"healing" America -- a guest post by Laurene Lafontaine

A couple of weeks after the US election, a number of US citizens working in the Church of Scotland were asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called Life and Work. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election.

The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but we were told we could publish full original essays here if we wished. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, it seems like time. 

This guest post is by the Rev. Laurene Lafontaine, a minister in Aberdeen.

~~~~

Growing up in a family which was neither religious nor political, I was a bit of an outlier with my overwhelming interest in both religion and politics.  There are  memorable moments in my journey of faith, and I can clearly remember various political moments as if they were yesterday.  For example, at a 1984 rally, I met Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman Vice-President nominee of an American major party; shaking hands with both Bill and Hillary Clinton after getting up at 4:45 am on election day 3 November 1992 for their 6:00 am last campaign stop in Denver; the resounding roar of 80,000 people when Illinois Senator Barack Obama accepted the nomination for Democratic nomination for President in Denver, Colorado 2008; meeting Vice President Joe Biden in 2012; and the haunting election night of 8 November 2016. 

In 2016, as voting results were reported along the political prognosticators’ acknowledgement they had got it wrong, a growing angst and dread overtook the anticipation and excitement many Americans felt earlier in the day. Around 1:30 am(CST)/6:30 am GMT, after it was clear a win was unattainable, I went to bed. I was feeling utterly devastated along with at least 63 million other Americans and countless across the globe. Hillary Clinton would not be the 45^th President of the United States, and our worst nightmare had begun. 

This nightmare has included children being taken from their parents at the Mexican border, a Muslim travel ban executive order, impeachment, withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement, and an America First agenda. Unimaginable damage to American democratic fabric has occurred. Trump has been the catalyst which not only brought the pervasive structural racism and white supremacy in American society to the forefront, but also legitimised outright brutality and violence perpetrated upon people who were African Americans, immigrants, children, Muslims, LGBTQ, Asians, reporters, to name a few. 

The unmitigated racism, on which America was founded and built, has flourished under this administration. The horror of watching African Americans literally being murdered, lynched, before our very eyes by those called to protect or armed young men … there are no polite words for this utter depravity.  Instead of bringing people together, he has spent four years golfing, tweeting, and sowing hate and discord in a divided country.  

His intentional dismantling of the American governmental social and educational programs and structures is deeply concerning as the impact will be felt for generations. As a child born into poverty, such programs provided early education opportunities, essential food support, medical care and financial assistance to families like mine. In 1965, I was a member of the first Head Start class held in my hometown. Head Start provided a safe environment where a curious 5-year-old could begin to thrive intellectually. Education is the golden ticket, in conjunction with social support, they are crucial to the development of a just and peaceful society. 

America is at a critical stage of societal development.  America is like an unruly 244-year-old adolescent, relatively speaking, nation struggling to develop a healthy identity, post-Cold War. Addressing the brutal history of genocide and slavery will be crucial in efforts to shift from a racially bias culture to a bias free society. 

After four years of divisive political leadership, President Elect Joe Biden and Vice-President Elect Kamala Harris are faced with a monumental task particularly as the catastrophic Covid crisis rages out of control.  Their challenge is to develop a new inclusive leadership approach beyond typical party politics. It is encouraging that a core value of their transition team is a diversity of ideology.

I am cautiously optimistic.  Joe Biden is the right person for this challenge.  He is centre-left with considerable experience and a rich history of bringing diverse perspectives together. He is a team player who surrounds himself with bright people who are often much smarter than he is. His selection of Kamala Harris was wise and bold. Joe Biden is a good man guided by a strong faith, an openness to learning, and an inclusive understanding of justice. Two of my friends worked on his staff whilst he was Vice President, so their experiences have also informed my perspective.  

Returning to religion and politics, often a hesitancy exists regarding a religious voice in the public forum because it’s perceived as political. Had several religious leaders spoke out when Trump belittled or said awful things about a person, ethnic groups etc, would it have made a difference? I hope so. At least, those people might have felt like they mattered. What are the social justice issues in the UK? As Christian leaders, we can share the Gospel message by addressing social justice issues in the public forum and advocating for those affected by those issues. If we don’t, who will? 

"healing America" -- a guest post by Julia Cato

 A couple of weeks after the US election, a number of US citizens working in the Church of Scotland were asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called Life and Work. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election.

The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but we were told we could publish full original essays here if we wished. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, it seems like time. 

This guest post is by Julia Cato, who is a graduate probationer, seeking a call to ordained ministry in the CofS.

~~~~

“How do you think it will go?” a friend asked a week before the 2020 U.S. General Elections. “I have no idea” was my honest reply.  I sighed with what I realised was almost defeat.  I already had the sense that no matter how the elections would go, no one would come away a winner.  There was too much divisiveness and too much harm done. Now, a few weeks on, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party’s win feels more like a reprieve than a victory.   

I attended a DoDDS (Department of Defense Dependents Schools) primary school on a U.S. Air Force Base in Germany.  I remember every morning we would stand to sing either “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” or “America the Beautiful”.  Then, with our hands on our hearts, we would recite in unison, “The Pledge of Allegiance” to the U.S. flag hanging in the corner of the classroom.  Every single day of every school year. 

