racism – Salvaged Faith

UMC 101: An Inclusive Church

Posted on February 20, 2022Leave a comment

Text: Luke 5:17-26, Book of Discipline – Constitution Preamble and ¶1-5, ¶140, and the new 6

Over this last month as we have worshipped with one another, there has been a recurring theme at the core of our tradition: God’s grace and love is for all.

The prevenient grace of God stretches out to all people, inviting them in.

When we become disciples, we are called to reach out in love to do no harm and do good to all we meet.

Grounded in the core of our faith, we create space for difference and open our arms to encounter people with varying languages and cultures and traditions.

We believe that God reigns over all of human existence, and we trust in the Holy Spirit to guide us as we seek responses that share the healing and redeeming love of God with all people.

And we go out, each uniquely gifted and equipped, to make disciples of all peoples and transform the world.

In our statement on inclusiveness in our Book of Discipline (¶140) we say:

“We recognize that God made all creation and saw that it was good. As a diverse people of God who bring special gifts and evidences of God’s grace to the unity of the Church and to society, we are called to be faithful to the example of Jesus’ ministry to all persons.
Inclusiveness means openness, acceptance, and support that enables all persons to participate in the life of the Church, the community and the world.”

In our Constitution, we proclaim that “all persons are of sacred worth” and “all persons without regard to race, color, national origin, status, or economic condition, shall be eligible“ to worship, participate, receive the sacraments, and become members of the church. (¶4)

The church… the Body of Christ… is for all… and needs all.

But the truth is we need these kinds of statements, because we have not always lived out this truth.

As we talked about last week, sometimes we have been more of a fortress protecting those inside, rather than a force out in the world seeking all people.

We have placed barriers on who was welcome and how they could participate.

We have created separations between races, genders, and classes.

Over the last few weeks in our Confirmation class, we have been exploring our United Methodist history. Each student presented on a different topic or person from our past and together we learned about people who did not experience the church as inclusive and open to all.

We learned about Richard Allen, a freed black man and ordained pastor who was sidelined in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He left our denomination due to the discrimination and formed the African Methodist Episcopal – or AME Church.

We learned about Anna Howard Shaw, who felt a call to ministry but was denied ordination in the MEC. In her journal she wrote, “I am no better and no stronger than a man, and it is all a man can do to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil, without fighting his Church as well.” (Story of a Pioneer, p. 123-124). She left the denomination and was ordained by the Methodist Protestant Church in 1880.

The Methodist Protestants themselves had left the denomination after growing concerns about the power of clergy and the exclusion of lay people from decisions.

The Free Methodists broke away from the denomination over their concerns for the poor after New England churches began the practice of charging for your spot in the pew!

Or what about the story of Bishop Andrews who gained slaves through each of his marriages and refused to set them free… his story became part of the rationale for why the Methodist Episcopal Church, South broke away from the rest of the denomination.

When the MEC, MEC South, and Methodist Protestants eventually merged back together in 1939, we learned about the segregation of the African American clergy and churches in the Central Jurisdiction.

We can find throughout our history these stories of exclusion.

But along the way, there were also folks who exemplified the spirit of our scripture reading for today… friends and colleagues who have torn down walls, built new structures, shattered glass ceilings, and burst through roofs in order to bring people to Christ.

Mark and Luke tell us the story of the crowds who gathered to hear Jesus preach in Capernaum. Five friends came together, four of them carrying their friend who was paralyzed.

But as anyone who might be vertically challenged like myself can attest, it is difficult to see over a crowd.

And it must have been even more so for this man on his mat.

The group tried to shoulder their way in closer, but to no avail.

And then they got creative.

They climbed to the top of the roof and began taking a part the tiles to make an opening above Jesus so they could lower him down.

They refused to let their friend sit out on the curb.

He, as much as any other, was a child of God who belonged at the feet of Jesus.

Do you know what I noticed in this pericope reading it this week…

It doesn’t say that they brought their friend in order to be healed.

There are many stories where people specifically brought people to Jesus to be healed, but that phrase is not used here.

The crowds gathered wanted to hear Jesus preach and to hear the good news.

Why would we assume anything different about this paralytic man?

