Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, Year C, "Beautiful Feet," Isaiah 52:7-10

Sermon 12/26/21

Isaiah 52:7-10

Beautiful Feet

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’” I love these words, this imagery, from the prophet Isaiah. Although Isaiah had his own context and other situations and visions in mind, we in the church have not been able to help hearing his words as a Christmas text. Messengers who announce good news, peace, salvation? Visions of the heavenly host of angels singing to shepherds in a field fill our minds. 

But for me, the first response I have to this text is to think of my week at Creative Arts Camp at Aldersgate, one of our conference’s church camps, the summer between elementary school and junior high. At Creative Arts Camp, we put on a musical, and our musical that year was The Friendship Company, based on Christian singer Sandi Patty’s album for children. One of the songs on that album? “Beautiful Feet.” Here are some of the lyrics: 

There are feet that skip and play

There are feet that run away

There are feet that love a race and win or lose

There are chubby feet and small

And strong feet to kick a ball

But beautiful are the feet that bring good news.

There are feet that sleekly swim

Through the water wearing fins

There are feet that shimmy up the tallest trees

There are happy feet and sad

There are aching feet and mad

But beautiful are the feet that publish peace.

Those are beautiful feet

Beee-uuu-ti-ful feet!

Dutiful, cute-i-ful lett!

Tried and true-ti-ful feet

Me-ti-ful

You-ti-ful

Do you have beautiful feet!

I was old enough to outwardly find this song kind of cheesy, and young enough to enjoy singing such a goofy piece, and all these decades later, “But beautiful are the feet that bring good news” still rings in my head - this song won’t let go. 

What does it mean to have beautiful feet? Do you have beautiful feet? I’m sure some of us don’t like the way our feet look, and some people don’t like feet altogether. Some people have feet that don’t cooperate with what they want them to do. Some people have injured feet, or don’t have feet at all. But I don’t think this verse is trying to focus on beautiful feet by any typical measures. This verse isn’t about pedicured, polished feet. This passage is praising whatever it is that gets you where you are going to accomplish a most important task: carrying peace, bringing good news, and announcing salvation. This passage is praising the messengers who carry God’s news to people who so need to hear it. 

In the Bible, we have a word for people who carry messages for God: angels. When we see the word “angel” in the Bible, it literally means messenger of God. What usually pops into our minds when we think of angels are the haloed figures that we see in Christmas pageants. And indeed, angels, God’s messengers, are key figures in the Christmas story. An angel tells Mary that she will give birth to Jesus. An angel tells Joseph not to divorce Mary and dissolve their relationship. Angels tell the shepherds where to find Jesus, and what Jesus’s birth means. Angels protect Jesus after his birth from Herod’s deadly maneuvers by again speaking to Joseph. They’re pretty central to the story. 

But, God’s messengers aren’t just these divine, ethereal beings. The word for regular old human messenger is the same word we use for angels - and that’s because the task is the same. Messengers carry news. And God wants us to be messengers of God’s good news, God’s Christmas message, God’s peace and salvation and joy and justice too. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation.” No halo required. 

Who has been a Christmas messenger for you? Who has delivered the Christmas message to you? I’m not just asking about who has told you the nativity story of Luke 2. I’m wondering who has told you the message of the heart of Christmas - that God is with us, the God has been made flesh in Jesus, like we read about in our text from John 1? Who has brought you a message of peace - not just the abstract, fluffy message of peace, but who has shared a message with you that has helped you experience the peace of Christ deep in your heart? Who has helped you receive a message of salvation - a message that God seeks wholeness for your life, and your right relationship with God and neighbor? Who has helped you hear and receive and trust God’s good news of unconditional, unrelenting, unshakable love? How beautiful are those who have brought you these life-changing messages! And how beautiful are you - down to your core - when you are messengers of Christmas, angels in your own right, sharing peace, joy, and salvation! 

