welcome – Salvaged Faith

Nehemiah: Everyone Is Included

Posted on February 12, 2023Leave a comment

Text: Nehemiah 11:1-2, 12:27-43

Nehemiah and company finished rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem in fifty-two days.

But when the work was complete, what they were left with was basically a shell of a city.

It had walls and gates.

It had a temple and temple staff and priests.

But what it didn’t have was people.

There were some who had lived amongst the ruins, but the majority of people were scattered in surrounding towns and villages.

And so with this nearly blank slate of a city, Nehemiah had to figure out how best to create their ideal city.

On Tuesday, I joined with other clergy from our circuit for our monthly meeting.

We represent twelve churches, almost all on this northwest side of Des Moines.

These gatherings help us think about how we can support one another’s ministry and what kind of work we might do together.

This Lenten season, we will be joining with some of these churches for a community Ash Wednesday service here at Immanuel with a choir made up of members from four different churches.

And for Good Friday, we will gather at Walnut Hills for a Tenebrae service with special music led by five different congregations.

But one of the main conversations that occupied our time was about how we are making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.

As we think about the faithful disciples we have in our congregations, how are we empowering you all to go out and transform this city into what God desires it to be?

And Pastor Lee from Valley UMC reminded us of a principle of community organizing.

The question we should be asking is not always what I can do to impact this individual person today.

Sometimes, the question is, what do we want our community to look like in thirty years?

What does God want our community to look like in thirty years?

And what might need to happen in order to get to that place?

That was the kind of question Nehemiah was asking.

He heard God invite him to rebuild the community and the truth was, this isn’t the kind of work that could be accomplished in fifty-two days.

And he knew from past experiences with the officials and leaders exploiting the common folks that you had to be careful with power.

They needed to set up a system where all sorts of people were included and welcomed and had a voice.

So what did God want Jerusalem to look like in thirty years?

And what would it take to get there?

Nehemiah had a lot of options before him.

They could have focused on including just the wealthy and educated.

They could have picked the best and the brightest.

But as we see when they start this effort of resettling, they intentionally worked to make sure that people from every part of their nation were included.

To ensure they didn’t just pick out their favorites…

or just who they wanted to live in the city…

or just those who looked like them…

Nehemiah had the people cast lots.

As we demonstrated with the children, casting lots was a way of randomizing the decision.

One out of every ten people were chosen in this way to move from the surrounding villages up the road and into the fortified walls of the city proper.

And in one sense, this was a sacrifice for these people.

They had to uproot from their small towns and establish themselves in a new place.

But they were also invited to take on the responsibility of this rebuilding in the city in a way that allowed them to leave their own unique mark.

It was a way of saying: your tribe matters to the good of the whole.

We value having your part of the community at the table.

We not only welcome you, we celebrate you.

You are important to us.

This community belongs to you… just as much as it belongs to me.

And your presence here now will ensure that your part of the community will continue to be part of the future of this city and this people.

That is the conversation we are having right now with our welcoming statement.

In the first sentence of the statement, we are invited to claim this kind of truth:

“We celebrate God’s gift of diversity and value the wholeness made possible in community equally shared and shepherded by all.”

First… what does it mean that we celebrate God’s gift of diversity and value the wholeness made possible in community?

This church has welcome and hospitality as one of its core values.

So many of you, in our Nehemiah community groups, shared about how you first connected with the congregation.

Time and time again, I heard the story of how you planned to visit a few congregations, but once you arrived at Immanuel, you never went anywhere else.

You felt love and support and welcome.

When I first got to Immanuel, I experienced that to be true as well.

I’ve learned you are quick to show up at the bedside of a friend and have often visited before I even hear someone is in the hospital or sick.

I see the care that is taken to make this a hospitable and welcoming place: from coffee time and funeral lunches to how you make space for others.

On the sign outside our building, it says, ‘All Welcome!’ and you really want to everyone to feel welcome here.

Just this week, I was working on our statistical tables and I thought about just how much our diversity has increased this past year as we officially welcomed IGF to be part of our church.

But we also have a wide range of ages… from nine-week-old babies to nonagenarians.

We are wealthy and we struggle financially.

We are healthy and we need healing.

Some of us have been educated on the streets and some of us have taught in universities.

We vote republican and we vote democrat and some of us don’t vote.

And even Cyclones and Hawkeyes and Panthers all attend here and are still somehow able to worship together.

More than that… we celebrate that diversity.

We learn from one another, we partner with one another, and share our diverse gifts.

But, sometimes I think the love and welcome of Immanuel is one of our best kept secrets.

There are folks in this neighborhood and larger community who do not know they would be welcome here…

Even though the sign says, “All Welcome,” there are people who might wonder, “even me?”

We might not force them to cast lots and make them come inside our church, but being explicit about who is welcome and showing and affirming that broadly might help our neighbors to see this as a place that they, too, could find belonging.

A place where they could share in ministry.

So one of our congregational goals for 2023 is that we want to become a place that is known as safe, comforting, and supportive for all people.

And our welcoming statement is a part of that, because it helps us be more explicit about what we truly mean by welcome.

But, it also invites us to truly become a community equally shared and shepherded by all.

There is another way that Nehemiah emphasized this kind of welcome and celebration of people from every walk of life.

You see, the time finally came to throw a party.

A real celebration for the completion of the wall.

And he could have just held auditions and picked the best band and singers and the most famous speakers.

But instead, he intentionally made sure that there were people from every part of the community present.

They were sought out from all the places they lived.

And they could have just had the party in one prime location… like the square where they rededicated themselves to God…

But instead, Nehemiah made sure that every single square inch of that wall was celebrated.

And in doing so, he honored and celebrated the work of all of the everyday people who played a part…

the goldsmith and the perfumer…

and the folks who carried stones and who held shields and who stayed up all night…

and the daughters and grandchildren who came to help…

He made sure that everyone who had been part of the work was valued and celebrated in the process.

