"Daring To Hope." A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent

"Peaceable Kingdom," by Edward Hicks.

"Daring to Hope"

Isaiah 11:1-10; Matthew 3:1-12

Here we are, in the second week of Advent.  For a lot of people, there’s so much to do, at home, at church and everywhere else.  There are gifts to be purchased and wrapped...cards to be addressed...cooking and baking to do...the house to clean... and decorating to do.  

            In the background, we have the news feed of our lives.  Mass shootings. Another child accidentally shooting himself with a gun he found in the house. Thousands of migrant children separated from their families and housed in cages. A migrant teenager dying from the flu. Impeachment hearings. Environmental degradation. Huge economic disparities between the uber-rich and those who struggle to provide food and basic shelter for themselves and their families. The list could go on….

            In the midst of all of this, Advent invites us to turn our thoughts to what it means that God came and lived as one of us in our world to show us God’s way?  Advent invites us to wait… to pay attention… to prepare the way of the Lord… and to live in hope. 

           In the Hebrew scripture lesson, we heard the prophet Isaiah singing a song of hope 700 years before the birth of Jesus, in a time when things seemed hopeless.  His message must have sounded as unrealistic then as it does now.

The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie with down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them. . . .
They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain…

            The prophet Isaiah was probably writing in the period of the Syro-Ephramite war, when the dynasty of David seemed like a mere dead stump, compared to its enemies.  The nation had been defeated and humiliated by another national power.  Their government was weak and ineffective, and the people were dejected and demoralized.  In the midst of all that, how do you live in hope?   Isaiah’s words must have seemed terribly unrealistic—as unrealistic as Isaiah’s words seem to a lot of people today.

           Enter the Spirit of the Lord; a new shoot is coming out of the dead stump of the monarchy.  That’s what the Spirit of the Lord does—it brings life where things have been dead.  The Spirit brings forth new green shoots of life.

  

          Isaiah sings of a new kind of king—a king upon whom the Spirit of the Lord rests.  God’s Messiah will use his gifts to serve the people with equity and righteousness. What will the reign of the Messiah will be like?  The enmity that dominates the world is transformed into peace. 

   

         A great theologian of the last century, Reinhold Niebuhr, once wrote: “Do you want peace in this world?  Then work for justice.”  Until there is justice for everyone, there will be no peace.  For even a defeated enemy remains an enemy.  The only hope for peace is not the building up of more power to defeat and control—but power to make our enemies our friends. 

  

          Advent invites us-- dares us-- to wait in hope for the coming of a different kind of King, who will use his power to “rule the world with truth and grace” and transform creation into a world in which every creature can live without fear. 

  

          Can you imagine a world without fear?   No fear in Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen…  no fear in Bethlehem or Jerusalem…  no fear in South Sudan.  No fear in homes from an abusive parent or spouse. No fear in our neighborhoods where innocent children have died to gun violence.

           “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain; for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”   This is the promise and hope of Advent.

            But hope is a fragile and fleeting thing. 

            Fast forward seven hundred years or so.  Two hundred years had gone by since the people of Israel had had a prophet in their midst.   They’re living under occupation, with the Roman army enforcing the oppression of the Empire.

    

           Suddenly, John shows up in the wilderness, looking and sounding a lot like Elijah, who was expected to return to prepare the way for God’s coming Messiah.  “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he says.  “Prepare the way of the LORD.  Make his paths straight.”  

            John’s call to repentance and preparing the way is a call to turn around and look for and hope in God’s future, which is breaking in on them.  It’s a call to commit to see our world as God’s world    and our future as God’s future, because that’s what repentance is about.  

            And yet, more than 2,000 years later, amid the moral, religious, and political crises our nation and world are facing, we are still waiting and longing.   

            Every Advent John the Baptist shows up, because God loves us enough to hold us accountable to be who and whose we.  We are living in a broken, hurting world.  The people of Palestine still live under occupation in a conflict that looks hopeless to a lot of us.  Children in Flint and their families continue to deal with the long-term effects of lead poisoning.  In our own communities and communities around our nation, a parent can work 40 hours a week and still not be able to afford nutritious food and other basic necessities for their children. In our nation, consumerism and individualism rule. Our political system is broken.  The gap between the very rich and the poor continues to widen.            

            And so, we still long for a time of righteousness and justice and peace. 

            For a long time, I’ve felt drawn to the images painted by Edward Hicks, a Quaker preacher and artist, who was so inspired by the vision in Isaiah 11 that he painted at least 66 “peaceable kingdom” paintings.  