I remember my German mother’s quiet discomfort with this morning ritual of school children pledging their allegiance to a flag.  It would be years before I would learn how a flag can mean different things to different people.  And even more time would pass before I would begin to understand how national histories haunt us until we make reparations for our sins. 

I can still recite “The Pledge of Allegiance” by heart. Not only did we pledge allegiance to the flag, but also “to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all (emphasis mine).”  The Very Reverend Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas writes, “On the one hand is the democratic vision that America is founded upon, with freedom and justice for all. On the other is the actual foundation of America, with its embedded ideology and practice of white supremacy. These two sides are at war with one another.”

The 2020 US General Elections are about more than just Biden versus Trump, they are about who we are as Americans and who we want to be.  Come 20 January 2021, the 46th President of the United States will have to lead a country greatly divided.  While many will be celebrating the new administration with its first woman of colour vice-president, millions will not.  If there is to be true and lasting change, the new President and his administration will have to push forward in new ways, not falling back on institutionalised patterns. 

“Liberty and justice for all” must embrace God’s justice moving us toward a freedom and wholeness in which we all can see one another as equals.  As Christians, we must articulate and model God’s justice from our pulpits, from within our prayer groups and bible studies, from within our homes, and from within ourselves.  There cannot be unity among the people of the United States of America where there is not justice for all.

A deeper understanding of reconciliation and healing is necessary, and this will require a reckoning with the injustices committed, not just over the last four years, but throughout our nation’s entire history.  My hope for the next four years is that we Americans will take advantage of this reprieve and begin a healing which can only unfold by effectively rooting out white supremacy embedded in our systems and structures, and perhaps most significantly for white Americans, within ourselves.  

- Graduate Probationer, Julia A. Cato

"healing" post-election USA

 A couple of weeks after the US election, I was asked to contribute an essay to the Church of Scotland magazine called Life and Work. The topic was about "healing America" after such a divisive election, and they were asking a number of American citizens living and working in the Church of Scotland to reflect. I said that I was feeling a bit cynical about calls for "healing" and that these were likely the most dangerous two months in post-Civil-War US history, but I would try.