In fact, Mark Arnold reminded me this week of how Jesus responds to this act of home vandalism. “Jesus sees the faith of the man and his friends first and includes him in his ministry of grace and forgiveness… only referring to the man’s disability when challenged about his authority.” (https://theadditionalneedsblogfather.com/2019/09/11/disability-sin-god-heaven/)

He goes on to write, “everyone, including disabled people, are made in God’s image.”

When we talk about inclusiveness in the church, we speak of our call to share the ministry of Jesus with all people and make sure that every person is able to participate fully in the life of not just the church, but the community, and the world. (¶140, p. 101)

It means “the freedom for the total involvement of all persons who meet the requirements… in the membership and leadership of the Church at any level and in every place.”

Our call to inclusiveness does not ask someone to adapt or change who they are in order to have a place at the table. It is a recognition of their faith and gifts and belovedness in God’s eyes… just as they are.

And it entails our commitment to “work towards societies in which each person’s value is recognized, maintained, and strengthened” through basic human rights and “equal access to housing, education, communication, employment, medical care, legal redress of grievances, and physical protection.”

It means speaking out against acts of hate or violence against people based on who they are.

And within the church, the call to inclusiveness means that sometimes we have to tear the roof off the house to make sure that everyone has access… or add a ramp or an elevator to the church.

It means utilizing assistive hearing devices and closed captioning on our facebook live stream.

One of the things that I think we have gained during Covid-tide is broadening how we make our worship accessible for our members who were homebound and we continue to mail the entire worship service to more than fifty homes every week. Where we can’t bring folks to church, we bring the church to them.

It means including youth and young people on our leadership teams and making commitments to protect children through our Safe Sanctuaries policies.

Here at Immanuel, it meant changing our maternity leave policy to a parental leave policy.

And it also means, as we say in our Constitution, that the church “shall confront and seek to eliminate racism, whether in organizations or in individuals, in every facet of its life and in society at large.”

I mentioned before the how we institutionalized racism through the Central Jurisdiction here in the United States. Just as those four friends literally changed the structure of that home, Confronting racism sometimes means changing our denominational structures and I give thanks that the Methodist Church eliminated the Central Jurisdiction with the insistence of the EUB church as part of the merger that formed the United Methodist Church in 1968.

But this also includes learning about and repenting of our history, as well as actively seeking to not just make room at our table for neighbors who are black, indigenous, or people of color… but building new tables – together.

As a predominately white congregation, this might entail intentionally building relationships with people and church neighbors that look differently than us.

And, it means that we bust open the glass ceiling and do the same for women and girls who have faced discrimination in the church. In fact… this new paragraph on gender equality was only added through a constitutional amendment approved in 2016 and then ratified by annual conferences in 2019.

Still, there are more walls to tear down.

Another constitutional amendment failed by just 5% to meet the 2/3 threshold for implementation by annual conference votes.

Currently, our constitution proclaims that “no conference or other organizational unity of the Church shall be structured so as to exclude any member… because of race, color, national origin, status or economic condition.”

That amendment would have expanded our protected classes in the constitution to add gender, ability, age, and marital status.

We continue to go on to perfection.

As I think about what it means to be United Methodist today, I think about those five friends from our scripture.

I think about how each one of them was beloved by God and a person of sacred worth… just as they were.

And I think about how they worked together to make sure that all were able to be in the presence of Jesus.

Our call to inclusiveness in the church is a call to relationship and faithfulness.

It is about invitation and welcome.

It is about breaking down walls and tearing apart ceilings and fighting so that our friends and neighbors can all gather at the feet of Christ.

But it is also about owning up to the reality that along the way we have not always lived into this ideal and acknowledging the people who either chose to leave or were forced out of the church simply because of who they were.

I am reminded that my access and privilege to even stand here in this pulpit is not something to be taken for granted.

I remember the people who fought to make this a reality and look for ways to use my voice to speak up on behalf of others who are excluded.

May we, as United Methodists, continue to work to ensure that the doors of the church are open to all people, may we embrace one another with love and acceptance, and may we provide the kind of support that is needed so that all of our siblings can fully participate in the life of this church.

Expanding Our Vision

Posted on July 11, 2021Leave a comment

Text: Acts 10: 1-5, 9-15, 19-20, 24, 27-28, 34-36, 44-48

Eighty five years ago, I probably would not have been welcomed in this pulpit.

As a woman, ordination was out of the question.

A combination of tradition and a patriarchal society and a way of reading the scriptures precluded the church from welcoming women as preachers and pastors.