            A “peaceable kingdom.” Can you imagine it?  A time when broken creation becomes the completely harmonious creation God intended.  Predators-- wolves, leopards, lions, and bears will live in harmony with the domestic animals like lambs, calves, goats, and cows.  Lions will eat straw like oxen, and a little child will play over the holes of poisonous snakes.  The earth will be filled with the “knowledge of the LORD.”  

            Jesus has come to live among us, full of grace and truth, and called us to follow him, living God’s way of love.    

        

So… how are we to live?  How are we to live as a community of faith?  Do we give in to hopelessness and despair?  

            Do we dare to hope?  Can we trust in God’s promises?  Can we imagine a better world?  Can we believe in the possibility that injustice and oppression can be overcome, with God’s help?

            Jesus came and “proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.”[1] 

            To those living under the oppressive regime of the Roman Empire, Jesus taught and embodied a different way of being in the world that allowed even the marginalized and the poor to reclaim their identity as children of God.  To people whose identities had been shaped by centuries of living under exile and oppression of conquering empires, Jesus demonstrated that the empire doesn’t have the power to define who you are.  

            What Jesus proclaimed as a transforming message of hope has been spiritualized and individualized and distorted.   Jesus didn’t come to be a personal savior for individuals, but to be the way, the truth and the life, to show us all a way to live into God’s dream for all of God’s people. He taught us to pray for God’s will to be done on earth as in heaven. 

            When we repent—when we turn away from the ways of the world and the empire-- and turn toward God’s way of righteousness and justice and peace, we find our lives changing.    As our lives are being transformed, we can no longer be content to exist under the old ways of the world.   

            Our faith teaches us that God’s intention is for us to live in Beloved Community together, in righteousness and justice.  But we look around, and we see there is still a gap between the vision and reality.  

            We wait and hope for the time when God will fully bring in the Kingdom… the kin-dom.   In the meantime, we live into the Kingdom of heaven—the kingdom of justice and peace, as we work for a better world that more fully embodies God’s dreams.

            Sometimes it’s hard to see how things can be different… or how the little things we do can make a difference.   But sometimes new life emerges from the most unlikely places, emerging as a tiny green tendril out of a stump that looked dead. 

            We live into hope in big and small ways when we change the life of a family by providing them with a goat or a flock of chickens with a gift to the Heifer Project.   When we shop ethically and buying locally as much as possible and stop using single-use plastics, we make a difference in peoples’ lives and the environment.  Making choices to care for the environment and giving to aid global and domestic causes all make a difference, and they witness to our hope.  

            When we engage the powers and principalities by contacting our elected officials about issues that matter, we are daring to hope that we can make a difference. When we volunteer in our local schools, when we tutor a child or teach an adult how to read, we are living into hope.

            We live into hope because the Christ’s reign is among us now as we live into God’s dream for us, working for justice and peace for all of God’s beloved people.

            In this season of waiting, God comes to us and nudges us: “Look! Look -- there on that dead-looking stump.  Do you see that green shoot growing?”

            Can you see it?

Rev. Fran Hayes

December 8, 2019

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[1] “A Brief Statement of Faith” of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).    https://www.pcusa.org/site_media/media/uploads/oga/pdf/boc2014.pdf

"Healing Faith." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on Mark 5:21-43

"Healing Faith"

Mark 5:21-43

Jesus has just returned from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, in Gentile territory, where he performed an exorcism and interfered with the local swine-based economy.

That region was known as the Decapolis-- a group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire.  Rome, in an effort to spread its culture and the Imperial cult to the furthest reaches of its territory, had built roads, public buildings and temples throughout the Decapolis. Worship of the emperor was the common bond that linked the ten cities together.

      The story of this exorcism and his interference with the swine-based economy is a metaphor for Roman culture and Imperial rule. Mark depicts it as violent, brutal, unclean, and wracked with fear. The local people had begged Jesus to get out of town.

            After that, Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee, and he’s welcomed by a crowd.  In the crowd, Jesus faces a range of human need. As biblical scholars have pointed out, ninety percent of first century Jews lived in desperate poverty. They lived under the occupation of the Roman Empire, and were also oppressed by a cultural and religious system that valued custom and ritual over justice and mercy.

            Jesus has been proclaiming the good news of God’s love and the spirit and heart of the law, and crowds keep coming to him.

            Today’s gospel lesson is a story of two healings. One of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus comes and falls down at Jesus’ feet and begs him repeatedly to come home with him and heal his young daughter.  “She is at the point of death.  Come and lay your hands on her so that she may be made well and live! 

            Jesus sets off to go with him.  A large crowd follows along and is pressing in on him. 

