each family returned to! Every tribe got a portion of the land and then every family got a portion of the tribe’s land. That is, every family got land on which they could live and farm. There was a careful distribution of land to enable all of the Israelites to have subsistence.

Then, there were rules and regulations to make sure that the land wouldn’t be appropriated out of the hands of the family!! One of those was the rule that loans had to be forgiven every 7 years so that debt did not accumulate. The other piece was that land could only be LEASED, as we heard in the Jubilee passage a moment ago. If a family got into financial trouble and had to sell their land, it could only be leased for up to 49 years but it could not be sold outside of the family. This meant a family could not permanently lose their basis of subsistence.

There is one exception to the land distribution though. One tribe did not get ANY land. That was the tribe of Levi, the Levites. The Levites, instead, lived off of the tithes of the other nations. The Levites were the “holy people”, from that tribe the priests were chosen. The Levites were set aside to deal with matters of the Divine. They were the moral compass of the community. The Levites were dependent on the other tribes for their survival when they otherwise had so much power, it kept them motivated to seek the well-being of the tribes because they were interdependent. It also meant that while most of society was at work farming and tending to herds, there were people pondering, considering, and attending to the big picture. It wasn’t that they were closer to God, simply that they got to spend more of their time attending to the things of God on behalf of everyone else.

The Torah vision had other safeguards in place to try to keep things just. Loans could not be given with interest. That means that there was no penalty for needing a loan. One did not go further into poverty because one was in poverty. It also means that those who were doing well enough to offer loans did not glean further wealth from it.

The was also a provision for gleaning. Those who owned land were banned from picking the edges of their fields as well as from going back to pick a second time, making sure to get it all. That way, those who didn’t have land – the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners, had a way to feed themselves by picking the leftovers. I am also under the impression that some of the work of the tithe was to feed the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners. That is, that even though the Torah tried to make sure everyone got land, there were also careful provisions for the exceptions! This is summarized in Leviticus 19, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 19:9-10)

Finally, the Bible absolutely obsesses over having a fair justice system that shows no partiality. To go back to Leviticus 19 for a concise version of this, “You shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great: with justice you shall judge your neighbor.” (Leviticus 19:15) The very concept of justice in the Torah vision is tied into the lack of partiality, neighborliness, and to God’s own nature. Almost all of those Leviticus 10 provisions end with “I am YHWH.” God’s own being requires this care of people, and this care of people is what builds a society that reflects God’s own being!!

Of course, ancient Israel often failed to live into the Torah vision. That’s why we have so many prophetic books filled with prophets calling kings and the powerful into compliance with the care of the vulnerable and justice for all!

Now, I do not wish to live in a theocracy, I think they tend to go poorly. But, I think there is a whole lot in the Torah vision that is worth considering and pondering. I don’t see a whole lot of justice in our society, and I do see a LOT of partiality. Starting with where we are today, what do we see God at work trying to create? How is God seeing to make sure all people have sustenance? How is God at work to make justice systems just and fair? How is God trying to ensure the vulnerable are cared for and that those who have experienced oppression or harm are heard? I believe we can hear this work of God, if we listen for it; and see this work of God, if our eyes are open.

Psalm 19 celebrates the vision of the Torah, it celebrates the Torah itself! It is beautiful, isn’t it? It calls the Torah a source of reviving the soul, and wisdom, and clarity. It says the Torah is sweeter than honey and better that gold! It thinks this communal living that attempts to reflect God’s love of God’s people is THAT good! What delight is there in envisioning a society, a WORLD, where all are cared for?

The Torah-vision, the kindom of God, the beloved community, they are different ways of saying the same thing. So too, I believe, is the often repeated quote from Rev. Dr. J. Edward Carothers, teaching of the church existing to “to establish and maintain connections of mutual support in ever widening circles of concern.” Just so, the Psalmist says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” As people of faith, we are called into these visions – to see them, to dream them, to move towards them, to celebrate them as they come into being, and work towards them. Sometimes the biggest work of all is to dream big enough for God. Thanks be to God. Amen

1Martin Luther King Jr. 1957, found at http://www.wearethebelovedcommunity.org/bcquotes.html. Accessed on 9/27/28.