It still does in some places and traditions.

But here I stand… ordained, my calling from the Holy Spirit confirmed by the church.

As a young(ish) woman, I have always lived in a church that ordained women. I have always been a part of a church that valued the contributions women made in ministry, in leadership, and in the world. It has been a given.

But I also know what it took to get here.

Late this spring, folks from Immanuel joined with other churches in our circuit to read together through a series of essays called, “I’m Black. I’m Christian. I’m Methodist.”

While their experiences were contemporary, these pastors wove into their narrative the history and legacy of exclusion and discrimination of our church. While some Black Methodists chose to leave, for those that remained within this denomination, separation and exclusion and discrimination continued to be our legacy.

Our church divided over slavery, rather than taking a stand for the full humanity of our siblings.

When we finally re-united, it was as a segregated church, with black churches and clergy all set apart in the Central Jurisdiction until 1968.

The impact of that structural racism continues to be felt today.

What surprised us the most as we read through that book of essays, however, were parallels between these stories of exclusion and discrimination and our current debate within the church about the lives and leadership of our LGBTQ+ siblings.

I am here today because how we understood God’s call in the life of women changed.

In the same way, we have claimed a more expansive vision of what it means to be the church from other cultural and ethnic backgrounds.

The church is more diverse and beautiful and powerful today because we have recognized how the Holy Spirit is moving through one another.

I wonder where God is going to change our minds next…

This isn’t a new question…

It is a question as old as the church.

As we journey through the book of Acts, we see God’s Kingdom widening.

From Jerusalem, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth.

The faithful Jewish disciples begin to welcome and share the good news with those on the margins of the community…

And those who are converts in more far flung places…

And now we have a story about God speaking into the life of a Gentile and how God moves Peter to share the good news.

As the leader of the apostles, Peter had been visiting all of the house-churches where the followers of the Way were gathering in the wider area, especially on the coastal plains of Sharon.

He had just been to Lydda and then spent some time in Joppa.

And it was there, moved by the Spirit, that Peter had raised a faithful servant named Tabitha from the dead.

He was able to do amazing things, working and teaching in that community.

He was faithfully serving God and thought he knew exactly what that meant.

He presumed that he understood the rules of faith.

But just like Saul in the chapter before, Peter was about to have his world turned upside down yet again.

He was about to catch a glimpse of the scope and the breadth and the depth of God’s love for all people.

Our story today starts in the home of a gentile. A captain of the Roman army, named Cornelius, receives a vision from God and sends for Peter.

Let’s talk a little bit about this guy and what it means…

A Gentile is anyone who is not Jewish, someone who was not a part of the family of Israel, either through birth or conversion.

An outsider… as far as the faith was concerned.

There were gentiles, like Cornelius, who were described as “God-fearers” or “God-worshippers” which meant that they would have practiced elements of the Jewish faith and worshipped the God of the Israelites, but they were limited in their participation.

The temple had many different courts, and the requirements to move further and further into the temple, towards the holy of holies, left many out. The big open area you see in the photo is called the Court of the Gentiles. That was the only part of the temple Gentiles could enter, divided from even the steps leading up to the building by a wall.

These folks would not have kept the same ritual laws and for that reason, it was forbidden for Gentiles to enter these holy places or for Jews to enter the homes of Gentiles… lest they encounter something that would have made them unclean.

But many faithful god-fearing folks like Cornelius continued to show up. They continued worshipping God from those outer courts. In spite of the barriers, they wanted a relationship with God.

And God wanted a relationship with them.

So God prepares Peter’s heart for a more expansive vision of who was included in the Kingdom of God.

Before he is summoned to Caesarea and the home of Cornelius, Peter is given a vision of the clean and unclean joining together and he is asked in the vision to eat something that is unclean.

He doesn’t want to embrace it.

Everything in his very being tells him that it is wrong.

The holy was being profaned by the ordinary.

And then the voice in his vision speaks: “Never consider unclean what God has made pure.”

There is a knock at the door and the Holy Spirit whispers to him… go.

Peter is summoned to the home of Cornelius, and although he was not allowed by Jewish custom to enter, he did.

He entered the home of a gentile and broke bread with the unclean.

And when Cornelius asked about why God had brought him there, Peter shares the good news of Jesus Christ.

As he preaches to the entire gathered household, the Holy Spirit descends upon them and they receive the gift of faith.