The essays ended up having to be significantly edited for length, but I was told I could publish my full original essay here. The magazine was published this week...and after the events of this week in Washington DC and a number of US state houses, I thought it was time.

~~~~

It feels difficult to write about healing a post-election USA when the election is, in many ways, still ongoing. It may or may not be too strong to say that I’m writing while we are witnessing an attempted coup, but however it turns out, I think it’s safe to say that the divisions in the United States are deep and present-tense, and will not be easily plastered over.

Indeed, it actually feels a little bit trite to talk about “healing” when that carries some implications of restoration to a previous health that I’m not sure has ever truly existed. From the inception of the nation, it has carried an illness (white supremacy and a sense of exceptionalism) that has inexorably led to this brokenness. Should that brokenness be healed if it means simply returning to the way things used to be? If that’s the road taken, then we will surely find ourselves at this same place again, and again, and again.

I want to be hopeful that the moment we are witnessing now is indeed a moment of transformation. Once upon a time, the racism in the country was institutionalised as a system of enslavement and of colonial expansion. Then it was institutionalised as a system of segregation. Then there was a period when racists hid behind hoods and under cover of darkness. Today it’s again out in the open, and that feels, paradoxically, like a move toward health. After all, we cannot transform what we do not name. Pretending the problem of white supremacy and nationalism does not exist will only allow it to grow (as has happened for the past 50 years when many thought we had made great strides). Now that we can see plainly that much of that progress was an illusion, there is hope for real change. Much like South Africa needed Truth in order to have Reconciliation, the same is true in the USA. And there has not been very much truth-telling there.

For centuries it has been the American way to present an image, to paper over differences (or to melt them together, we might say), and to act as if everything is fine — as long as you’re white, you’re one of us. But underneath, the sense that people of colour might not be “real” Americans, that they were inferior in some way, has persisted, both subconsciously in people (and consciously in plenty of people) and systemically in the way society and economy and culture are structured. Honesty about that could pave the way forward.

Perhaps the fact that so much division is now visible to the white gaze, where it used to be hidden (but still present, and has always been visible to non-white people!), is actually a good thing. It allows us to honestly see how much work we have to do, and to do it for real this time rather than just with a few words that are nothing more than a cheap plaster that does nothing for true healing. This will be heartbreaking work, but also heart-healing work — if we are willing to engage with it at every level, not just as individuals but also in the way the economy works and doesn’t work, in the ways cultural institutions (music, dance, theatre, art, literature) are valued, in government, in systems of power in communities, and within churches. It will mean wrestling with theological language that equates “dark” with “bad,” it will mean changing the way resources are used, it will mean adjustments in who is at the table when decisions are taken, it will mean listening and believing the stories people tell, it will mean stepping aside to allow new leadership, and — perhaps most difficult of all for a nation built on rugged individualism — it will mean actually caring about and for our neighbours in tangible ways and in policy ways.

The current situation feels so destabilising, but maybe that’s exactly what the USA needs if it is to truly achieve a society of “liberty and justice for all” and not just some. So I hope President Biden won’t rush to “healing” but will first encourage some soul-searching and truth-telling, so that the healing that eventually comes will be on a cellular level and not just skin-deep.

Mary Sings -- a sermon for the fourth Sunday of Advent

Rev. Teri Peterson

Gourock St. John’s

Mary Sings

Luke 1.46-56 NRSV

20 December 2020, NL3-16b, Advent 4 (blessings of an impossible Christmas)

Today we pick up right where we left off last week, with Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth. They're both pregnant and Elizabeth has blessed Mary for her trust in God's word to her. I'm reading from the gospel according to Luke, chapter 1, beginning at verse 46, from the New Revised Standard Version.

And Mary said,

‘My soul magnifies the Lord, 

  and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, 

for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.

   Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; 

for the Mighty One has done great things for me,

   and holy is his name. 

His mercy is for those who fear him

   from generation to generation. 

He has shown strength with his arm;

   he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. 

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly; 

he has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty. 

He has helped his servant Israel,

   in remembrance of his mercy, 

according to the promise he made to our ancestors,

   to Abraham and to his descendants for ever.’

And Mary remained with her for about three months and then returned to her home.

This week I read a startling news article. Did you know that 2020 is the year that human-made things literally outweighed nature? This is the year that all the stuff we have created — our built environment of concrete and metal and glass, machinery, waste, everything we own — all of that now weighs more than all the entire biomass of the earth. Plastic alone weighs more than all the animals on land and sea! And the vast majority of that mass has been created since the second World War.

Reading about this definitely gave me pause when I was shopping for Christmas gifts. How can we celebrate the Christ who turns everything upside down and at the same time not add to this heavy footprint on God’s beloved creation?

I also had Mary’s song at the front of my mind as I was reading about the study titled “poverty linked to higher risk of Covid death” showing that those living in poorer health board areas of Scotland were more likely to have severe cases of Covid requiring intensive care, and because fewer critical care beds were available in those areas, people in economically deprived areas are more likely to die. We’ve seen the effects of that in Inverclyde through this pandemic, and the statistics nationwide bear out that more poor and disadvantaged people are dying—both from Covid and from other things going untreated as the health service tries to cope.

And again, the news this week is full of the epidemic of drug misuse in Scotland, and here in Inverclyde a rising rate of drug use and deaths. Of course we know that drugs and deprivation go hand in hand, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to us. 

Into the middle of this reality, where hope seems impossible, Mary sings.

Like all of us, she begins from her own personal experience. Though she was not a person of power or status or wealth, just a poor teenager in an out-of-the-way town in an occupied land, God noticed her. God loved her. God called her. And she sang of her gratitude, her awe and wonder, her praise. This thing that God had done — called her to be a prophet and the mother of the Messiah — would not be easy, yet she said that God had done great things for her! She may have been scared, as anyone in her position would be, but her confidence in God’s goodness was enough to raise her voice.

And then, halfway through, Mary recognises that her own personal experience, her own little life that has been unremarkable, is also part of something bigger. Something that God has been doing for a long time, and will continue to do through her and her son, and on into the future: upend the systems of this world and make them look more like the kingdom of God.

From generation to generation, God works with power and mercy, through the lowliest and the marginalised, to fulfil the promise that changes everything: scatters the proud, brings down the powerful, and sends the rich away empty, while lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things. 

This is the Word that becomes flesh in Jesus. This is the promise that Mary is bearing in her body, the fruit of her faithfulness. This is who God is and what God does — from the earliest days of scripture to the very end of the book and beyond.

I wonder how many of us would join Mary in praising God for these things … given that we are far more likely to be the proud, powerful, and rich in this scenario? We are, globally speaking, at the top of this system that God is turning upside down. We are the ones whose lifestyles have created a situation where our stuff weighs down God’s creation. We are the ones who stand at arms length from the realities of deprivation and wring our hands and make a donation here and there and pray for something to change.