Aside from the “Beautiful Feet” song that has stuck forever in my mind, there’s another song that our Isaiah text calls to mind - a Christmas carol - and one we’ll sing to close our worship today. “Go, Tell It on the Mountain” also draws on themes from this Isaiah text. It was never a favorite carol of mine growing up, but once I learned more about its history, I started appreciating it more deeply, and it has certainly been on my mind this week. 

A few decades after the end of the Civil War, an African American choir director in Tennessee named John Wesley Work, Jr. set out with a goal of  preserving the spirituals of black Americans from the years of slavery which had mostly been passed on by oral tradition. Work's project influenced nearby Fisk College, a historically black college, and their choir - the Fisk Jubilee Singers - took the spirituals Work collected on tour with them around the country, and even to England to perform for Queen Victoria. The Fisk Jubilee Singers  saved the debt-ridden College from closure with their touring, and they have been credited with keeping the Negro spiritual alive. “[Jubilee] singer Ella Sheppard recalled, ‘The slave songs were never used by us then in public. They were associated with slavery and the dark past and represented the things to be forgotten. Then, too, they were sacred to our parents, who used them in their religious worship.”” (1) 

“Go, Tell It on the Mountain” was one of these songs. Theologian James Cone says that the hymn conveys the message: “the conquering King, and the crucified Lord . . . has come to bring peace and justice to the dispossessed of the land.  That is why the slave wanted to ‘go tell it on de mountain.” With its peace and justice themed Christmas message, “Go, Tell It” has been adapted many times. It was used as a freedom song during the Civil Rights movement. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded a version. And one version included a verse about segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace. “I wouldn’t be Governor Wallace, I’ll tell you the reason why, I’d be afraid He might call me And I wouldn’t be ready to die.” 

The original author of the spiritual is unknown, but thankfully Work included it in his project, and his brother Frederick helps draw attention to it. They paired the text of the spiritual with a joyful tune that seemed to express the hope and liberation of Christmas message. The earliest published version of the hymn included the refrain that’s familiar to us, with some different verses, like “When I was a seeker I sought both night and day. I ask de Lord to help me, An’ He show me de way.” Eventually, John Work Jr.’s son, John Work III, decided to expand on the song - it is unclear if he uncovered existing additional verses that had been lost, or if he wrote his own new verses to the hymn, but in 1940 his version was published, the version we know today. By the mid 1950s, the hymn was being included in some mainline Protestant hymnals. Go, tell it on the mountain! Jesus is born! Let peace and justice be proclaimed. 

That’s our task friends. Christmas Day was yesterday. But now in the season of Christmas and beyond, our task is to be messengers of all that we’ve heard and seen at Christmas, all that we’ve experienced of God and God’s peace and justice, all that we’ve known of God’s love. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of those who announce peace, good news, and salvation! So let’s go and tell it - Jesus is born, God become flesh, God with us, always. Amen. 

1. This section of the sermon uses this resource (St. Peter’s) and the one Hawn resource listed below. All quotations come from the Hawn resource. “Advent Devotional Day 7,” St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, https://www.stpeterslutheranyork.com/blog/advent-devotional-day-7

2. C. Michael Hawn, “History of Hymns: “Go, Tell it On the Mountain,”” Discipleship Ministries. https://www.umcdiscipleship.org/resources/history-of-hymns-go-tell-it-on-the-mountain-1

Sermon for Christmas Eve, "The Irrational Season," Luke 2:1-20

Sermon 12/24/21

Luke 2:1-20

The Irrational Season

One of my roles as a doctoral student at Drew Theological School is serving as the Chapel Graduate Assistant. I assist in crafting the liturgies for the worship services, coordinate guest preachers, prepare the worship space and slides for the screens, and so on. It’s a really great outlet for me since I’m not serving as pastor of a local church anymore while I’m in school to do some of the ministry tasks I love, like planning and leading in worship. Our last service of the semester was a service of Advent lessons and carols, and we alternated scripture readings, poems, and musical selections. We started the service with a very brief poem by Madeleine L’Engle called “After Annunciation.” 

“This is the irrational season

when love blooms bright and wild.

Had Mary been filled with reason

there’d have been no room for the child.” 