But then that story gets interrupted.  As Jesus is making his way through the crowd, he senses that power has gone forth from him, and he turns to find out who touched him.

            It wasn’t just the crowd pressing in on him, but a woman—a very specific woman.  This woman had been suffering from hemorrhages for twelve years.  She’d gone to doctor after doctor, and had spent all her money on them, trying the treatments they prescribed.  Who knows what she’d tried?    Perhaps drinking tonics made of vile bitter things… rubbing herself with terrible smelling salves.  But none of it had done any good, and she still bled. 

            In addition to the effects on her physical health, her bleeding had other profound effects on her life.   It made her ritually unclean.  She couldn’t go to the Temple to worship.  Anyone who touched her, or lay on a bed in which she had slept, or sat on a chair where she sat would be unclean as well. 

            Imagine the kind of isolation this woman must have experienced over those twelve long years.  Imagine being unable to attend services and rituals in the Temple.  Imagine people shying away from you, being unwilling to touch you for twelve years.  This woman was an outcast.

Unlike Jairus’ daughter, she apparently has no male kinsman to plead her case.       

            But this woman has heard reports of the power at work in Jesus, and that has given birth to hope and faith.  So—in desperation and great faith—she audaciously and courageously works her way through the jostling crowd and approaches Jesus from behind and touches his garments.

            She might have thought, “I don’t need to bother him.  I don’t need to slow him down with a lot of chatter.  All I need to do is touch the edge of his garment.  Then I’ll be healed.”

            But things don’t go exactly as she planned.  No sooner does she touch his clothes than Jesus turns around and says, “Who touched me?” 

            Jesus refuses to let the woman remain invisible.  He insists on personal contact and on drawing the woman into relationship.    And so, the woman falls down before him and tells him the whole truth.

            Jesus says to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has made you well.  Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.’”  The New RSV translates this verb in terms of healing.  But, as some scholars note, this translation of the verb fails to capture the sense in which the physical cure results in a fuller restoration.[1]  It might be a better translation to hear Jesus saying, “Daughter, your faith has saved you.”

            As we reach the conclusion of the inner story, we can discern that the miracle involves far more than physical healing.[2]  It includes entry into a ‘saving’ relationship with Jesus himself.  The woman is no longer alone.  Jesus calls her “Daughter,” claiming her as family, and restoring her to community.  She is told to “go in peace”—shalom, which involves wholeness, salvation—and healed from disease.

            Not only does Jesus not seem to mind that the woman has touched him.  He also doesn’t worry about the ritual purification.  After he sends the woman on her way, healed and whole, he doesn’t stop off at the baths or send the disciples off for a water so he can wash.  It doesn’t seem to matter to him. 

            For Jesus, there is no such thing as an unclean person.  The society he lives in may try to keep certain people outside of their boundaries, but Jesus keeps reaching out to them.  He keeps welcoming people back inside the circle of God’s love and healing and community.  Time and time again, he welcomes people who have been cast out…or he moves outside the boundary himself, to meet them where they are.

            The other story in today’s gospel lesson shows a similar pattern.

            Some people come from Jairus’ house to say, “Your daughter is dead.  Why trouble the teacher any further?” 

            After all, you could hardly ask Jesus to deal with a dead body.  Dead bodies were considered unclean.  Touch a dead body, and you become unclean.

            But Jesus overhears and says to Jairus, “Do not fear-- only believe.’  He takes Peter, James, and John and they go to Jairus’ house where they find a commotion.  Mourning has already started, the customary rituals of loud weeping and lamenting.

             “Why do you make a commotion and weep?” Jesus says.  “The child is not dead, but sleeping.”  When the people laugh at him, Jesus puts them all outside.  He takes the child’s parents and the three disciples and takes the child by the hand and tells her to get up.  The girl begins to walk.  Everybody is amazed!   Jesus gives them orders not to tell anybody about this, and tells them to give the girl something to eat.

            The religious community in Jesus’ day and through much of history has often gotten in the way of healing.  But the gospel story we heard today from Mark tells how God works through Jesus, who is empowered by the Holy Spirit to reach out with a healing touch.

            God’s holiness works through Jesus and his followers to spread the life-giving power of the kingdom--the kin-dom-- into the world wherever people are receptive to it.[3]

            So…when Jesus welcomes the woman who has been hemorrhaging as “daughter”—a term of endearment-- and touches a dead girl, we have what Marcus Borg has summarized as “The politics of purity” being replaced by “a politics of compassion.”[4]

            Jesus deliberately reaches out to the woman, welcoming her back into the human family, back into the community from which she had been isolated.  Instead of avoiding contact with the dead girl, Jesus reaches out and takes her hand and restores her to life. 