The profane, the ordinary, the unclean… these people who were outside of all that Peter knew to be holy… the spirit and presence of God filled their lives.

He and his companions could see it… feel it…

And Peter exclaims: “These people have received the Holy Spirit just as we have. Surely no one can stop them from being baptized with water, can they?”

None of the disciples could deny their gifts.

Water was brought and Cornelius and his whole family were baptized on the spot…

They were part of the family of God…

At various points throughout the history of the church, faithful folk stood up and exclaimed: These people have received the Holy Spirit… just like we did – How can we stop them from being baptized?

How can we deny them a place at the table?

How can we continue to reject their leadership when God has so clearly spoken in their lives?

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism was against women preaching in principle… until he witnessed the Holy Spirit working through the lives of women like Sarah Crosby, Grace Murry, and Hannah Ball. He relented and licensed them for preaching in the circuits across England.

Likewise, Wesley was a staunch opponent of slavery the very first Discipline of the church prohibited members from owning slaves.

In fact, that Methodist egalitarian spirit is what drew large numbers of Black people to the movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

As Rev. Erin Beasley writes: “Under Methodist, all Christians became brothers and sisters despite their background… “ and no matter their gender, ethnicity, or class.

And yet, even as God pushes us to expand our vision of who is included, that long-memory of what we had believed is hard to shake off.

It is not easy to let go of control.

Or upend our expectations.

Or give way for others to lead in new ways.

Sometimes the witness of the Holy Spirit is sometimes rejected by those who are trying to follow God’s will.

Even after John Wesley licensed women to preach, it was not until 1956 that women were granted full clergy rights in the church.

The anti-slavery position of the early Methodists quickly became more lenient as they sought to establish more congregations in the South. Black ministers like Richard Allen were not allowed to be ordained as elders… requiring them to be supervised by white clergy… eventually leading these folks to leave the church.

It is hard to let go of our traditions, our rules, our power.

We hang on to what we know and understand.

There is an uproar in Jerusalem when the hear about what Peter had done.

The apostles summon him back to the city to account for his actions.

They start with criticism. They launch into accusations. They read off the rules.

I can imagine their frustration growing as they start to wrestle with the implications of what has just happened.

The leaders of the early church, like Peter just days and weeks before, believed that faith meant one thing, and God was trying to show them it meant something else.

It doesn’t stop the Holy Spirit from moving however.

Not only does God act by giving us these unique and undeniable experiences of grace and power and Holy Spirit-led transformation… like Peter experienced with Cornelius…

But God also expands the vision of the whole church by calling those who have had these life-altering experiences to tell their story.

The apostles were furious and demanded an explanation.

Peter gave them one.

He told them about his vision.

He told them about how God led him to the house of Cornelius.

He connected what he had experienced of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit with what he witnessed first-hand in Caesarea.

In chapter 11, verse 16-17 he testifies: “I remembered the Lord’s words: ‘John will baptize with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”.

“I really am learning that God doesn’t show partiality to one group of people over another,” Peter says.

I give thanks that the apostles rejoiced in his witness.

They came to understand that God wants to be in relationship with all of us.

With the whole of creation.

With you and me.

And we keep learning that lesson…

We keep discovering and remembering and learning all over again just how far our vision needs to expand…

With black and white and brown.

With young and old, and gay and straight,

Folks who are married and single and divorced and widowed.

cis-gender, transgender, and non-binary folks,

with those struggling with mental health and those who love them.

With life-long Americans and with people who have just arrived in our country.

Are we there yet?

No.

Have we sometimes taken steps backwards?

Absolutely.

Like Peter, we are still learning that God shows no partiality to one group of people or another.

It has been a hard lesson… centuries and millenia in the making…

But God keeps pushing us… stretching us… calling us into a more expansive vision of what the church can and should be.

God is God.

And we can fight it.

We can resist it.

But God will keep pouring out the Holy Spirit on whomever God chooses.