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

Sermons

“Life, Death, and Resurrection“ based on Isaiah 25:6-9 and Mark…

April 1, 2018February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

When I was a little girl, 8 years old I think, my family adopted a calico cat we named Marble Cake. We adopted her from the Humane Society, and she was beautiful. She was a little bit wild! The first time I held her, she extended her claws and exited by walking down my back. My parents thought she’d been mistreated earlier in her life, and assured us that if we were kind to her she would settle down.

The thing is, they were right. She changed in the matter of months. She was sweet and cuddly, a wonderful lap cat, and a fantastic companion for 18 years! Looking back on that moment when she settled into our lives, I’m especially grateful for my parents’ wisdom. Marble Cake needed to be able to establish her boundaries and have them be respected, so that the love we wanted to give her could break through. If we had ignored her, she wouldn’t have experienced love. If we had violated her boundaries, she never would have come to trust us. Worst of all, if we had fought back when – acting in fear- she hurt us, there would have been escalating violence.

I suspect that the story I just shared is particularly obvious to most of you. Hurting mammals respond with fear and fear often comes out as aggression. And any mammal who has been hurt needs consistent, gentle, loving care; and when it comes, miraculous changes occur. The irony is that human beings forget that we too are mammals, and we too need consistent, gentle, loving care. This forgetting causes problems on both the personal and the societal scale.

I want to look at the ways this plays out on the societal level. Let’s think for a moment about a group who is seen as a threat. This happens often enough! In fact, in the time of Jesus, the Jesus movement itself was seen as a threat. Conversely, from the perspective of the Jesus movement, the domination system of the Roman Empire was a threat!

Each of them responded VERY differently to the perceived threat though. The Roman Empire and its Roman appointed Jerusalem leaders worked the way most societies do throughout time. They decided to eliminate the threat, silence it, stop it. More concretely, they decided to kill Jesus to prevent the movement from continuing. Even though the Jesus movement was a nonviolent one, they stopped it violently. This is the most common way that the world works 🙁

Within the Jesus movement, those in power and authority were also a threat! The Jesus movement compromised primarily Galilean peasants whose lives were already threatened by the ways money flowed to the top in the domination system with didn’t leave enough for everyone to survive. They were further threatened when the Jerusalem leaders got scared of them. Jesus wasn’t trying to eliminate anyone though, he wasn’t even thinking of them as threats or as enemies. This is the man who taught love of enemies. Jesus was trying to change the system so that everyone benefitted, INCLUDING those who were currently oppressors. His nonviolent movement was aimed at the commonwealth of God where everyone can thrive. Now, of course, the oppressed are the most harmed in any system of oppression, BUT the oppressors are always also dehumanized by their participation in the system. Jesus was trying to bring a fuller life and a deeper humanity to all people, he was trying to bless the oppressors.

Reflecting back on Marble Cake, the Empire hit back when the cats claws came out, and Jesus loved the cat. Sometimes this is easier to see closer to our lives today. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote,

To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.¹

Rev. Dr. King and his followers acted like Jesus and his followers. They followed the path of nonviolence that transforms violence itself with the power of love. It is not an easy path, but it is a transformative one.

The world in the time of Jesus, as it was before him and as it has been after him, tended towards the ways of violence, oppression, and domination. There is a contrast between the ways the world most often has worked and the ways God would have the world work. And the primary difference is that the world uses violence to uphold inequity while God calls us to nonviolence and profound equity. (As people normalized to a capitalistic system, this should be squirmy.)

Jesus threatened the domination system of his day, in many ways. He offered free healing, which upset the economic systems dependent on gaining wealth from people’s illness. He taught everyone who came to him, which flagrantly defied the rules of social order (most particularly that only men were worthy of studying God). His teachings illuminated the injustices of the world around him. He spoke in ways that called out those who benefited from oppressing others, including in his own faith tradition. Additionally, he engaged in nonviolent direct action against the injustices of the Roman-Appointed Temple and the Roman-Controlled Passover celebrations. Worse yet, he was profoundly popular with the masses who were rekindling the power of their own faith tradition to find hope, connection, and reasons to challenge the way things were.