When I think about the impact of a welcoming statement like the one before us, I think about how even inside this caring, loving community, there are folks who might have a part of their lives they aren’t sure is welcome.

They might hesitate to talk about their divorce.

Or worry about how their pew mates might accept their non-binary grandchild.

There are folks who might hesitate to participate in a small group because English isn’t their first language.

They might hold back their concerns about whether they can afford to stay in their home.

An explicit welcome helps us convey:

We not only welcome you, we celebrate you.

You are important to us.

And you have something to offer this community that we need.

This community belongs to you… just as much as it belongs to me.

But it also says, we will continue to have your back… just like we did before.

We will work to support you and walk alongside you in the future we are claiming together.

And if needed, we will go to bat for you in the struggles that you face in this world.

The celebration and dedication of the wall was also a celebration and dedication of the future for the city of Jerusalem.

They held before them a vision of the kind of place they wanted to be in thirty years.

A community where all parts were cherished and had a role to play.

A community that would hold one another accountable to the commitments they had made.

A community that would have one another’s backs whenever hardship would come.

And I hold this community in my prayers as you discern and think about the kind of place you want to be in thirty years as well.

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.

No Christmas Without Joy and Acceptance

Posted on December 13, 2020Leave a comment

All through this Advent season we are exploring the complicated family tree of Jesus of Nazareth Matthew shares with us.
Their stories are a legacy of courage and faith, justice and peace, that shape how we understand our Savior in the manger of Bethlehem.
Today, we remember that there would be no Christmas, no Jesus, no salvation without Ruth.
Salmon was the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab.
Boaz was the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth.
Obed was the father of Jesse.
Jesse was the father of David the king. (Matthew 1: 5-6)
So let us listen today, for how God moves through unexpected people and in unexpected ways to bring to us a redeemer…

Our story begins in Bethlehem itself.
Bethlehem, or “House of Bread.”
A place of abundance is overrun by famine.
Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, had two sons and lived contently within the city in the time of the judges.
It was a time without a centralized government, with great instability and turmoil.
When they could no longer make a future for themselves within their hometown, they fled and became refugees.
We might see their faces in the images of refugees from Syria and Iraq and northern Africa today… Camping in muddy fields, clothes wet from the journey, their only possessions what they could carry, completely unsure if they will be welcomed wherever they arrive.
The place they come to call home is the land of Moab.
Now, it is important at this point to consider what it meant for them to find a home here. The Moabites were actually distant cousins of the Israelites, tracing their lineage all the way back to Abraham’s nephew, Lot and his daughters.
The Ammonites and the Moabites are their descendants and were regarded with disdain and suspicion.
As the story of the people of Israel continues, these distant cousins became enemies.
They refused hospitality to the Israelites as they fled from Egypt and watched with great unease as Joshua and his people conquered the land.
Our story today is just one generation removed from this conflict, yet Naomi and Elimelech seek refuge there.
Just as they establish themselves, Elimelech dies, leaving Naomi and her two boys, Mahlon and Kilion.
Years pass. They grow up and they each marry women from that land… Moabite women… Ruth and Orpah.
But then one son after the other dies.
As Helen Pearson notes, “This healthy family had earlier departed a sick land only to become sick in a healthy land. Death canceled hope, and Naomi became a stranger in a strange land.” (p. 115)
She plans to return to Bethlehem to live as a widow… resigned to beg for the rest of her sad and bitter life. And she sends the Moabite daughters-in-law away, releasing them from any obligations with the opportunity to start anew.
Naomi prays that God would show them the same kind of loving-kindness, chesed, that they and their people had shown to them as strangers.
They weep. They grieve. They lament all they have lost.
And then… one of these daughters, Ruth, refuses to leave Naomi’s side.
It is an act of loving-kindness… unmerited love and grace and mercy shown to Naomi.
Even more than that.
Ruth casts her lot with the God of Naomi.
Ruth commits herself to a life where she will be the stranger and the foreigner, a grieving widow with no tangible possibilities.

You know, this year we have ourselves experienced grief, loss, tragedy, and disruption.
The loss of jobs and income.
The grief over loved ones we have lost.
The disruption of our routines where everything normal and familiar was taken from us.
We have been cut off from one another and have had to miss out on times of celebration.
There have been moments where we felt like Naomi and Ruth in this moment… grieving, lonely, and depressed.
As they make the journey back to Bethlehem, this despair so overtakes Naomi that she begs people to call her Mara – The Bitter One.

What she fails to recognize in this moment is that she is, in fact, not alone.
Ruth is by her side.
She had not been completely abandoned.
And friends… you have not been abandoned in this season either.
In small ways and in big ways, we have walked with each other through the dark and shadowy valleys and show up with cards and calls and food and connection.

Ruth takes the initiative to provide for them by going out to glean in the fields.
She is essentially going to pick up the small grains that are left on the ground after the harvesters have done their work.
It was back-breaking work, demeaning work, dangerous work.
She was a Moabite stranger, with no one to look out for her, utterly at the mercy of the field hands.
Remember how Naomi prayed that God would show her daughters-in-law kindness?
While she is out there working, a man named Boaz sees her.
Boaz, the son of Salmon, whose mother was Rahab.
Rahab the prostitute.
Rahab who herself was a foreign woman.
Rahab who herself risked everything to secure a future for her family.
Rahab who had faith in the God of Israel.
Rahab who welcomed the spies in hospitality and in peace.
You can’t ignore that her story has impacted the character of her son.
Boaz is moved not only by her work-ethic, but also by the way in which she sacrificed and acted to stand beside Naomi. He decides to show her favor and protection.
He make sure she has access to the best fields, has plenty to eat and drink, and protects her from his own men.