New Every Morning

Posted on July 19, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Lamentations 3:19-33

When I was in high school, my youth group took a summer mission trip to the northwest part of our country.
I went to a larger church in Cedar Rapids, so we filled an entire bus with our students and chaperones.
Our ultimate destination was Seattle, but along the way we stopped and sang at churches in Wyoming and Idaho and we spent some time at Yellowstone National Park.
We took time to hike and walked through a part of the forest that had experienced a forest fire and saw the beginnings of the new forest already beginning to emerge with soft green baby trees.
We worshipped and remembered the indigenous people who once lived upon this land… like the Blackfeet, Crow, Sioux and Cheyenne.
We strolled along the pathways to see the hot springs and of course, visit Old Faithful.
And we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
I remember one of the projects my group was assigned to was helping to secure rolls of grass seed to the side of a hill so that we could help prevent erosion along the road way.

But one of the things that has stuck with me the most from that particular trip was not the sights or the service… but a prayer.
A prayer that we said together every morning… often while we were rolling down the road on our bus.
A prayer that rose us up out of slumber and helped us to center ourselves before the day began.
A prayer that I still think of in the mornings.

We actually have this prayer in the back of all of our hymnals as part of the Orders for Daily Praise and Prayer:

New every morning is your love, great God of light,
And all day long you are working for good in the world.
Stir up in us desire to serve you,
To live peacefully with our neighbors,
And to devote each day to your Son,
Our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.

New every morning is your love.
Every morning.
Every. Single. Day.
Over and over again.

To be faithful is to be constant… steadfast… reliable…
And those words could certainly be used to describe one of the most striking features of Yellowstone National Park – Old Faithful.

Just beneath those gorgeous mountains and rivers and forests is an active volcano somewhere between thirty and fifty miles across.
As it simmers and brews underground, water from above seeps in and begins to boil, creating these amazing geothermic features throughout the park.

From mud pots to hot springs, you find incredible colors and textures as various gasses and bacteria and algae that thrive at different temperatures come alive.
And then there are the geysers, superheated water rockets that burst unpredictably out of the ground.

Well… most of them are unpredictable.
Not Old Faithful.
Roughly every ninety minutes, this geyser erupts.
In every kind of weather, in any part of the year, at any time of day.
Over and over and over again.
Consistently.
Constantly.
Faithfully.

As the Mills family found out just this week on their own family road trip in Yellowstone… here is Scott’s video!

Something you can count on.
Something you depend on just as sure as the sun will rise in the east.

Now… we can’t always see the sun rise.
Sometimes the rain is pouring on our heads or the storm clouds are raging.
But the sun still rises.

And as the author of Lamentations reminds us, the faithful and compassionate love of God is renewed every morning, too.
Even if we can’t see it.
Even if it seems like God is far away.
Even if we are swimming in distress.

The eruption of Old Faithful happens not in spite of the simmering energy and destructive forces just beneath the surface… but because of them.
And so it is with God.
It is in the midst of our lament…
In the midst of our conflict…
In the midst of our grief…
In the midst of our suffering…
It is because of all of those powers that could destroy and overwhelm that we witness the faithfulness of God’s love.

Now, what is interesting about what is happening to the lamenter is that they are talking about their own punishment by the hand of the Lord.
They were experiencing the consequences of a life where they had rejected peace…
Where they had forgotten what is good…
Like so many of the prophets, he is writing about the direct result of turning away from God’s ways…
of failing to look out for our neighbors,
of taking advantage of rather than caring for creation…
It is chaos.
It is destruction.
And while we can point to God as the cause, the truth is, we are simply harvesting what we have sown.

There is a lot happening in the world today…
A lot of the turmoil we are experiencing…
That are simply the consequences of choices and decisions we have made in the past.
The anger that is erupting on the streets about racial injustice is not simply about the racist actions of a few individuals.
It is confronting the cultural, historic, and structural systems that we all participate in and have not challenged in the past.
The rise in Covid-19 cases across the country, but also right here in Iowa… they are directly related to choices that we are making about whether or not to wear a mask, where we go, and who we interact with.
And now we are facing the consequences of increasing the burdens upon our families and our teachers because we have not done our part to create a safer environment and reduce the spread.

What the Lamenter also wants to remind us, however, is that in spite of all of our failures.
In spite of all of the consequences we are experiencing.
God has not walked out on us.
God’s faithful love has not disappeared.
God’s compassion doesn’t dry up.

No, every morning, it is renewed.
Every morning we experience just how great is God’s faithfulness.
Every time the sun comes up, we have a chance to turn away from our selfishness and our destructive tendencies and instead turn towards God.

And so when we feel like we are standing on the edge of the volcano…
When we feel like everything is falling apart…
When we feel like the consequences of our failures have become too great to bear…
That’s when we need to stop.
And wait.
And sit.