            Mark’s story points to the divisions in society between male and female, between the weak and the strong, the clean and the impure, and the rich and the poor.

            Jesus’ disciples marveled that Jesus wants to know who touched him and don’t seem to understand how responsive Jesus is to vulnerability and need.

            Perhaps we who are his disciples today have failed to understand that as well. Or maybe we do. How many of us have felt our hearts broken when we see images of families being separated at our border, and discouraged when we hear some people using their faith to justify those policies. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets around the country yesterday to make a statement that “families belong together.” Last weekend there were thousands in Washington, D.C. for the Poor People’s Campaign. I believe there is a growing movement of people with a growing understanding of how we are all family in God’s kin-dom.

            Just four days before he was struck down by an assassin’s bullet, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King preached a sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington. He invited his listeners to place their struggles and calling in the context of God’s ordering of the universe.  Dr. King suggested that whatever differences we may experience, yet our mutual vulnerability and humanity unites us more deeply.

            “We are tied together in the single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. And whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God’s universe is made. This is the way it is structured.”[5]

            Even when we are tempted to despair, Jesus reaches out in an invitation of pure love…an invitation to bring our own bleeding bodies and spirits to the only One who can offer us true healing…the only One who can welcome us into true community when our ties with that community have been broken.

            Jesus reaches out and invites us to follow-- to look at the suffering ones in our midst, to listen to their stories, to reach out and touch them, and lift them to their feet.  By example, Jesus invites us to call them “Daughter” … “Son” … “Sister” …  “Brother” -- family.

            Just as Jesus called Jairus’ daughter to rise up, he invites us to stand up for love and justice. The Greek words used for the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter and of Jesus is God’s way of telling us to get up and stand up for God’s righteous and justice. By lifting up the lowly and providing for “the least of these,” we will strengthen and revive our communities and our nation, and we will be living more fully into God’s kin-dom.

           

            The good news of the gospel calls us to live out our faith in ways that invite all, not just some, to be touched and healed by God’s love… and all, not just some, can become a real part of the community. 

            The good news of the gospel calls us to become a richer, more whole community—a community that in its wholeness truly embodies the shalom that Jesus bids the woman when he says “your faith has made you well…go in peace…”

            And so… may we never be content to rest within our safe walls, but instead, may we move out beyond the boundaries to where ministry with Jesus takes place, where we receive God’s blessings, and where we can be a blessing to those who do not know that God’s love is even for them.

            May our faith make us well and whole. May we walk in the way of peace…shalom…salam.

            Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

July 1, 2018

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[1] Donald Juel, Mark.  Augsburg Commentary on the New Testament (Augsburg, 1990),  p. 84.

[2] James L. Bailey and Lyle D. Vander Brock, Literary Forms in the New Testament: A Handbook (Westminster/John Knox, 1992), p. 142.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (Harper, 1994), p. 58.

[5] “Remaining Awake Through the Great Revolution,” from A Knock at Midnight, can be accessed at the following site:  https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/publications/knock-midnight-inspiration-great-sermons-reverend-martin-luther-king-jr-10

"Come and See." A Sermon on John 1:43-51 on the 2nd Sunday of Epiphany, the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr Holiday.

"Come and See"

John 1:43-51

I heard a story about a woman who volunteered at an art museum as a docent.  There was a statue in the collection that this docent had walked by and even told others about countless times. 

On one particular tour, the docent was leading a group of blind guests.  A young girl was among those invited to touch the statue that she couldn’t see. 

The docent remembers, “She ran her hands down the body of this female figure, and her first remark was: ‘Oh, she’s pregnant.’

The docent recalls, ‘And I had never thought about that.  But in fact, the figure does look like a pregnant woman.  Here was a kid really showing me something that I had been looking at for thirty-five years and had never noticed.’”[1]

The gospel story we heard today about Nathanael is about seeing…and being seen.  It’s a story about seeing what’s in front of you, and how hard that reality is.   It’s about learning to see in a whole new way, because of how Jesus sees him.

This is the second part of a story about Jesus calling the disciples.   As John the Evangelist tells it, these are disciples of John the Baptist.  When Jesus walks by, John the Baptist tells them that Jesus is the one they have all been waiting for.  Then Simon Peter and Andrew go with Jesus.

That’s where today’s gospel lesson picks up.  Jesus finds Philip and says to him, “Follow me.”  Philip goes and finds Nathanael and says, “We have found him about whom Moses in the laws and also the prophets wrote—Jesus, son of Joseph from Nazareth.”

Nathanael isn’t impressed.   He asks, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

Philip doesn’t try to argue with him.  He simply repeats the invitation that Jesus gave the day before: “Come and see.”