We should be careful what we pray for, because the song Mary sings is definitely about change. It’s about an upending of a system that is, frankly, immoral and against the values of God’s kingdom. Which is not to say that those of us who benefit from the system are bad, but rather that the entire system is. We can't even claim that it’s broken, because the reality is that it’s working exactly as it’s been designed — to privilege the few at the expense of the many, to lift up some on the backs of others. And that system is exactly what God in the flesh will challenge, insisting on valuing every person as a beloved child of God, deserving of enough to eat and inclusion in the community and compassionate care…and that challenge is what will get him killed by the powers that do not want to be scattered or sent away empty. But the Mighty One who looks with favour on Mary will not be thwarted. Not this time, not ever. This is a promise that cannot be broken, and God will find a way to fulfil it, even if it means breaking the power of death to do it.

If this is what God is doing in Christ, then we who are called the Body of Christ had better be ready to be a part of it. If we celebrate Christmas and then nothing is different afterwards, we haven’t celebrated the Messiah that Mary is singing about today. Her words echo through the generations calling us to the kind of impossible Christmas that changes the world. What does the Word of God Incarnate have to say to those who live in such dire poverty that drugs seem the only comfort? Or to those who get richer while the poor get poorer? What does the community of those who love Mary’s son have to say to those who care more about their ability to shelter money in tax havens than about the lack of critical care beds in our hospital? How does the magnificat sound to the earth that groans under the weight of our economy’s need for constant consumption?

I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing Christmas was just about celebrating a birth and then getting back to normal life, just like any other birthday party. But what God is doing in Christ is saving the earth and all that is in it, even if that means saving us from ourselves. This is an act of love so monumental that it turns everything upside down. Who are we to wish that God would…what, love us a little less so we could go on as before? It’s impossible for God to do anything but love, and to fulfil promises, and this is the promise that makes Mary rejoice and that hopefully brings us the same kind of joyful commitment to God’s call that we, too, will be willing to bear God’s word in our bodies—and into the world that is desperate for the good news to be more than just pretty words or songs or cards or presents.

May it be so. Amen.

hearing the stories

I have had a number of conversations lately that really drive home how different the historical and cultural context in which I now life is from my previous life experience.

Today I visited a woman who talked for an hour about the 21 boys she used to play football (soccer) with as a child, and how many of them didn't come home...and about her husband and the nightmares he had...and about a cousin who was killed during an air raid on his training camp...and about the many American soldiers she met when her mother took them in during their leave. She spoke of how she was just a teenager then, only 13 when the war broke out, and she naively thought there could never be another one like it.

I have sat in the living rooms of women who were evacuated to the countryside when they were children, and one whose family took in child evacuees. And I have sat by the bedsides of women who never married because a generation of men was lost. And I have sat around the table with women whose husbands never spoke of what they'd seen, or who felt an immense sense of unearned luck because all their brothers came home when so many didn't.

A lot of my time these days is spent with women in their 80s and 90s. These are women who lived through World War II--who bore the brunt of the reality of war both in terms of the cost at home (family lost, rationing, women in the workforce in new ways, etc) and in terms of the long-term cost of lives forever changed.

The stories are incredible--of bombs bursting in the garden, of rationing that extended well after the war was over because of the immense national cost of rebuilding, of large gaps between siblings because one parent was away at war, of sweethearts lost and found, of letters exchanged and news reports anxiously read.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are people who feel abject horror at what happened in Charlottesville last weekend. They cannot fathom that Nazis marched through the streets, or that white supremacy is an acceptable ideology.

This is not to say there is no racism in Scotland, of course. But it is to say that people who lived through the Nazis the first time, who sacrificed far more than most of us who are from North America experienced (including those who gave significantly to the war effort, once we got over enough of our own white nationalism to enter the war), cannot understand how on earth it is possible that Nazism rises again, unchecked, or even encouraged by those in power.

Today's conversation included the casual observation that the woman's husband, at age 19, had been issued a revolver with only a couple rounds of ammunition. It's purpose was to use on himself, should his plane come down behind enemy lines.

Imagine being 19 years old and given those instructions, then put into a plane with rockets, a pop gun, and a map, and told to go up just 250 feet because any higher would make their bombs less accurate.

Now imagine being that person, or their family, and seeing the images from Charlottesville.

One of many things I am enjoying about living here is the sense of freedom to speak truth even when it might be politically unpopular. I don't know if that will always be the case, but in this moment at least, no one bats an eye when I say white supremacy and Nazism is antithetical to the gospel. I have been in churches where that would be a controversial statement...and that is, frankly, an abomination. There should be no room for Nazi sympathizing. If there are people who disagree, then what they need to hear is not something that they can construe to agree with them--they need to hear the hard good news that brings them to confession and repentance. Period.

If they won't listen to Jesus, maybe they'll listen to the stories of these amazing women I've sat with over the past several weeks, and be reminded that hate does not win. It cannot win. And it cannot be allowed to even try.


***Yes, I'm aware that there's plenty of racism and xenophobia to go around. See: colonialism, Brexit, Grenfell, etc. And yet many of these women have spoken to me about those things as well, fully aware and concerned that people don't remember what they fought for. And also, honestly, racism is different here. Not better or worse necessarily, just different. Because history is different. The context of the World Wars, and of slavery, is different across the ocean....

fox in the henhouse--a sermon on Luke 13

Rev. Teri Peterson

PCOP

fox in the henhouse

Luke 13.1-9, 31-35

12 March 2017, NL3-27, Lent 2 (are you all in?)

This morning’s scripture reading is from Luke chapter 13, and can be found on page ___ of your pew Bible if you wish to follow along. Jesus has been teaching his disciples and the crowds who follow them throughout the countryside and towns. He has taught them directly about prayer, and he has spoken in parables about many things. He told them to let their light shine, and to look carefully at the circumstances and times they are living in for evidence of God’s work. Remember that each gospel writer gives us a different perspective on Jesus’s life and teaching—Matthew looks at Jesus from behind, through the lens of the whole Old Testament; Mark looks at Jesus from right next to him, as if they are holding hands walking together; John looks at Jesus from above, with a cosmic perspective; and Luke looks at Jesus from just in front, looking back, almost like a movie maker looking through the camera, trying to capture faces and details along with the background and context. He wrote his gospel around 50 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, so he has more information about what is to come in the future, and sometimes we see that in his wide-angle lens, as in today’s story.

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whom Pilate had killed while they were offering sacrifices. He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.’

 Then he told this parable: ‘A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, “See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?” He replied, “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig round it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.” ’

 At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” ’

Today Jesus jumps right in with the age-old question of why bad things happen…or, as the main character in the musical The Book of Mormon asks God, “more to the point, why do you let bad things happen to me?” The assumption in the ancient world—and, if we’re honest, often today as well—is that tragedy is a result of sin. We intellectually understand and protest this view when it is given voice by people who, for instance, insist that Hurricane Katrina is punishment for allowing gay people to exist and live regular lives with the same rights as anybody else, or that the earthquake in Haiti is punishment for voodoo practiced during the centuries-old slave uprising that led to Haiti’s independence. We know those are ridiculous statements…and yet the same idea rears its head when we ask “why do bad things happen to good people?” Because underneath that question is some assumption that there are people who deserve bad things…we just don’t know any of them personally, of course, because “good people” usually means us and people we know and love.