You know, the forces that lead to the eruption of Old Faithful rely upon two things.
First, the ever simmering force of the volcano.
Like our sin and our selfishness and our tendency towards destruction, it is a constant reality.

But it also depends upon the renewing and refreshing waters above the ground.
The melting of the snow in the mountains.
The rain that falls from the sky.
The ground water that seeps deep into the earth.
Without them, the geyser simply wouldn’t gush.
In the same way, God’s faithfulness and mercy are constantly pouring into our lives,
constantly rushing over us,
new every morning,
new every day.
As the Message translation puts it – God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out.
God’s merciful love couldn’t have dried up…
It is ever-flowing.
It will not end.

And when life is heavy and too hard to take, the lamenter reminds us that God is still there.
Waiting for us.
Waiting for us to set down our load.
Waiting for us to turn around.
Waiting for us to stop harming one another.
Waiting for us to face the music and get real and honest about where we went wrong.

If we keep going a bit farther in the text, the lamenter tells us that we must search and examine our ways.
We should lift our hearts and our hands to God.
We were the ones who did wrong.
And when we call out for another way…
God comes to our side.
Always.
Consistently.
Faithfully.

New every morning is your love, great God of light,
And all day long you are working for good in the world.
Stir up in us desire to serve you,
To live peacefully with our neighbors,
And to devote each day to your Son,
Our Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord.

The Fragility of our Connection

Posted on June 7, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Philippians 2:1-8

Arches National Park is perhaps one of the most iconic and picturesque of the spots we will visit.
Three hundred million years ago, give or take, this land lay beneath an ocean. With the ebb and flow of the waters, salt deposits built up hundreds of feet thick.
Eventually, pressure turned some spots turned into sandstone. But as water eroded away the salt but not the harder rock, sandstone was left hanging over these empty gaps, leaving nearly 2,000 arches (America’s Holy Ground, page 31).

But as we mentioned as we began today, these arches are not sturdy or solid. Landscape Arch has seen a number of collapses and Wall Rock Arch fell apart one night in a huge pile of boulders in 2008.
They were formed under pressure and eventually pressure from the elements and human interaction will cause these connections to crumble.

When we planned this series, I wanted to focus on the strength of our connections, but I must confess that yesterday as I was thinking about this sermon I spent most of my day weeping.
Because the connections between us in this nation have never felt more fragile.
Because the tension in the air is palpable.
Because every post or story feels like to fans the flames of division.
And while I try to do better, and be better, I’m guilty of it, too, as I think about conversations I’ve had this week.
I so desperately want to be able to find words to make things okay, to soothe the wounds of our relationships, to seek peace, and there isn’t anything I can say.
I can’t make it better today for my neighbors who are black, indigenous, or people of color.
I can’t make it better today for my neighbors who are law enforcement.
There is too much that is broken and has already crumbled.
We can’t look away and pretend we didn’t see.
There is too much work that has to be done to acknowledge the pain and to hold one another accountable before we can even begin to live in peace.

This Sunday is Peace with Justice Sunday in the United Methodist Church.
Our Social Principles remind us that, “As disciples of Christ, we are called to love our enemies, seek justice, and serve as reconcilers of conflict. “ ¶165.C
As I have heard chanted at various rallies… not just this past week after the killing of George Floyd, but anywhere faithful people show up to seek change:
“No Justice. No Peace.”
As we state for this day, “…political and social turmoil can be caused by a number of issues including economic disparity, environmental degradation, gender inequality, racism and xenophobia, and illness and disease. If we want peace, we must be committed to disrupting these conditions and systems that perpetuate injustice.” (https://www.umcjustice.org/what-we-care-about/peace-with-justice)

Next week, our confirmands will stand up and claim their baptismal vows.
Not only will they take responsibility for turning away from their own sin and failings…
They will claim the freedom and power God gives them to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves.
We wrestled together with what that means, and all of their questions really got me thinking about what it looks like for me to claim that freedom and power, too.

What does it look like for us to resist those systems of injustice?
How do we begin?
How do we create the conditions for peace?
How do we seek justice?
How do we strengthen our fragile human connections?

There isn’t anything I can say in one sermon that can undo or fix systemic racism.
But we can talk about what each of us can do right now in our own personal relationships.