This act of favor and kindness is like a spark of life for Naomi.
She realizes that Boaz was a distant relative, someone who could redeem her husband’s property and provide for their future.
The law of levirate marriage that we heard about in the story of Tamar couldn’t apply here because Naomi had no other children.
But a kinsman redeemer could intervene. As Helen Pearson notes, they had “the obligation and duty to provide security, especially for widows and the poor; to restore the honor and prestige of the family; and to protect the interests, property, and inheritance of his extended family.” (p. 128)
Boaz could act to protect Naomi, but Ruth would remain vulnerable.
And so Naomi hatches up a plan for them to both get what they needed.
Ruth would present herself to Boaz as a potential wife.
If I had more time today, we’d get into the details of this drunken encounter on the threshing floor, but let’s just say, Boaz is willing and eager to take Ruth as his own and to take on the role of redeeming Elimelech’s property.
After going through all of the proper channels, Boaz marries Ruth and protects the legacy of Elimelech, Kilian and Mahlon.
They give birth to a child, Obed, and Naomi rediscovers the meaning of joy and life and abundance through her grandchild.

One the scriptures we will explore this week in our daily devotions is Psalm 126.
It is a song that rings out in times of exile and struggle:
Lord, change our circumstances for the better, like dry streams in the desert waste!
Let those who plant with tears reap the harvest with joyful shouts.
Let those who go out, crying and carrying their seed,
Come home with joyful shouts, carrying bales of grain!
Ruth and Naomi went out with tears, but God acted in their lives and they came home with joyful shouts.
And as we continue this journey to the manger, we see their legacy in the story of Jesus.
You see, when Joseph discovered his fiancée was pregnant, he probably cried out: Lord, change our circumstances! But he stuck by Mary, like Ruth stuck by Naomi.
When the holy family had to feel to a strange land and flee from the wrath of Herod, they probably cried out: Lord, change our circumstances! But God journeyed with them, as God did these weary refugees.
All along the way, acts of hospitality and gifts of kindness sustained their parched spirits.
We see how Christ takes up this legacy as he acts to bring life and joy and abundance in the midst of moments of despair and hunger and longing.
He brings the dead to life.
He feeds the multitudes.
He shows compassion and kindness upon strangers and foreigners.
Those who plant with tears reap a harvest of joyful shouts.

In this season of Advent, we are called to prepare our hearts and our lives for Jesus Christ.
We are called to make a home in our hearts for Christ to dwell.
And we do so by remembering the legacy of these faithful ancestors and allowing it to transform our own lives.
After all, there would have been no Christmas without Ruth.
When we find ourselves, as Naomi did, swallowed up by despair and grief, joy is discovered when we realize that others are journeying with us and that we are not, in fact, alone.
Your acts of connection, the cards you send and the calls you make, the cookies you drop off at a neighbor’s door… all of these things are like seeds of joy that you can plant every single day.
But I’m also struck by the larger forces that this story brings into focus.
This is a world in which asylum seekers and refugees who have left their homes with tears are crying out. At the end of 2019, an estimated 26 million people had sought refuge from violence war, famine and climate disasters. Another 33.4 million people were internally displaced, living in shelters and camps within their own country due to violence or disaster.
But we don’t have to even think globally to be aware of the deep need and hunger for support for people right here in our own neighborhood who rely upon the food pantry and our social services to stay in their homes or to make it through a long, cold winter.
Lord, change their circumstances for the better!
And then I realize that God acts through you and me.
God acted through the Moabites who welcomed refugees into their land.
And God acted through the compassionate hospitality and protection of Boaz and the community in Bethlehem that provided for Ruth and Naomi.
Your acts of kindness, generosity and welcome can make an incredible difference, changing circumstances, providing possibility, filling mouths with laugher and joy and abundance.
This next weekend, we are hosting a drive-through food drive for the DMARC Food Pantry Network. Let us pour out joy and abundance and grace and love to our neighbors during this difficult season.

A Feast of Terror and Abundance

Posted on November 8, 2020Leave a comment

Text: Matthew 22:1-14; Isaiah 25:1-10

So, all month long in our daily devotions we are focusing on where the Kingdom of Heaven shows up in the gospel of Matthew.
What we discover is an awful lot about how we should live right here and right now.
The Sermon on the Mount is filled with ethical instruction about how we treat one another in the Kingdom… which is often the opposite of what the world expects.
We’re called to put all of this teaching into practice in our lives and get out there and start sharing the Kingdom of Heaven with everyone we meet by healing and teaching and building relationships.
And then, we get to the parables.

This coming week we are going to talk each day about some of the shorter parables…
The Kingdom of Heaven is like a mustard seed, or leaven, or a net thrown into the ocean…
But for the next two weeks, I want to focus on some of the big and complicated parables we find in this gospel.

Parables, as I shared in yesterday’s devotion, are stories about ordinary things that draw people in, but have a meaning that is often hidden from plain sight.
They are meant to provoke us, to get under our skin, or as Debie Thomas puts it: “show us things we don’t want to see.”
Because they are stories, they have layers of interpretation, not just one way of seeing them. Jewish rabbis in the time of Jesus would have debated and wrestled and turned a scripture upside down and inside out and every single time would have discovered something new within it.
That is how we are invited to dive in… with open minds and willing spirits.
We are invited to dig into the history and the context that surrounds these simple narratives to try to grasp how the crowds around Jesus might have heard them.
And then we are supposed to ask how God is working to challenge the assumptions we bring into the story.

So today, we have the parable of the wedding banquet.
Now, usually when we look at this parable, we imagine that the King is God, right? God has invited the chosen ones to the party, and when they refuse, God throws open the doors to anyone else who might come.
Well, that is the sanitized version of that story.
Because it skips over all of the terrifying parts.
This is not a happy and blissful scene, but something that is straight out of a horror film.
When the invited guests don’t show up, in his rage, the king has them all murdered and sets the whole city on fire.