“Come and see.”   Peter Gomes wrote that these three simple words are “the entire sum and substance of the Gospel.    Jesus invites us to join him in the fullness of all that God has in store for all who love him.

“Come and see.”   And that’s what Nathanael did.   When Nathanael comes into view, Jesus explains approvingly, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”

But Nathanael can’t see Jesus at first, because he’s looking through the clouded lens of his own prejudice.   When he looks at Jesus, he sees somebody from Nazareth.  Can anything good come from Nazareth? 

He asks Jesus, “Where did you get to know me?” 

Jesus answers, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!  You are the King of Israel!”

Jesus tells Nathanael he has seen him and known him…recognized him.  And suddenly Nathanael sees Jesus as he really is.  For Nathanael, being seen makes the difference.   And he begins to see things differently.  When we see things through the lens of the gospel, it changes what we expect to see… and what we already know—or think we know—about what we’re looking at. 

Sometimes we can’t see because of what we think we already know— about “those people” from the wrong side of town… or the wrong part of the world…or the wrong side of the issue.  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth? Or Ghana? Or Nigeria? Or Haiti?”

Sometimes we can’t even see ourselves, because our vision is blurred by denial and self-delusion…or by insecurity and self-hate. 

Nathanael is changed by how Jesus sees him.  Before he knew Jesus, Jesus has seen and known him.  Being seen and loved changes Nathanael, and it gives him new vision, to see greater things than he ever could have imagined. 

Over the centuries, others have been given new ways of seeing.   Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of them.  He was transformed by the gospel and changed by how others saw him, and he heard God’s call.

In 1955, King was a young man, a recently installed pastor at a kind of uptown church-- a place known for being the church of the black elite.

In the mid-1950’s, he wrapped up his course work for his Ph.D. and took his first call to a church.  He had recently declined a nomination to serve as the president of the Montgomery, Alabama chapter of the NAACP, because he felt he needed to spend more time at his church work. 

            Then Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. A meeting was held in the African-American community to decide who was going to lead the bus boycott.  The other pastors and influential leaders in the community were smart enough to know that this looked like a risky business, so they decided to ask the new pastor in town to serve as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association, the group that would lead the bus boycott.  

 King didn’t see himself in that job.  But others saw him that way, and their vision changed him. 

            Rev. King had every reason in the world to say, "This is not the right time for me. I have a young family.  I have a dissertation to finish writing.  I have a congregation that doesn’t know me or trust me yet.   If I start out at the head of this enterprise, what will that do to my relationship to my congregation?  It just isn’t a good time.  This isn’t the time for me to do something like this.” 

            But, as we know, this very human being was moved from “not my time” to yes.  

            A while later, there was another defining moment. It came past midnight, in the King family’s kitchen. By that time, Martin was 27 years old.  Over the past month, he had been leading the bus boycott, a decision that set off a series of death threats delivered via mail and phone to his home-- as many as 30 to 40 calls a day, often at night. Normally, King could put the phone down and go back to sleep. But one call, on the night of January 27, 1956, stood out.

            As King’s wife, Coretta, and their 10-week-old daughter slept in the bedroom nearby, the voice on the other end of the line spoke, calling him a racial epithet, and saying, “We’re tired of your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow up your house and blow your brains out.”

            Shaken, King went to the kitchen, made himself a cup of coffee, but soon buried his face in his hands.

            Dr. King described it in his book, Stride Toward Freedom: “I was ready to give up. With my cup of coffee sitting untouched before me, I tried to think of a way to move out of the picture without appearing a coward. In this state of exhaustion, when my courage had all but gone, I decided to take my problem to God. With my head in my hands, I bowed over the kitchen table and prayed aloud.
            “The words I spoke to God that midnight are still vivid in my memory. "I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I've come to the point where I can't face it alone.
            “At that moment, I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced God before. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: "Stand up for justice, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever." Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything.¹

            The fears ceased. But not the threats. Several days later, around 9:00 pm, a bomb exploded on the front steps of the house. Nobody inside was hurt. All these years later, traces of the bomb are still visible in the concrete.[2]

More than 60 years have passed since the Montgomery bus boycott. More than 50 years have passed since the March on Washington when Dr. King gave his “I have a dream” speech. 

We have had a tendency to freeze Martin Luther King in 1963, at the time of his “I have a dream” speech. But he went through a transformation in the last several years of his life before he was killed at age 39.