I found myself turning to Paul’s letter to the Philippians.
The church was experiencing a quarrel between two of their members – Euodia and Syntyche. We don’t know the details, but it had the potential to tear the church apart.
And so Paul writes to them these words… this is the Message translation:

“If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ,
if his love has made any difference in your life,
if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you,
if you have a heart,
if you care –
then do me a favor:
Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends.
Don’t push your way to the front;
don’t sweet-talk your way to the top.
Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead.
Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage.
Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
Think of yourselves the way Christ Jesus thought of himself…
he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave…” (Philippians 2:1-7)

When there is conflict and division in the world, the only way we can overcome it, Paul writes, is by putting ourselves to the side.
We have to start focusing on what is good for the other person.
We have to humble ourselves.
We have to stop and pause and focus on the love we have for Christ and other human beings FIRST.
That is the agreement that Paul is talking about… that we would agree in Christ. That we would agree to be like Christ. That we would agree to look upon one another with love.

I find it interesting in the message translation that Eugene Peterson uses the word “privilege” to describe how Christ emptied himself of his status as equal with God.
The Greek word Paul uses here, rooted in kenosis, describes what it means to divest yourself of what rightly belongs to you.
The only way that God in Christ Jesus could reconcile with us…
The only way that God in Christ Jesus could repair the broken connection with humanity…
The only way…
Was for Jesus to set aside his privilege and power and status and to become one of us.
And then, to set aside his life and to die for us.

Paul sees the division in that community, sees the conflict between these two women, and he asks them to be like Christ.
The only way we can have reconciliation and peace is if we let go of trying to be right.
We have to stop focusing on what is best for ourselves and start asking what is right for others.
I think it is important to note here that not all power and privilege is equal.
Jesus took on the status of a slave… and for slaves, for the oppressed, for those suffering injustice… there is no lower for them to go. There is no power to relinquish.
So part of adopting the mind of Christ is becoming aware of the systems in our society that have created differences in the way people are treated and the advantages they have.
We have to look at the ways inequalities are slowly but surely eroding the connections that we have built with one another.
How are our health systems, education systems, economic systems creating the conditions for life for our neighbors?
Where we benefit unequally from those systems, we are not called to dig in deeper, but to work to help others get ahead.

When Paul asks us to put on the mind of Christ, he is asking all of us to equate ourselves, to humble ourselves, to make ourselves lowly.
To walk in the shoes of those who have nothing left to lose.
To listen.
To learn.
When we live this way… putting others first, setting ourselves to the side… it has a transformative impact on the rest of the world.
As Paul goes on to write in the next verses, again this is the Message translation:

“Go out into the world uncorrupted, a breath of fresh air in this squalid and polluted society. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. Carry the light-giving Message into the night…” (2:14-16)

We are to carry this mind of Christ with us everywhere we go.
In the letters we write to legislators.
In the attitude we strike towards those who disagree with us.
At the ballot box.
In the places we chose to shop.
With our families.
In the ways we stand up for those who are crying out for justice.

Think of yourself as Christ thought about himself.
And think of others the way Christ thought of them.
If we can start there, we have taken one step towards peace and justice.
And every step strengthens our connection.
May it be so. Amen.

YES! We Are Able to Care for Our Children

Posted on October 15, 20181 Comment

Text: Mark 9: 33-37, 42-43, 10:13-16

For twenty-seven years, faith communities across the United States have been observing the “Children’s Sabbath,” lifting a united voice of concern for the children in our midst.
Marian Wright Edleman has been instrumental in this work throughout her life. She recalls in a letter of introduction to this year’s observation that fifty years from Dr. King’s Poor People’s Campaign, we are still in the midst of the struggle to end racism, materialism, poverty, and war.
“Many are driven to despair,” she writes, “by assaults on children and family well-being – including rampant and resurgent racism; the devastations of poverty…; the daily, deadly toll of gun violence…; and the heartless ripping of children from the arms of parents seeking refuge in our country. But this time demands that we persist in hope, not despair, and fight with all our nonviolent might until justice is won.”
“All children deserve lives of hope, not despair,” Edleman proclaims.
All children.

So this morning, we are joining together with Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and other Christians to remember that all children are precious in God’s sight and to answer the call to make a positive impact on their lives.

Our faith, after all, demands that we think about the children.