Then, the king pulls in everyone who is left – good or bad, rich or poor – and in essence, forces them to attend the party.
I mean, if they refuse, they might turn out like those initial guests, right?
All of these leftover nobodies show up, probably with fear and trembling.
Then, when the King looks out at the crowd, he sees one person who isn’t wearing the right thing and has him thrown out into the darkness.

Debie Thomas asks us:
“As Christ’s followers, do we really believe in a God as petty, vengeful, hotheaded, and thin-skinned as the king in this parable? A God who burns an entire city to the ground in order to appease his wounded ego? A God who forces people to celebrate…while his armies wreak destruction right outside? A God who casts an impoverished guest into the “outer darkness” for reasons the guest absolutely can’t control? Obviously the answer is no. Of course we don’t believe in a God as monstrous as that. Do we?”

One of the things that I remember my grandpa saying pretty clearly is that he didn’t understand the God of the Old Testament.
The God he found there was violent.
The God he found there punished the people.
But the God of the New Testament was full of grace and mercy and forgiveness.

But I think we can only say that is true if we selectively read through the scriptures and we skip over interpretations of parables like this.
And I’m reminded that it also requires us to skip over the promises and visions of abundance and love we find in the Torah and Prophets and Writings.
In fact, in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about not the wedding feast of terror from our reading today, but the feast of abundance in Isaiah 25 and 55.

Isaiah cries out…
…the Lord of heavenly forces will prepare for all peoples
a rich feast, a feast of choice wines,
of select foods rich in flavor…
He will swallow up on this mountain the veil … swallow up death forever.
The Lord God will wipe tears from every face;
he will remove his people’s disgrace from off the whole earth,
for the Lord has spoken.
They will say on that day,
“Look! This is our God,
for whom we have waited—
and he has saved us!

All of you who are thirsty, come to the water!
Whoever has no money, come, buy food and eat!
Without money, at no cost, buy wine and milk!
Why spend money for what isn’t food,
and your earnings for what doesn’t satisfy?
Listen carefully to me and eat what is good;
enjoy the richest of feasts.
Listen and come to me;
listen, and you will live.

Surrounding these passages are mentions of God’s judgement.
Of walls being trampled and people being destroyed.
But here is the thing about the prophets.
They were speaking to a people who were actively experiencing their own ruin.
Their cities were being overrun and burned to the ground by occupying forces.
Their neighbors were being killed.
And they had to try to make sense of what was happening.
How could God have let them down?
Why weren’t they protected?
And what the prophets proclaimed in this moment is that the rulers and the people needed to acknowledge their own sin and complicity and failures.
But every single time, the prophets also spoke of Gods redemptive love.
They set forth a vision of abundance and grace and restoration.
You see, the God proclaimed in these texts is not petty or cruel… no, God’s steadfast love endures forever.
God is patiently waiting, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death forever.

How do we reconcile that vision with our traditional interpretations of this parable?
Maybe we start by asking new questions.
I was a bit blown away when Debie Thomas posed a question in her reflection:
“What if the king in the parable isn’t God at all?”
“What if the king embodies everything we’ve learned to associate with divine power and authority from watching other, all-too-human kings and rulers?

This king, after all, acts a whole lot more like Herod that the God we find in scripture.
You know, the one who went out and murdered infants because he felt his rule was threatened.
This king acts a whole lot more like the Roman Empire, which has subjugated the people of Israel.

Perhaps, Jesus tells the parable in precisely this way because he wants to challenge the assumptions we have about the kind of Kingdom he is bringing.
A parable, after all, shows us things that we don’t want to see.
Not about God, but about ourselves.
This parable comes on the heels in Matthew’s Gospel of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem.
There were some there, who wanted God’s reign to come with violence. They hoped for an overthrow of the Roman empire.
But there were also those like the religious leaders who believed that God’s reign was exclusive and filled with judgment. They sought to arrest and kill Jesus because he was not playing by their expectations and rules.
What is Jesus trying to get us to see?
If God is not the King… where do we find the Kingdom of Heaven in this parable?

In the parables we will explore over this next week in our daily devotion… Jesus tells us the Kingdom of Heaven is hidden. It is quiet. It is blossoming. It is unexpected. It is contagious. It is inclusive. It can’t be stopped.

When I hold those Kingdom of Heaven values up to this parable, I come to a surprising insight.
What if the Kingdom of Heaven is centered not on the powerful ruler, but the one person who has the courage to stand out?
The one who refuses to follow the rules of the party, the empire, the world.
As Debie Thomas puts it, “What if the ‘God figure’ in the parable is… the one brave guest who decides he’d rather be ‘bound hand and foot’ and cast into the outer darkness of Gethsemane, Calvary, the cross, and the grave…?”

After all, just prior to this parable, Jesus challenges the religious leaders quoting scripture to them:
“The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The Lord has done this, and it’s amazing in our eyes.”

The Kingdom of Heaven is not a feast of terror where guests are forced to attend by the threat of sword and fire.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a feast of abundance that turns upside down our notions of power.
It is where tears are wiped away.
It embodies the kind of love the Apostle Paul speaks of in 1 Corinthians 13.
The Kingdom of Heaven is patient.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not easily angered.
The Kingdom of Heaven keeps no account of wrongs… not taking pleasure in wrong doing, but rejoicing in the truth.
The Kingdom of Heaven endures all things… even the threats and violence of the world.

In fact, it is the rejection by this world that lays the cornerstone for God’s will to be done among us.