In the case of today’s issue of the Jerusalem gossip chain, we have people who were going about everyday lives when a building collapsed—perhaps it was bad engineering, perhaps there was an earthquake, perhaps it was terrorism, perhaps it was just old and the infrastructure was compromised. Whatever the case, the tower fell and 18 people were killed. Were they worse offenders than everyone else living and doing business in Jerusalem? What did they do to deserve such tragedy striking?

Or the Galileans—of particular interest to Jesus and his disciples, as many of them are Galilean, and therefore often looked down upon as low-class, uneducated, uncouth—who had been on pilgrimage, went to the Temple to offer sacrifices, and were killed by the very government that was supposed to be keeping the peace… They were good, faithful people, going to church…were they particularly awful sinners, to be targeted by their own government?

When we put it so starkly, it seems ridiculous. And Jesus makes sure we are aware that the answer is always no: NO, there is no star chart of the worse and better sins, nothing that we can do that would cause God to rain punishment in the form of tornadoes or cancer or car accidents or gunshots. We all sin, we all fall short of God’s glory and call. Period. Every person, and every group or institution needs to repent—to turn around, away from sin and toward God’s way of love and justice. And God doesn’t use tragedy to try to force us to come back. Bad things happen, yes. We all sin, yes. Those are not related statements, though. Trying to figure out why God is punishing us with illness or heartbreak or disaster, or how we can guarantee our security against those things, will lead nowhere, because that’s not how God works.

Instead, Jesus tells us a story. A fig tree has been growing in the garden. It’s in the right place, it has the right name and qualifications, but it isn’t producing fruit. It is taking up space, using resources, claiming to be a fig tree…and it is in danger of being cut down. But the master gardener intervenes, promising to spend more time nurturing the tree. Digging around the roots, fertilizing, watering, pruning, caring for it, putting in the effort to help it grow into its purpose. During this year of the Lord’s favor, the year when God is making the kingdom come right here in the presence of Jesus, the fig tree gets a second chance.

This is how God works. Not by promising safety or security, but by investing time and energy, pushing us to look at our lives and the fruit we bear for the kingdom. We might get dirty, and sometimes the pruning is painful, and it might be harder work than we thought we signed up for, but ultimately the purpose of the tree in God’s garden is to bear fruit. Our purpose in God’s kingdom is to bear fruit…which will mean digging up the things we’ve long buried, getting our hands in the manure that is so gross and so life-giving when we use it for the right reasons, cutting off the branches that are siphoning away energy, turning our attention away from comparing ourselves to what other plants in the garden are doing and focusing on what the master gardener is doing, so turn from simply existing and trying to protect what little we have to bearing fruit that provides for all who encounter us.

It’s time-consuming work. Focusing on what God is doing, and doing what we are called to do, doesn’t leave any space or energy for figuring out how to best build a fence to keep everyone else off our little plot of land, or for passing judgment on people experiencing hardship, or for maintaining systems that ensure that water and nutrients only get into our roots and no one else’s. The spiritual work of looking honestly at ourselves and allowing God to dig and prune and feed is never about fixing other people, only about growing so that we can better serve other people. Bearing fruit doesn’t mean that the tree eats better—it means that the tree feeds better, and we don’t get to control who enjoys the fruit we bear in the kingdom of God. Our task is to figure out how to bear the fruit God calls us to give, and to learn to give it freely and generously, just as we have received freely and generously from others and from Christ the gardener who intercedes for us so faithfully.

It is in the midst of this that we jump to the end of the chapter and hear Jesus say of Herod, who wishes to see him, “Go tell that fox for me…I have work to do, and I’m doing it.” Herod has already killed John the Baptizer, and he’s been wanting to question Jesus and see if he is really the miracle-worker everyone says. But Jesus is busy with life-giving work, and has no time for death-dealing interviews. So he uses this beautiful, motherly, vulnerable metaphor: “long have I desired to gather you together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…but you were not willing.” Even the mother hen can’t force all the chicks to snuggle up together, to move as one in the direction she wants them to go. 

So he warns them instead: we have set a fox to guard the henhouse, and we shouldn’t be surprised when that starts to go terribly wrong. It seems confusing how we could get here, but if we just look back at the chapter, it’s all there. We’ve been duped into believing that some people deserve bad things, while others deserve good things, and we’re always in the latter category ourselves. We’ve blindly participated in systems that feed us while starving others, and we’ve cared more about protecting ourselves than about bearing fruit. We’ve learned to blame God and sin rather than to dig down and uncover our own complicity and rather than pruning off the branches that we hang on to even though they hinder our growth.

When our image of God is of someone whose favor you have to earn and whose wrath you have to avoid, whose circle is closed, and who only calls and uses and speaks through people who meet a human-made set of criteria, it’s a short leap to believing that we deserve what we have and therefore must protect it at all cost, especially from those who are different. It’s an even shorter leap to believing people who don’t-have must be undeserving, must have made bad choices or brought it on themselves or be dangerous. All of this sets the stage for the fox, who is cunning enough to manipulate our fear and our desire for self-advancement. He then takes advantage of us all running every which way except under the wings of the mother hen. The fox counts on us judging each other rather than having compassion, and the fox’s power depends on us turning a blind eye to our own fruitless trees so we can stay focused on what we’re missing rather than what we have and what responsibility we bear.

Jesus, in contrast, spreads wide his mother-hen wings, knowing they don’t offer the kind of protection that the fox claims to promise—he literally uses the chicken, image of weakness and cowardice, to face down the fox. He calls us to gather round, stick together, and move where he moves. He calls us to unpopular self-examination, knowing it is the foundation for bearing fruit…and that is the purpose of residents of God’s garden: to produce fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, generosity, goodness, and self-control…fruit that feeds others, changes the world, and lasts well beyond anything the fox can do.

May it be so. Amen.

Who Will Go? A sermon on Isaiah 6

Rev. Teri Peterson
PCOP
Who Will Go?
Isaiah 6.1-8
13 November 2016, NL3-10, H2-5 (God Provides)

The prophet Isaiah lived in the 8th century BCE, when the Assyrian empire was expanding, conquering the northern kingdom of Israel and destroying much of the southern kingdom of Judah. Isaiah lived in Jerusalem, the only city relatively unharmed in this war, and he spoke primarily to the kings, priests, and their wealthy advisors. Isaiah insisted that being God’s people involved not only worshipping the One God, but also behaving in ways consistent with God’s plans—and that God’s concern was primarily for those outside the halls of power, without wealth or connections. Much of the first section of Isaiah is about God’s vision of justice and righteousness, and how the leaders of the nation fall short of that vision, and therefore both oppress their people and lead them astray. In today’s reading, the king has died and the nation is in turmoil. We hear about Isaiah’s vision of a visit to the throne room of God, where heavenly beings worship and where Isaiah receives the difficult grace of confession and call. The reading from Isaiah chapter 6 can be found on page __ in your pew Bible if you wish to follow along.


In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. And one called to another and said:
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.’
The pivots on the thresholds shook at the voices of those who called, and the house filled with smoke. And I said: ‘Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!’
Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out.’ Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I; send me!’