On Christmas Eve 1967, a few months before he died, he spoke with his congregation in Ebenezer Baptist Church and said, “I must confess to you today that not long after talking about that dream, I started seeing it turn into a nightmare. I remember the first time I saw that dream turn into a nightmare, just a few weeks after I had talked about it. It was when four beautiful, unoffending, innocent Negro girls were murdered in a church in Birmingham, Alabama. “

Dr. King comforted the families of those little girls and preached their funerals, and struggled with the fact that the church was bombed partly because it had been a focal point for Birmingham’s community in the struggle he had led just months before.[3]

If we are to remember Dr. King with honesty, we need to remember the events of those several years and how they impacted him:  the assassination of President Kennedy, the disappearance of the three young SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) volunteers in 1964.

King was going through a rapid transformation from a civil rights leader to a human rights activist. He came to see himself as an advocate for the poor and oppressed wherever they were.  He began working to bring together people of all races and parts of the country, anyone who was impacted by poverty and injustice.  In December 1967, he announced organizing a Poor People’s March on Washington to demand better jobs, better homes, better education--better lives than the ones they were living.

In the eyes of many, Dr. King was seen as a “communist dupe,” “troublemaker,” ‘traitor,” or “naïve, because he was challenging the status quo and speaking out against the triple evils of materialism and systemic poverty, of militarism, and racism.

Rev. King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. (Some of us who are old enough remember exactly where we were when we heard the news.)   The Poor People’s Campaign went forward, climaxing in the Solidarity Day Rally for Jobs, Peace, and Freedom on June 19.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Dr. King’s death and the Poor People’s Campaign. The day after Mother’s Day is the beginning of a New Poor People’s Campaign, under the leadership of Bishop William Barber, Rev. Liz Theoharis, and others. 

In his last speech, Dr. King said, “I’ve been to the mountaintop…. I’ve looked over and I’ve seen the promised land…  Mine eyes have seen the promised land…. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Martin Luther King’s prophetic witness helped black and white Americans to have visions and dream dreams.  What he saw helped other people to see themselves differently.  He saw African Americans and white Americans as children of God, who needed to be set free from hate.    He helped us to see one another more clearly. 

We’re not in the promised land yet.  But God’s love gives us new vision.

            Change is coming.  So, it seems to me that we can choose how we will face the changes.   We could approach them fearfully…grudgingly… and imagine all the worst possible scenarios about how terrible things will be.  Or we could trust in God to be with us as we cross over a bridge to becoming a more diverse and inclusive, just and righteous nation.  We could pray for God to use us as people of faith, to model what it means to live as Beloved Community and to be part of a transformation of our country that is more and more fully a nation of abundance, where there is truly liberty and justice for all. 

            In our time and place, God calls us to be people who “come and see” and are so transformed in the grace and abundance and freedom of Jesus Christ that we embody it as we live together in Beloved Community with all of God’s children.  

Martin Luther King’s prophetic witness helped black and white Americans to have visions and dream dreams.  What he saw helped some people to see themselves and other people differently-- as beloved children of God, created in the very image of God, who need to be set free from hatred and fear.

            We’re not in the promised land yet.  But God’s love can give us new vision.  Can we imagine it?  Is anything impossible for God? 

In the words of our Presbyterian Brief Statement of Faith: “In a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing…to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior…to unmask idolatries in church and culture…to hear the voices of people long silenced…and to work with others for justice, freedom and peace.”

God’s love gives us new life and new vision.  So, come and see.  See the face of Christ in your neighbor.  Get a glimpse of who God has made us to be.  Come and see.

Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

January 14, 2018

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[1] https://pres-outlook.org/category/ministry-resources/looking-into-the-lectionary/

[2] http://lisasingh.com/2010/01/martin-luther-kings-defining-moment-a-kitchen-in-montgomery-alabama-past-midnight/

[3] Vincent Harding, Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (Orbis Books), Rev. Ed., 2008. Kindle, Location 206.

"An Epiphany of Abundance," a sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on John 2:1-11. Preached January 17, 2016, on the Sunday before the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"An Epiphany of Abundance"

John 2:1-11

Jesus and his mother and his disciples are attending a wedding.  Anyone who’s ever officiated or planned a wedding can tell you that things can go wrong. 

            In those days a wedding was a great occasion, and most everybody in the village, plus some people from neighboring villages, would have been invited.   Weddings were hosted by the groom’s family, and the celebrations lasted for up to a week. 

            This is one of only two occasions we meet Jesus’ mother in John’s gospel.  The other time is at the foot of the cross. 

            This celebration is in trouble, because on the third day, they’re running out of wine.  This is a crisis for the family responsible for hospitality. 