Last week, we compared the values of the kingdoms of earth and the Kingdom of Heaven.
Today, we are invited to imagine ourselves as those invited guests…
Will we allow fear and intimidation to keep us in the world?
Or are we willing to take up our crosses and stand against the forces of evil, injustice, and oppression?
It was a decision that the disciples would have to make just a few days after Jesus shared these words.
Some of them betrayed Jesus and handed him over.
Some of them fled.
Some of them tried to fight.
Some of them denied who he was.
You see, standing against this world feels almost impossible.

Almost.
Because even our rejection cannot stop the Kingdom from taking hold.
Even our hesitation cannot stop the Spirit from moving.
God’s steadfast love endures forever.
And God is patiently waiting for us, with the banquet table always abundantly set, ready to swallow up death and fear and oppression forever.
All we have to do accept the invitation.

Sing! Play! Summer! – Amazing Grace

Posted on July 7, 2019Leave a comment

Text: Luke 15

I have a fantastic sense of direction.
If you drop me in a new place with a map, I can easily get my bearings and find my way.
When I think about it, I can’t remember a time that I have ever been lost… at least not while I was navigating!
I do lose things, however.
I misplace things all the time.
My attention slips for just a few minutes and I set something down and the next thing I know, it’s gone.
In fact, on graduation day at Simpson College, my family was helping me move out of the house. We packed everything up and loaded the boxes into my mom’s SUV and the plan was for me to follow behind with my brothers in my car.
My parents took off and all of us young folks helped my roommates finish packing and loading their cars.
We finished and went to head home ourselves, when I realized… I couldn’t find my keys.
They were nowhere to be found.
In a panic, we called my parents and they found them packed in the top of one of the boxes in their vehicle.
So I dropped my brothers off at the movie theater, while my boyfriend drove me halfway back to Cedar Rapids to meet my dad and the keys.
Believe it or not… that’s not the only time I’ve lost my keys while moving.
And, of course… I lost one of my monkeys this morning =) [reference to the children’s sermon]

Today, Luke’s gospel tells us the parables of the lost… the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son… the child who takes his inheritance and runs off, squanders it all and returns home.
A parable a short story that tells us a moral lesson… like the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not – the point is what we learn from it.
Luke groups these lost parables together, because he thinks it is key to who Jesus believes we are and how we are to live.
You see, at the beginning of this chapter, Jesus sat down for supper with some unsavory characters.
He was eating with tax collectors and sinners. Ooooo….
What? Does that not trouble you?
The idea that Jesus would sit down with a tax collector?
That’s probably because tax collectors today – while not our favorite people, are also not the unsavory villians of Jesus time.
But who might be?
What kind of people would we find it scandalous for Jesus to be having dinner with today?
What about drag queens?
Or Muslims?
White supremacists?
Or prostitutes?
Would any of those groups of folks make your feathers ruffle just a little bit?
Would you stop in your tracks and stare?
The Pharisees sure did.
They walked by the house where Jesus was having this grand old feast with a bunch of sinners and they started to whisper.
They started to grumble.
They started to complain… that fellow welcomes sinners!
And not only that – he eats with them!!!

And so loud enough so that they could hear – Jesus begins to tell these stories about the lost. About the shepherd that leaves behind the entire flock to seek out the one lost sheep.
The story about the woman who burns as much oil as a single coin was worth just to find a coin that was lost.

And when they found those lost things – Jesus said – there was great rejoicing…
In the same way God seeks the lost people of this world…
and God rejoices when they are found.
I may not know what it is like to be lost and not know my way home, but I do know what it is like to have lost something.
I know the desperation of seeking out that thing that I need – the thing that I love.
I know how important it is.
And so in some small way, I understand what it means for God to seek out those who are lost.
What is harder to understand is that I am someone who has been and who probably still is… lost.
We don’t like to acknowledge that we are sinners… that there are parts of our lives we still hold back from God.
We are fantastic at being being oblivious little sheep, wandering away from the flock and not realizing it.
Maybe it is a habit of telling lies, or the anger you harbor in your heart…
Maybe you like spending more time watching football than showing up to praise God…
Maybe you use and abuse the gifts of God’s creation…
Maybe pride has led you to believe you don’t need God’s help…
But whether we want to admit it or not, we are all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. (Romans 3:23)
It is an ugly fact about each and every single one of us.
We can pretend it’s not so – but, maybe, at the very least, we can take comfort in the fact that we are all sinners.
We are in this together.
We have all fallen short of the glory of God.
And God seeks each one of us out anyways…

Today’s hymn of the day was the second most favorite song of the people of Immanuel… Amazing Grace.
It was written in 1779 by John Newton and his story reminds us of that simple truth that we are all lost… we have all fallen short… but that doesn’t mean God has given up on us.
Newton was born in 1725 and was taken to sea by his father who was a sea-captain. He rebelled, he drank too much, he got into trouble, and before he knew it, he was forced to join the British navy. He tried to desert, but was caught and had his rank stripped away.
Eventually he found himself serving on a slave ship, and caused a big stink among the crew, so they left him in West Africa – basically giving him to an African princess who treated him as a slave.
His father began to wonder where he was and sent out a rescue mission.
On the ship back home, a storm tossed the boat to and fro and they seemed to be sinking…
In that dark place, from rock bottom, with nothing left to lose, Newton began to pray and the ship drifted to safety.
He marks this day, March 21, 1748, as the beginning of his Christian faith.
As Diane Severance notes, “Only God’s amazing grace could and would take a rude, profane, slave-trading sailor and transform him into a child of God.” (https://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/john-newton-discovered-amazing-grace-11630253.html)

Here is the thing, though.
Even after this moment, Newton wasn’t perfect.
He continued in his work as a slave-trader until the age of 39 when he eventually answered a call to ministry in 1764.
As part of his ministry, he began to write hymns, including Amazing Grace in 1779… a testimony of his own journey from wretchedness to salvation, from being lost to being found.
But it was not until 1788, thirty-four years after leaving the profession that Newton would renounce the slave trade and his role within it.
In 1788, he published a pamphlet, “Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade.” He became an advocate for the abolition of slavery and lived to see it end in Great Britian in 1807.