~~~~~~~

In the year that King Uzziah died, he had been on the throne for 52 years. According to 2 Chronicles chapter 26, he became king at age 16, and he was faithful in seeking God with his tutor Zechariah for many of those years. He rebuilt cities, he went to battle with the Philistines, he built towers in the walls of Jerusalem, and neighboring tribes paid him tribute taxes. He became very wealthy and very powerful…and according to 2 Chronicles, when he became powerful he also became proud and arrogant. He stopped giving his attention to any but those who could advance his interests. He assumed he could do things on his own, so he left God out of it. He used people to build his projects and pay for shiny equipment for his massive army. And one day, he went into the Temple and tried to make an offering of incense inside the Holy of Holies, the room that only the high priest could enter, the room where God lived. Eighty priests followed him to try to convince him that what he was doing was wrong…and while inside, he broke out in an unclean skin disease and was banished from not only the Temple but also the palace and the town. He lived the remainder of his days in a camp, and his son reigned in his stead.

So in the year that he died, there was a complicated situation. He wasn’t allowed to be buried in the same place as those who were ritually clean. His son was already on the throne unofficially. And his arrogant ways had already affected how people lived and treated each other.

This is the moment—a very human moment in history—when Isaiah, who has already been a prophet for five chapters now, has a vision of the Temple filled with the hem of God’s robe and the heavenly host winging through the air singing. The Temple, where Uzziah had gotten into so much trouble at the pinnacle of his pride and power. The Temple, where Isaiah was not, apparently, among those who called the king out on his bad behavior. But now he stood there in this vision, practically touching the hem of God’s robe, and he realizes his need to confess: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips.”

Today we might say it like this: I have said things I should not have said, and I have kept silent when I should have spoken up.

When the man full of pride and power used and abused people, I was silent.
When the man who accumulated the wealth of surrounding nations turned his back on those who had built his cities, I was silent.
When the man who believed his position allowed him to do anything actually did unspeakable things, I was silent.
Instead I spoke in generalities, I spoke to others rather than to him, I spoke of happier topics, I made excuses, I spoke in cryptic metaphors meant only for the few who were already in the know.

I said things I should not have said, and kept silent when I ought to have spoken. I am a person of unclean lips, and I come from a whole people who have used and misused their voices and allowed this turmoil to happen. We have lost sight of God’s kingdom and turned to our own instead, leaving behind the vulnerable, the different, the outcast, the poor, the immigrant, the minority, the veterans.