So, the Roman appointed Jerusalem leaders killed him. Yet, he maintained his commitment to nonviolence. He didn’t fight back, he didn’t flee, nor did he accept that what was being done was acceptable. He was killed, but he remained nonviolent and committed to God and God’s vision. He didn’t let the threat of violence, and the fear it induces, change his path.

This becomes particularly significant today. Marcus Borg said, “Easter is God’s YES to the World’s NO.” The World, with its preference for systems of domination and oppression, killed Jesus. The threat of violence became the punishment of death, and the world’s strongest commendation. But it failed.

Violence couldn’t force Jesus to comply, or conform, or even fight back and become a part of itself. Violence was powerless against Jesus! Death was powerless against Jesus, because they couldn’t change him or stop him! Because Jesus was able to face violence with nonviolence and disrupt its power, we know that we can too.²

Furthermore, the reason the Empire used violence against Jesus was to stop the Jesus movement. In that, it radically failed. Initially, their tactics worked. Peter was too afraid to claim Jesus, even after he’d followed him to find out what was happening. The disciples stayed away while he was crucified. (Exception being the female disciples who seem to have been there the whole time, although to be fair to the males, I don’t think they were seen as a threat and therefore weren’t threatened in the same ways. Likely they were mostly invisible to those who killed Jesus.)

So, the tactics of violence to induce fear worked BUT only temporarily. Then SOMETHING happened and changed things. Those same disciples who had denied Jesus and disappeared into the night became the leaders of the continuing Jesus movement and were unstoppable by the threat of violence from that point onward. All of the (remaining, male) disciples remained nonviolent while they were killed by the violence of the Empire. Whatever it was that changed the disciples from fear to fearlessness, from allowing violence to impact their actions to being impervious to violence, that’s what we call resurrection.

And it is our inheritance today. Jesus had a commitment to nonviolence, one that refused to be changed by the threat of violence. His disciples learned it. Today we celebrate it, and in our lives we are able to claim it! We are, today, the Body of Christ continuing his work and his legacy, and that requires that we use his means to seek his ends. To be followers in the way of Jesus “requires the unconditional and unilateral renunciation of violence.”³ Without that, we would easily fall into the other methods of fear, retribution, and fighting violence with violence. And Rev. Dr. King so clearly told us, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”⁴

The system of domination, oppression, and violence killed Jesus, but failed to stop his movement. God and Jesus can’t be stopped even by death! The Jesus movement got stronger. God’s work in the world built strength!

Mark tells us all this with only an empty tomb. In this earliest of gospels, all we get is the already fearless women, the suggestion of resurrection through a messenger, the hope for the disciples, and the fear that ends it all. This is the original ending of the Gospel of Mark and it is strikingly abrupt. “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” The end 😉 Scholars think the ending is intended to motivate action, that the listener would think “well, if the women didn’t tell, I have to” and/or “if they were afraid, I can overcome my fear and participate in the resurrection that they’re missing!”

To live out God’s nonviolence, is to live out God’s love, and is to live the kindom of God in the now. Some of this living is in celebrating, and that’s our particular work today! We are to see, name, and celebrate. We see, name, and celebrate nonviolence, the kindom, and resurrection. It is all around us, when we are looking. It is in the decrease in worldwide poverty and hunger, but also in the loving way our breakfast volunteers greet our breakfast guests. It is in the work of UMCOR, but also in the loving greetings shared as people enter the church. It is in the long, hard, work to change the norms and laws of society for the better but also in laughter between strangers.

Nonviolence, its expansive love, and its incredible power have changed the world and will change the world. Their power is seen in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus AND in his followers throughout time. May it be seen in us, in the strength of our love, and in the clarity of our commitment to follow his ways of nonviolence. May it be seen as we celebrate the resurrection and the reminder that violence cannot stop the love of our God. Amen

1Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “On Loving Your Enemies” found athttps://www.onfaith.co/onfaith/2015/01/19/martin-luther-king-jr-on-loving-your-enemies/35907 on March 29, 2018.

2Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Fortress Press: 1993 it seems), 141.

3Walter Wink, 149.

4King (same sermon on “Loving Your Enemies”)

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