In many ways, Newton’s story reminds me of that lost son… the prodigal son… the one who is consumed by drunkenness and tries to make his own way and utterly fails.
Like the prodigal son, the love of the father rescues him and welcomes him home.
Amazing Grace speaks to this personal journey of salvation.

But I also think about the rest of his journey and how eventually Newton came to understand that every single person upon this planet is a precious child of God, worthy of love.
That God will not rest until every person is found….
The final verse of Amazing Grace is actually not attributed to Newton, but I think it represents that shift in his own life from the first person singular, to the first person plural.
From “I” to “we”

I am reminded of a story told by Rodger Nishioka who as a Presbyterian was working alongside some Russian Orthodox folks in an ecumenical project.
He made reference to the “Parable of the Lost Sheep” when someone interrupted him and asked him which parable he meant.
For a moment, I imagine Mr. Nishioka thought these Russian Orthodox folks didn’t know their bibles very well.
So, he summarized Luke’s parable about the shepherd looking for the one sheep that had gone missing from the flock of 100.
The Russian Orthodox priest looked at him and said, “Oh! You mean the Parable of the incomplete flock.”
In their tradition, God was concerned about the one sheep that went missing, because without that one sheep – the 100 would not be complete.
God wants to seek out and find all of God’s children and our family is only complete when all who are lost are found.
We are incomplete.
The family of God is incomplete when we leave out the tax collectors and sinners.
It is incomplete when we turn our backs on the drag queens and white supremacists.
We are not whole until our siblings who are Muslim or Jewish or Buddhist are welcomed.
We are lost if we cannot sit down with Jesus and the prostitutes.

As long as we diminish the worth of another person and hold them at a distance…
As long as we believe that others are unworthy, unfaithful, or uninterested…
As long as we act in hatred or anger towards our siblings…
As long as we are unwilling to sit down and share a meal God’s family is incomplete.

Like the woman with the lost coin…
Like the shepherd with the lost sheep…
Like the father whose son has gone missing…
God seeks out every single one of us until we are found.
Even me.
Even you.
Even them.
Thanks be to God.

Abiding in Love

Posted on May 13, 2018Leave a comment

Loneliness is a growing epidemic in our society.
Yes, I said epidemic.
Studies have now shown that loneliness and social isolation raises our stress hormones, causes inflammation, and can lead to heart disease, arthritis, diabetes, dementia, and more. In fact, some claim that it could even be a bigger health risk than smoking or obesity.

Being a part of community is good for your health.
In a world-wide study of “Blue Zones” or communities that are known to have residents that live 100 years or longer, they found that belonging played a role in three of the nine factors they identified.
They lived close to their families – often in multi-generational homes. And they had a tribe, a close circle of friends, that supported them in healthy behaviors. The vast majority of the centenarians belonged to a faith-based community.

Right here, in this faith community, we have been asking what it might mean to abide in God, to make our home in God, and to welcome others into that community of love. In these weeks since Easter, we’ve talked about what it means to be family, what it means to gather around God’s table, and what it means to return home to our faith.
If you haven’t noticed, one of the themes that keeps coming over and over again is that we need one another! We were created by God to be in community. And the fabric that holds us together is love. God’s love. Flowing through us.

This morning’s scriptures are no different.
In the first epistle of John, we are reminded that if you love a parent, you automatically love the children that come from that parent.
Those of us who love God have to keep God’s commandments – and that means that we show love to all of the children of God in this world.
This is how we overcome the forces of this world that would lead to death. This is how we combat loneliness and social isolation. This is how we help people live long abundant lives. God’s victory is known through love.

In John’s gospel, we are again urged to abide in God’s love and to love one another as Christ has loved us.
We have been chosen, appointed, sent forth, to share that love with the world.

I must admit that my faith in the ability of the church to truly love and accept all people has been tried a bit lately.
First, there is the ongoing tension of difference in the United Methodist Church when it comes to if and how we will accept LGBTQ+ people into the fullness of the life of our church. As more details come out about our bishop’s plan for providing a path forward as the church, we will have more indepth conversation here at Immanuel about what it could mean for us as a congregation.
But this week, we also released the results of five constitutional amendments that were passed at the 2016 General Conference. These amendments must be voted on by all of the annual conferences worldwide and be approved by a 2/3 margin. Three of them passed, but two did not.
The first amendment that failed will be up for a revote this year, because of an error that was discovered only after the results were released. But it dismayed me and others across the globe to learn that after 28 years of trying, we have again failed to constitutionally declare that men and women are equal before God and equal in the church.
The second amendment that failed, likewise, would have extended protections to more people in the church, eliminating discrimination on the basis of age, gender, ability, or marital status.
The rationale for why these amendments failed is complicated. In some cases, people thought they didn’t go far enough. In others, there were concerns about the potential ramifications for mandatory retirement or concerns about someone with intellectual disabilities being the chair of Finance or SPRC. In still other cases, the language about men and women was caught up with language about God being neither male or female in a way that troubled them.

What I see, however, is that we have failed to make love our primary motivation.
We have allowed fears to keep us from fully and without condition creating space in the body of Christ for every child of God to share their gifts.

Part of me didn’t want to share these results with you.
I wish that we were blissfully ignorant to the ways in which the church is a human institution and makes mistakes.
I know that many in this room aren’t even aware that the United Methodist Church has a constitution, much less what is in it.
But I also realized this week that one of the reasons that these two amendments failed is that as pastors, as leaders, as teachers, we don’t do a good enough job reminding one another that love is the source of our victory over fear, cynicism, and the ways of this world.