And then one of the heavenly host came to Isaiah with a hot coal, and touched his lips, burning away the cowardly silence and the haughty words. That would be a painful cleansing, a lesson that hurt…the way we use our voices matters, and it isn’t easy to undo. But afterward, with his mouth freed to try again, Isaiah can now hear the voice of God, cutting through the din of his own self-centered cries, and God says:
who will go for us?

Who will go…to the edges of society, where people are hurting?
Who will go…to the slums and the refugee camps?
Who will go…to the hospitals and prisons?
Who will go…to the protests and the rallies?
Who will go…to the Congressman’s office and the mayor’s town hall?
Who will go…to the social media feeds where we can hide behind a screen?
Who will go…to the places that need good news?
Who will go…to insist that there is no place for hate or exclusion in the kingdom of God?
Who will go…to comfort and protect those who feel unsafe and unwanted?
Who will go…remembering that good news comforts the disturbed AND disturbs the comfortable?
Who will go…to try new things in hope of seeing God at work in unexpected places?
Who will go…carrying words and actions of hope and challenge, living the vision of a new kingdom, a new way of being?
Who will go…to stand up for those who we think don’t belong?
Who will go…to speak up even when it’s uncomfortable, protecting the people God loves even when we don’t?
Who will go…to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and house the homeless?
Who will go…to ask our leaders why there are people who are hungry, naked, sick, and homeless?
Who will go…when it is inconvenient or difficult or painful?

Isaiah doesn’t hesitate. He already knows the cost of staying silent, or beating around the bush with excuses. This is his second chance, his moment to be renewed and re-dedicated to his task, to his community, to his people. He hears “who will go?” and he says “Here I am, send me.”

742 BC and today, the same is true: we know the cost of silence, and of excuses. We know there are people who need our voices to speak on their behalf, and people who need us to be quiet so their stories can be heard. There are places that need good news, and leaders who need to be challenged, and neighbors who need care. God provides us with a second, and a third, and a sixtieth, chance to examine ourselves and admit our failings, and then to live up to the call…and God asks: who will go? whom shall I send?

We give our answer in word and song, in prayer and action, in giving of time and resources: here I am, send me. And here we are, the body of Christ on the corner of Palatine and Rohlwing…send us.

May it be so. Amen.

Hope in the Face of Fear--a sermon on Jeremiah 42

Rev. Teri Peterson

PCOP

Hope in the Face of Fear

Jeremiah 42.1-12

24 July 2016, P2-2 (overflowing: hope)

The events of today’s reading happen shortly after King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had defeated the Israelites, destroyed Jerusalem, and carried their king, officials, leaders, priests, and well-off people away into exile. The people left behind were either too poor to be of interest to the Babylonians, or were military men who had fled out into the countryside to escape.

Just before the people came to Jeremiah in today’s story, they discussed their options, and decided it would probably be best if all of them who were left went out of the land and down into Egypt. Their own land had been ruined by war, so a famine was likely. Their cities were rubble, and the government and artisans and people with resources were all gone. Egypt was the opposite direction from Babylon, and far out of reach of Nebuchadnezzar, so felt safer. Having figured all this out, they come to the prophet to seek God’s blessing on their decision, as we read in Jeremiah 42, which can be found on page ___ of your pew Bible if you’d like to follow along.

Then all the commanders of the forces, and Johanan son of Kareah and Azariah son of Hoshaiah, and all the people from the least to the greatest, approached the prophet Jeremiah and said, ‘Be good enough to listen to our plea, and pray to the Lord your God for us—for all this remnant. For there are only a few of us left out of many, as your eyes can see. Let the Lord your God show us where we should go and what we should do.’ The prophet Jeremiah said to them, ‘Very well: I am going to pray to the Lord your God as you request, and whatever the Lord answers you I will tell you; I will keep nothing back from you.’ They in their turn said to Jeremiah, ‘May the Lord be a true and faithful witness against us if we do not act according to everything that the Lord your God sends us through you. Whether it is good or bad, we will obey the voice of the Lord our God to whom we are sending you, in order that it may go well with us when we obey the voice of the Lord our God.’

 At the end of ten days the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah. Then he summoned Johanan son of Kareah and all the commanders of the forces who were with him, and all the people from the least to the greatest, and said to them, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, to whom you sent me to present your plea before him: If you will only remain in this land, then I will build you up and not pull you down; I will plant you, and not pluck you up; for I am sorry for the disaster that I have brought upon you. Do not be afraid of the king of Babylon, as you have been; do not be afraid of him, says the Lord, for I am with you, to save you and to rescue you from his hand. I will grant you mercy, and he will have mercy on you and restore you to your native soil.

The world was falling apart. First, the king and all the ruling class and the religious leaders, along with the merchants and artisans, had been carried away to Babylon, and a puppet king installed. Then, when he also refused to listen to the prophet and insisted on going his own way, the Babylonian army had come and camped around Jerusalem, laying siege to the city for 17 months before finally breaking through and destroying everything—pulling down buildings, including the Temple, setting fire to the city, and tearing down the city walls. The entire Israelite army was either killed or ran away. The Babylonians looted the Temple and the city, and carried off all that bronzework we heard about a few weeks ago, and all the gold and silver ritual dishes, and also the rest of the merchants, officers, Temple staff, secretaries, and advisors who had come to live in the city in the intervening decade. Second Kings ends the story of the battle with the simple statement “So Judah was exiled from its land.”