In the gospel of Mark, which we have been following during this fall series, includes not one, not two, but three different instances in which Jesus prioritizes ministry to and with children… that that’s just in two chapters.
We are called to welcome children, to build them up rather than tear them down, and to even become like them.
The children around us… our children… teach us about what it means to be faithful.
And deciding to follow Jesus means being willing to say that YES!, we are able to set aside our desires and plans and limited vision and open our hearts and our lives to the needs and the gifts of the children around us.

There is another key part of these passages that might be difficult, but it is important to highlight. Our responsibility to care for these children… to set aside our agendas… to prioritize their needs… and to not impair them from abundant life… it isn’t an option.
It is a central part of our faith.
And Jesus even says that if we get in the way of these little ones – well, our own souls are at risk.
It’s that important.

So, I want to take some time this morning to talk about how we, through both the larger United Methodist Church and right here in our local community, how we can say YES! to Jesus by being in ministry with all of God’s children. I want to lift up ways we can “persist in hope, not despair.”

This past week, I was in Atlanta for our fall board meeting of Global Ministries and I want to begin by telling you about signs of hope and good news I saw through our connectional ministries.
Our Global Health Unit has a strong focus on maternal and child health and many health systems are being strengthened because of the funds that we have raised through Imagine No Malaria and other initiatives.
In Mozambique, midwives and community health workers are focusing on not only pre-natal, but ante-natal visits to help monitor health and provide education about diseases that threaten pregnant women and children. The efforts are paying off with a dramatic increase in healthy births.
Among all of the data that is collected through these visits there was one in particular that caught my attention. Last year, nearly 187 of these individuals were treated for malaria at these ante-natal visits. This year, because of our efforts to reduce transmission – only 13 individuals had to be treated. That is a 93% reduction! And a cause for great hope for children who might grow up and thrive.

We also heard a report from National Justice For Our Neighbors on our work along the border in these past months. This organization is a United Methodist ministry that provides legal help for immigrants and refugees. Their work has focused on the border with providing accompaniment for those who are seeking asylum.
In one such instance, a mother and her child from Guatemala presented themselves at the border and were separated and placed in detention until their Credible Fear Interview to verify their need for asylum. After 38 days, her interview finally came, and a JFON attorney named Virginia, helped the mother, Delia, present her case to the officer and was granted asylum. Having been found to have credible fear, Delia then had to post a $1,500 bond – which was raised by JFON.
But then, they had to raise funds to travel to where her child was being held two hours away.
One of the conditions of asylum is that individuals must be able to stay with family and so funds also had to be raised in order to get this mother and child to their relatives in another part of the United States. In the weeks for it took to complete this process, the JFON lawyer actually opened up their home for this family to stay with her.

Both of those programs and ministries are possible because we as United Methodists have said that YES we are able to care for the most vulnerable around us. We have combined our apportionment resources and special giving to be the hands and feet of Jesus all across this world.

But we also see the impact of these struggles right here in Des Moines. The neighborhood all around us is changing and part of the reason is that immigrant and refugee families are making a home in our midst. They have found here a safe place to start over, raise their children, and build a new life for themselves.
It’s the reason why Hoover High School is the most diverse school in our state.
But we also see this represented in the lives of children who attend the schools closest to our church.
We wanted to take some time today to hear about the needs right here in our local community, from one our elementary schools – Monroe.

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You and I… this community of faith… has the opportunity to bring hope and excitement to the children right here in our midst.
We can show up and volunteer.
We can support the work of these families as they care for one another.
We can pray for teachers and provide encouragement in their work.
We are going to be listening, paying attention, and seeking further ways to be in partnership with not only Monroe elementary, but our other neighborhood schools as well.

We’ve responded by collecting socks and underwear.
We’ve brought together supplies for school kits.
We’ve purchased books.
And now God is asking us to respond in a bigger way – to build relationships.
One of those opportunities is present right here in our building as we continue to get to know the Myanmar congregation and their children and together our children are growing in faith and love.
Reach out and get to know them on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings.
Sit with them at dinner.
Ask them how their day is going.
Volunteer with our children’s ministry.

And… if you are interested in stepping up in a bigger way, Billie is going to be coordinating some efforts in the future to build partnerships with our schools. She’d love to hear from you.

God has given us amazing gifts, resources, a beautiful facility, and the hands and feet to help.
Are you willing… are you able… to see the children around us and bring hope into their lives?