If I were to stand before you today and only talk about love, without also talking about how far we have yet to come, I would not being doing my job.
In the statement from our General Board of Church and Society, General Secretary Susan Henry-Crowe reminds us that “Mother’s Day was born out of appreciation for the tireless advocacy of women.” Anna Jarvis wanted to honor her mother’s life-long activism and in May of 1907, a Mother’s Day service was organized at the Methodist Church in Grafton West Virginia where her mother Ann had been a Sunday school teacher.
Could you imagine a church, could you imagine the body of Christ where women were not present or not contributing? Where women were cut off from the community? What would our church look like without women preaching or giving financially or taking care of the children in the nursery or preparing Wednesday night meals or leading the music.
The same question could be asked about if we had no older adults. Or children. Or divorced persons. Or single adults. Or folks with ADD or autism. Or men.

The community God intends for us is far greater than the one we would choose for ourselves. Perhaps that is why in the gospel of John, Jesus reminds us that we didn’t choose God… but instead we were chosen.
We were called into this community of faith to be in relationship with all of these people.
And our task is to love, honor, and celebrate the gifts of each person in this room.
When we combine our efforts and our talents and allow each person to fully commit to God’s work in this world – then that victory of love over the division and pain of this world will be complete.

When we close our service today, we are singing a good old hymn about when we all get to heaven.
But as we started our service, in the last line of Wesley’s famous hymn, we sang that we should own that love is heaven.
Heaven is not some far off place that awaits us when we die.
It is a reality that we make through our love of one another right here and right now.
And as we abide in God, we are reminded that we are also called to create room for others in this community of faith.
When every person knows the love of God and is valued and respected and honored… then we can sing and shout in victory… because heaven has been made real among us.
Amen.

Untitled

Posted on November 22, 2015Leave a comment

It was a Monday afternoon, in Marengo, and a young woman walked into the church and asked to use the telephone.

Not a problem, I said.

And while she sat in the office dialing numbers and getting no response, I sat at my desk trying to pick out hymns for worship the next Sunday. Are you stranded? I asked.

I learned that Maria had just been released from the county jail, was far from home, and no one was coming to get her.

She finally got a hold of a friend or a neighbor… someone she thought might help and was chewed out over the phone.

She hung up in frustration. Maria had no options.

She was seven months pregnant, in Marengo with no vehicle or ride, and needed to get home to the Quad Cities to her kids.

In Isaiah chapter 40, the prophet is moved to share God’s compassion for the people of Israel in exile. He gave them words of comfort in the midst of their trial and tribulation. And then Isaiah hears a voice:

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain.

He was to tell the people that EVERY obstacle that came between them and their salvation and their home was being removed.

In this time of worship, let us listen once again for the cry of the prophets.

****

I think about that woman often.

I thought about her as a group of us gathered in Ankeny about a month ago for the “Right Next Door” Conference and as we were surrounded by all of these people.

They represented those we knew, and people we have yet to come to know, who are impacted by addiction, domestic violence, incarceration, human trafficking…

We were invited to open our eyes and our minds and our hearts to see them… and us… in a new way.

Because, let’s be honest: we, too, have been impacted by these things.

We are not immune to the realities of alcohol or drugs, abuse, crime, or sex.

But we often leave those parts of our lives outside of the church.

Friends, those realities are deeply part of who we are and ignoring them or pretending they don’t exist can keep us from relationship with God.

Those people in exile saw an immense gulf separating them from their home and their God. Valleys of sin and mountains of guilt lie between them and the Lord.

We face those obstacles, but I’m increasingly aware that some of the mountains and valleys that keep people from the Lord include artificial barriers we put up to “protect” the church.

It is not just their past that keeps people like Michael or Maria from walking in the doors of the church.

So my question for us to ponder is this: What are the barriers we put up as a church? What keeps people who are struggling from having a relationship with God in this place?

****

A voice is crying out in the wilderness:

Prepare the way of the Lord!

Make it easier for people to come to God!

Help clear out a path!

Make a smooth and straight road for the Lord to come.

Maria found the courage to walk across the street to the church and ask to use the phone.

And I’m going to be honest, there are all sorts of mountains and valleys that might have kept me from helping her.

I was there in the building alone and I had been fighting the suggestions that I keep the doors locked when it was just me there.
I was in the middle of trying to get some work done and I was really busy.
She had just been released from prison.
I didn’t know if she was feeding me a line or if she was telling the truth.
I didn’t know if she was safe to be around.

Prepare the way of the Lord!

The door was open and I invited her in. I sat with her as she made her phone call.

Make it easier for people to come to God!

I passed the box of Kleenex when she felt betrayed and abandoned by her friend on the phone. And, knowing she was at the end of her rope, I asked if she needed a ride.

Make smooth and straight the road for the Lord to come!

We gathered up her bag and I set aside my work, and on the way out the door, she asked if she could have one of the bibles on the shelf. We got in my car and drove 90 some miles to get her home.

Some of you might be thinking that I am incredibly naïve and too trusting.

But I think that we, as people of faith, aren’t foolish enough.

We are called to prepare the way of the Lord – and that means knocking down barriers and building up gaps in this world.

We are called to take up our cross and follow Jesus wherever he leads us.

We are called to take risks in order to care for the least and the last and the lost of this world.

We are called to walk through the valley of the shadow of death and to eat in the presence of our enemies.

We are called to be vulnerable with one another and admit our faults and our weakness.

Over and over again, we hear God tell us: Do NOT be afraid, for I am with you.

And perhaps what is more naïve is to imagine that sin and danger exists only outside the walls of this church.

There are people in this room who are in recovery or who love someone who is… just as there are people in this room who are in denial about needing help.

Some people in this church have experienced abuse as a child or a spouse… and there are people in this room are abusers.