            David Lose explains why this was such a disaster:  “Wine isn’t merely a social lubricant…it’s a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, of joy and gladness and hospitality.  And so when they run short on wine they run short on blessing.  And that’s a tragedy.”[1]

            Jesus’ mother goes to him and identifies the problem. 
But Jesus says, “That’s really not our concern.  And my hour has not come.”  In the theology of John’s Gospel, “the hour” is the hour when Jesus goes to the cross. 

            His mother tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

            There were six stone water-jars there, ready to be used in the Jewish purification rituals.  Each held about twenty or thirty gallons.   “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus says to the servants, and they do.   “Now draw some out,” he says, “and take it to the chief steward.” 

            When the chief steward tasted the water that had turned into wine, he didn’t know where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.   He called the bridegroom and said, “Normally people serve the good wine first, and then the cheap stuff when people have already had plenty to drink.  But you’ve kept the really good wine for now.”

            John tells us that Jesus did this as the first of his “signs” and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

           

            Tom Wright suggests that what John calls “signs” are clues.  In the previous chapter, Jesus has promised Nathanael, “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”  These signs are moments when-- to people who are paying attention with at least a little faith--  the angels of God are going up and coming down at the place where Jesus is… moments “when heaven is opened, when the transforming  power of God’s love bursts in to the present world.”[2]   Whatever we believe happened that day, John wants us to know that this is a clue that with these events the life of heaven came down to earth. 

            Prompted by his mother, Jesus turned water into wine to point us to his heavenly Father—a God who loves to hear the laughter of people celebrating.     The joyous feast at Cana is still a sign that God wants us to rejoice in the amazing good news of grace and abundance. 

            No matter how hard we may try to “spiritualize” today’s gospel lesson, we have 150 gallons of really good wine at a wedding party that had been experiencing scarcity. 

            Today’s gospel text is about the very nature of God… and about the very purpose of being human.  The nature of God is pure grace-- abundant… surprising grace.  Grace overflowing to the brim, in times and places we least expect it.

            We need to pay attention to the details in this story.  The water-jars  were there to be used for Jewish purification rituals--   When Jesus turned the water into wine, it was a sign that God was doing a new thing.