Those who are left—the officers who deserted during the battle, making their way back to the ruined city, the poor people left behind to work the land, the governor appointed by Nebuchadnezzar—have watched their whole world turn upside down. Their leaders have failed them. The economy is in shambles, the environment is a disaster, and their understanding of themselves as chosen and blessed by God, the best nation, has been shaken.

Into this anxious and angry community, the newly appointed governor tries to speak calmly, encouraging the people to live in this new reality and make a way forward.

The prophet Jeremiah speaks the word of the Lord, saying the same thing: stay here in your land, build and plant, and God will build you up and plant you here—no more tearing down, no more plucking up. Live here now, and be God’s people here and now, and don’t be afraid.

The people, though, can’t hear it. They shout that the prophet is lying, God would never say that. They insist that the governor is corrupt because he was appointed by the king of Babylon, so they kill him over the dinner table. And then they get together and talk about how good things used to be, and how they just want to feel that way again—safe and prosperous and blessed.

It’s like they are re-living the exodus, channeling their ancestors insisting that it was better back in Egypt when they sat by the pots and ate their fill.

But they are so blinded by their fear that they can’t see—they can’t see how their memory of the past is colored by their anxiety, they can’t see forward, so they decide to run away. They’ll go back to Egypt, as far from the stranger king as possible, reaching way way back to their roots…and then, maybe, they’ll be safe.

They come to Jeremiah for prayer with this plan already in mind, anticipating that he’ll offer them God’s blessing. They insist that they’ll do whatever God says, as long as Jeremiah tells them everything. They insist so vehemently that it feels suspicious, actually, like they may be covering their anxiety with lots of words, babbling almost. Protesting too much, perhaps.

Jeremiah knows, and God knows, they’re not going to obey. But Jeremiah takes them seriously anyway. He goes to God and prays—for ten days, asking God for guidance. That’s a long time in an anxious space, with people stewing in their fear. It’s hard to wait, especially when it feels like the world is falling apart and we have to do something RightNow. Jeremiah doesn’t rush, though—he isn’t afraid to listen for what God is truly saying, and to take the time to be certain before speaking.

When the word comes, Jeremiah knows it won’t be well received, but he speaks it anyway. He offers God’s words of hope: I will build you up, I will plant you, do not be afraid, remain in this land.

It’s a beautiful vision: God says “I am with you.”

Spoiler alert: the people can’t see this vision. Their eyes and minds and hearts are clouded by fear—fear of invasion, fear of hunger, fear of each other. They cannot hear quiet truth, or carefully considered words. They long for the way things were, and they don't want to do the hard work of building God’s new future when it seems easier to go back, so they instead insult Jeremiah and his secretary, calling them liars and other names. And they pack up Jeremiah and Baruch into the already loaded caravans and carry them off to Egypt too.

In the face of fear, the people could not choose hope.

It takes courage to be hopeful when the world is falling apart. When everything is upside down, and our self-image is shattered and we aren’t sure what’s coming next, and our minds are full of images of the good old days, it is hard work to look for God’s presence and hope amidst the ruins of our assumptions and anxiety. And it’s hard to pray honestly, as Jeremiah did. Many of us are tempted to take the path of the people—asking God to bless the side we are already on, rather than asking God to open our hearts and minds and wills to walk God’s way…and then to wait for God to reveal the path, even while we are afraid of what might happen.

In the world at any given moment, there’s plenty to be afraid of. And there are people all around encouraging us to fear our neighbors, the possibilities of the unknown, the future, the government, nature, other countries, other religions, other political parties. We are constantly inundated with messages of fear, and it’s easy to slip into “it was better before when we were in Egypt” mode. It’s easy to join the throng in putting our trust in things other than God, taking matters into our own hands because God is too slow to answer, or because the word of God is too hard to follow.

But there’s also plenty of reason to hope. Even in the face of fear, we can choose hope. We can live as if we believe God’s promise is true: Do not be afraid, I am with you. We can be careful not to be blinded by the anxiety peddled by our leaders and our media, we can insist that they be truthful in their dealings with us, and we can refrain from automatically disbelieving anything we don’t already agree with. We can act with integrity—a key theme of the book of Jeremiah—and make sure that what we do and how we behave lines up with what we say we believe. We can do our part to make the world look a little more like the kingdom of God—treating everyone, even our enemies, with kindness and respect; caring for God’s creation even when it isn’t convenient; looking out for people on the margins and helping those in need even when it costs us more than we get back. We can refuse to participate in groups or systems that do not recognize the image of God in every person no matter their race or religion, and instead create spaces where all are truly welcome. We can choose hope, in the midst of all the fear that floats around and threatens to overwhelm us. It will take enormous courage, and we may sometimes have to do it even when we aren’t feeling it, but we can, and we should, be people who embody the good news of God, true in every time and every place: do not be afraid, I am with you.

May it be so. Amen.