Sermons
To Fall Down
“If I Fall” based on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Lay Leader Karyn McCloskey’s sermon:
Friends, all I can say is what a week to end up preaching…
I suspect there are at least one or two here today who climbed into a pulpit on September 16th,2001 and the months following and may remember what this feels like.
I don’t mean the sheer incomprehensibility of the attacks – at least to those of us born and raised in this country – but rather the aftermath. The hateful response to anyone who looked or sounded “foreign” –especially those with brown skin. The changes in our own government, the “Patriot Act” and the like. “See something, say something.” Distrust your neighbors – especially those with headcoverings and accents. It still bottoms out my stomach when I think about it.
This week feels the same. Changes in government, gag orders, stepping out of treaties and away from world citizenship. And now the ICE raids, families keeping their kids out of school, worried about neighbors turning them in—or at the very least not standing up to power.
It’s a lot and it’s overwhelming and it has the potential to seem completely hopeless…except that we are called to be people of hope. In essence for me, that’s what our baptisms recognize – they’re an outward sign of inward grace. Grace found in all people – regardless of race, religion, creed, time, place, socioeconomic status, or ability. There’s no clearer indication of this than the baptism of the Divine by a human. And for me, no clearer call on my heart than our baptismal vows.
I chose to use them as our call to worship because I think we need to have them in front of us. To give us strength when we’re weary. To pull us back when we’re getting distracted. To make us angry enough to flip tables that society would like us to quietly sit at.
This isn’t the first time that people of faith—and to be clear I don’t mean just Christians – have been called to action, called to stand with the vulnerable, called on a massive scale to respond with a very clear “NO”. Some of you have heard me tell the tale of Denmark in 1943, when after three years of Nazi occupation during which time the entire population, including the royal family, refused to comply with even intolerance, Hitler sent transport ships on the eve of Rosh Hashanah to gather up the Danish Jews. Word was spread across the countryside and through the cities – and overnight the Danish people hid over 7,000 of their fellow citizens away – in hospital beds, under fake names. In barns, in basements. And then shuttled them away in the holds of fishing boats across the waters to neutral Sweden. The German ships returned empty — and Denmark holds the distinction of being the only country in occupied Europe where the majority of those sent to the death camps were not Jewish.
A more recent example comes closer to home, when in March of 1965 came first the horror of Bloody Sunday, when 600 African Americans marching from Selma to Montgomery Alabama were beaten, run down, and tear gassed by State troopers and county possemen on the Edmund Pettus Bridge — followed by two more marches along that same route when thousands of people of all races, many of whom were clergy and other people of faith – with the third one ending with more than 25,000 assembling to protest at the Alabama State Capital, demanding the removal of obstacles to Black voter registration. ( On a side note – if you want to be inspired, I highly recommend watching the film “Selma” – that’s how I spent part of last Monday.)
There are others—like the decades of struggle, pain, and hard work that made possible this brand new Book of Discipline I got this week – but you get the point. At such a time as this, we are called to build the kindom.
To fall down and get back up.
To pick each other up – or lay down beside each other until we can rise again.
To stand behind, beside or in front of those who are vulnerable.
To use every ounce of whatever privilege we have
to speak out,
to lead out,
to fight our way out of this mess going on around us.
Because that’s how we renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil and unjust powers of this world, and repent of our separation from God and each other. So that we can accept the freedom and power God gives us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves!
And this becomes possible, because we know, to the very core of our beings, that the God of Jacob formed us too and the promise that echoes through the ages remains true: “I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.”
Amen.
January 26, 2025