            What I wonder:  What if Jesus had stuck with his original feeling?  It is not my problem, it is not my time.  What if all of his life Jesus had said, "That’s not my problem and it is not my time"?
            That’s unimaginable, isn’t it?
            Closer to our own time, in the mid 1950s, Martin Luther King wrapped up his course work for his Ph.D. and took his first call to a church.  His dissertation wasn’t done yet when Martin Luther King left graduate school and took a job as a pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. 
            Not long after he went to Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus.  A meeting was held in the African-American community in Montgomery, and they asked who was going to lead the boycott.  
            All the other pastors and all the other influential leaders of the African-American community were smart enough to know that this looked like a risky business.  They decided to get the new pastor in town to lead the boycott.  
            Rev. Martin Luther King had every reason in the world to say, "It is not the right time for me. I have a young family.  I have a dissertation to finish writing.  I have a congregation that doesn’t know me or trust me yet.   If I start out at the head of this enterprise, what will that do to my relationship to my congregation?  It just isn’t a good time.   I have all these reasons why.  This isn’t the time for me to do something like this.” 
            But, as we all know, this very human being was moved from “not my time”-- to yes.
            More than 60 years have passed since the Montgomery bus boycott.   More than 50 years have passed since the March on Washington when Dr. King gave his “I have a dream” speech, and since he wrote his last book before he was assassinated:  “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?”
            Have we made progress since that time?  Undoubtedly.  But we need to be honest with ourselves about where we the people of the United States are   and about our history.
            Later in the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”[3]
            I believe the gospel has the power to set us free-- as individuals, as a community, as a society-- if we have ears to hear the good news… if we have faith to trust in God’s power to transform us and bind us together in Beloved Community… if we trust in the gospel’s truth to make us free.
            I like the way Jim Wallis talks about the power of the truth in his latest book:[4]
            “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.  I truly believe that would be the best thing for all of us.
            To become more free because of the truth.  To become more honest because of the truth.  To become more responsible because of the truth.  To become better neighbors because of the truth.   To become more productive and contributing citizens because of the truth.  To become better Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, people of other faiths, or people of conscience with no religion—all better because of the truth.  To become a better and freer country for all of us because of the truth….To become better and freer human beings because of the truth.
            I agree with Jim Wallis when he says, “We can no longer be afraid of the truth about race in this country—past, present, and future—because our fears will keep us captive to all kinds of untruths.
            Wallis says when he crossed the famous Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on the fiftieth anniversary of the historic march that helped bring voting rights to all our fellow citizens, he realized that we can find answers in crossing another bridge—“the bridge to a new America that will soon be a majority of minorities.”[5]
            He’s talking about a new America that is coming into being due to demographic changes.  By the year 2040 or 2045, the majority of U.S.  citizens will be descended from African, Asian, and Latin American ancestors, according to the US Census Bureau projections.[6]   “We will have become a majority of minorities—with no one race being in the majority.  The United States will be no longer a predominantly white nation--  but a multiracial nation, which will make the assumptions of white privilege…increasingly less assumed.  That multiracial reality is already the case in many major cities around the country….” and for several whole states.[7]
            Truth be told, many white Americans—especially older white Americans—find that kind of demographic shift troubling.  Some commentators have been pointing to this uneasiness about shifting demographics as something that’s fueling the fears and suspicion of immigrants and people who are different that we hear voiced by some of the candidates. 
            It seems to me that we can choose how we will face the changes that are happening.   We could approach them fearfully…grudgingly… and imagine all the worst possible scenarios about how terrible things will be.  Or we could trust in God to be with us as we cross over a bridge to becoming a more diverse and inclusive nation.  We could imagine how God could use us as people of faith to model what it means to live as Beloved Community and to be part of a transformation of our country that is more and more fully a nation of abundance, where there is truly liberty and justice for all. 
            Jim Wallis tells about the time he was invited to talk to his son’s fifth-grade class about immigration.  They went through the long history of immigration in this country.  All the children in the class learned that they were part of our national history—people who had chosen to come to America or were forced to by the chains of slavery.  Then he told the students about our current problem of 11 million undocumented people living in uncertainty and fear for years and even decades, being unable to safely obtain medical care, being exploited without protection by unscrupulous employers… and being separated from family members. 
            The students asked the obvious question:  “Why don’t we fix that?  Why doesn’t Congress change the system?”
            Jim said, “They say they’re afraid.” 
            The students looked even more confused and asked, “What are they afraid of?”
            Jim said he paused to think…and looked around the room—a classroom of a public-school fifth grade class in Washington, DC.  He looked at their quizzical and concerned faces, a group of African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and European American children.  Then it hit him.
            “They’re afraid of you,” he replied.
            “Why would they be afraid of us?” the students asked.
            “They’re afraid you are the future of America.  They’re afraid their country will someday look this class—that you represent what our nation is becoming.”
            This group of 11-year-olds looked even more confused.
            “They’re afraid this won’t work,” Jim said.  “Does it work?”
            The children looked at one another.  Then they responded with many voices, saying, “Yeah…Sure…Of course it works…It works great…It’s really cool!”
            Together they decided that their job was to show the rest of the country that this new America coming into being is, in fact, really cool.[8]
            Some of the stories we heard during Advent remind us that sometimes people have a failure of imagination,  like Zechariah, when the angel Gabriel told him Elizabeth was going to have a baby:   “How can this be?” [9]
            In our time and place, God calls us to be the people who come to know God, to experience the grace and abundance of Jesus Christ,  to embody that love and live together in Beloved Community with all of God’s children.  
             

            Whenever we think we don’t have enough—enough money or power or privilege or security--  whenever we think the party’s over because things are changing, God will keep doing new things and surprising us with new wine that is sweeter and tastier than ever before… and give us dreams and visions to help us live more fully into the life of abundance and grace into which God calls us.  Can we imagine it?   Is anything impossible for God?      

            In a world threatened by ethnic, racial, and religious conflict, the consequences of trying to defend the status quo   or of wallowing in the valley of despair and fear and negativity are enormous.   But the rewards of inclusive justice and healing are too important not to try.           
            The prophets and the gospel call us to dream, to imagine an alternative reality of Beloved Community for all God’s people.  They challenge us to embody it in our daily lives, trusting that God will provide abundant new wine  and better things than we ever tasted or seen or imagined   and a life overflowing with joy and blessing in God’s presence.
            Thanks be to God! 



Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
January 17, 2016

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[1] David Lose, “Epiphany 2B: What Grace Looks Like!” http://www.davidlose.net/2016/01/epiphany-2-b-what-grace-looks-like/ 

[2] Wright, John for Everyone, Chapters 1-10 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), Kindle Edition, Loc 472.

[3] John 8:32

[4] Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin:  Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America.  (Brazos Press, 2016), Kindle Edition, Location 388.

[5] Wallis, location 407.

[6] Marcie Bianco, “The Year White People Will Become a Minority in America Has Been Declared,” Mic.com, December 11, 2014, cited in Wallis’ book.

[7] Wallis, Location 4396.

[8] Wallis, Location 4388.

[9] Luke 1:5-25, 57-66.