Our congregation has members who have been in prison or who love people who are in prison.

In this room, there are those who have visited pornography sites and probably even men who have frequented prostitutes.

We just don’t talk about it.

We are entering the season of Advent and the first character we discover is a prophet named John the Baptist.

He wasn’t afraid of what others thought.

He wasn’t afraid of what might happen to his own life.

He wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

And He prepared the way for countless people to let go of their old lives and embrace God’s love.

He prepared the way of the Lord by calling people out to the river… to a space carved out for people to be honest about who they are… a space where they could name and repent of their sins… a space where they could receive forgiveness and new life.

He carved out a clear path for all people… no matter who they were… to come and be in God’s presence.

Isn’t that what church is supposed to be all about?

God Changes Minds

Posted on May 10, 2015Leave a comment

I change my mind all the time.

I like variety. I learn. I grow. I experience new things. I’m in a different mood.

And my understanding and beliefs change as a result.

All. The. Time.

Most recently, we have been doing some work on our backyard.

Early this spring, we removed a few trees. And the morning the workers came to take the trees down, I thought I wanted the pile in one place.

Today, I want it somewhere else.

I changed my mind.

My initial decision was one that had to be made in the moment.

And at the time, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted.

I also thought I understood how much wood there would be.

Now, I’m the first to admit, I was completely and utterly mistaken.

What we were left with when the tree company left was an enormous wood pile.

I didn’t have all the information.

I didn’t understand the scope and breadth and depth of what this pile would be. Or how it would block the view of my barberries and take up the entire first level of our retaining wall.

I hadn’t thought about the best way to store said wood in order to help it cure.

I couldn’t see in that moment the bigger picture.

And now, I’m going to build some muscles moving all of those logs… because now, with more information and some experience, my mind was changed.

In our reading from Acts today, Peter changed his mind, too.

Or rather God changed Peter’s mind.

Like me, Peter couldn’t see the big picture.

He was living his life as a faithful Jewish man and thought he knew exactly what God was about and what God wants from the people. He presumed to understood the rules of faith.

But his knowledge was limited.

He didn’t see the scope and the breadth and the depth of God’s love for all people.

In the prelude to our scripture reading from Acts this morning, Peter has been sent on a missionary journey to the home of Cornelius… a gentile.

A Gentile is anyone who is not Jewish, someone who was not a part of the family of Israel, someone who was an outsider as far as the faith was concerned.

While the scripture describes Cornelius as a God-worshipper, Gentiles had limits on their participation in the Jewish temple.

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.

They were excluded from the rest because they were unclean. They were different. They were not welcome.

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

And God wanted a relationship with them. So God prepares Peter’s heart for a transformation in thinking. Before God sends Peter to Caesarea and the home of Cornelius, he gives him a vision of the clean and unclean joining together. Peter receives a vision of a new sort of body of Christ.

Then he is summoned to the home of Cornelius, and although he was not allowed by Jewish custom to enter, he did. He went in and ate with the family and he shared with them the good news of Jesus Christ. And as he preached to Cornelius and his family, the Holy Spirit descends upon them and they receive the gift of faith.

Peter’s world has just been turned upside down. Those he thought were outside of God’s love and power have just had it poured upon them. And 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?”

No one 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.

When my husband and I decided to take down some trees at our house, we thought we understood the parameters of the proposal. They take down the trees. We keep the mulch and the wood. End of story.

But what exactly are we going to do with all of that wood?

How are we going to store it?

What do we do with the plants that were once in a shady area that now need to be moved?

And what happens to the family of bunnies that has now made their home in the wood pile in its current location?

As soon as a new, unexpected element enters the equation, it is natural that there is some anxiety, some wheel spinning, and chaos.

And that is precisely what happened in the aftermath of Peter and Cornelius.

You can take down a tree or two. You can baptize a Gentile family.

But there are going to be repercussions.

Things just won’t be the same.

Peter is summoned back to Jerusalem. He is called back to the apostles who heard about what happened and who aren’t so sure they like what has happened.

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, believed that faith meant one thing, and God was trying to show them it meant something else. But we cling to our traditions, to our rules, to what we know and understand.

I think the number one way God changes our hearts and minds is by helping us experience the world in a different way.

That’s what happened with Peter. God moved him to the right time and place and put Cornelius in his life to give him an undeniable experience of grace and power and Holy Spirit led transformation.

But the number two way God changes hearts and minds is by calling those who have had these life-altering experiences to tell their story.

The apostles were furious and demanded an explanation.

And 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 give he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, then who am I? Could I stand in God’s way?”.

Seventy 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.

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

At various points throughout our history, faithful folk stood up and exclaimed about women: 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 stop them from being ordained 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.

God changed his mind.

God changed the mind of our church.

God helped us to see a different vision of what the church and our community could be, just as God had done for Peter.

As a young 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 often wonder where God is going to change our minds next.

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

When I was in Washington, D.C. last week for a leadership fellows training, the church we spent our days at had welcome signs plastered throughout the building.

“We love single people, divorced people, widowed and married people,” it says.

“We love people who have not been to church in ages and those who never miss a Sunday.”

“We love people who are in recovery and those who are still addicted.”

The list went on and on, but it reminded me that God shows no partiality to one group of people or another.

God wants to be in relationship with all of us.

With the whole of creation.

With you and me.

With black and white and brown.

With young and old, and gay and straight,

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.

When you start to make a list, all of a sudden the people we are supposed to love and share the good news with starts to overwhelm us.

Like the woodpile in my yard, it truly seems incredible and awesome.

The question that’s before us is: what are we going to do about it?

How will this knowledge change our practice?

And if we are going to let God change our hearts and minds and church, where do we need to start moving around the woodpile to make room for everyone to thrive and find a place here?