When we read the poem, it got a chuckle - no doubt the congregation thinking about children, and the fact that they bring both joy and chaos, and no matter how parents and doting family members prepare for the arrival of children in their lives, thinking you can be “ready”, really and truly “prepared” for the arrival of someone as unpredictable as children are is indeed just that - irrational. And so everyone chuckled knowingly. “Reason” and “children” don’t always go together. 

But I think this little verse is also quite deep. “This is the irrational season, when love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.” What’s so irrational about the Christmas story? I’ve been thinking about all the aspects of the telling of Jesus’ birth that we might call irrational. L’Engle’s poem reflects on the annunciation, the act of the angel Gabriel, God’s messenger, telling Mary that she would give birth to the Christ Child. That happens in Luke 1, before the nativity story we read from Luke 2 tonight. Everytime I read about Mary hearing the shocking news of her own pregnancy, I’m amazed at how she reacts. She asks just one question - how can this be? And then she response to God saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” I would have asked a million questions. Why me? Why now? Is this for real? What if I can’t do this? What if people don’t believe me when I try to explain? Won’t I be at risk? Isn’t there a better way? Wouldn’t it have been more sensible, more rational to ask questions? To get the details? To ask what God was thinking? Aren’t God’s expectations of Mary unreasonable? Isn’t her response unreasonable? 

And then there’s Joseph. Joseph’s story features mostly in Matthew’s gospel. Does he act rationally? Reasonably? He does at first. When he finds out Mary is pregnant, and he knows he isn’t the father, he resolves to quietly part ways with Mary. That’s a sensible course of action. But Joseph starts to get visits from God’s messengers in his dreams, convincing him that Mary’s child is of God, and that he should stay with Mary despite what people will think. And Joseph does. Aren’t God’s expectations of Joseph - that he’ll just mold his life around Mary’s and this child who doesn’t quite belong to him - unreasonable? 

Of course, the most irrational of all in the Christmas story is God, who acts in all sorts of unreasonable, unpredictable ways. God chooses Mary, a common young Jewish woman who doesn’t particularly stand out in any way. God comes in human form in a way that’s likely to make people doubt Mary, doubt Joseph, and disbelieve that Jesus is God in the flesh. God makes a big heavenly dazzling announcement about Jesus’ birth - but this heavenly dazzling announcement, a glorious display of heavenly messengers filling the skies - goes to a bunch of shepherds, people on the fringes of society, hanging out with animals, not other people. Jesus’s birth isn’t announced to anyone who might be described as influential. Jesus is instead born where there seems to be no room for him, where no one is likely to notice. Indeed, Christmas is the irrational season because God seems to act so irrationally in entering the world in human form. Yet, this is the irrational season when love blooms bright and wild, and God is determined that we find room for the child. God’s love for the world - for me and for you - is bright and wild, irrepressible, and so here God comes, in unreasonable ways, tucking into unexpected places even when it seems like there is no room for God in all the places you’d think to look first. 

In response to this good news, this great joy, this very irrational story that has gifted us with bright and wild and blooming love, how shall we respond? What is our call, if we are to be Christmas people? As the poem suggests, I think we’re meant to imitate Mary, and figure out what unreasonable responses the gospel story, the birth of Christ, calls us to make. I think for us to make room for the Christ child, God calls us to do some irrational things. What do I mean?

The first response that popped into my head is thinking about my irrational mother! My mom lives in a small two bedroom apartment. Most of the time, it is just the right size for her. She’s got a bedroom, and there’s a guest bedroom for when her children or grandchildren are visiting. But right now, I’m staying with her for a month while I’m on break from school. And my roommate came to spend Christmas week with us. And my brother is about to arrive, visiting from Illinois. And another brother is coming to stay for a few days because he doesn’t want to miss out on seeing everyone else. And so my mother has carefully arranged how to make everyone fit with air mattresses and rollaway beds and doubling up in rooms and napping on couches and piling suitcases into corners. And it is chaotic, and occasionally claustrophobic. And nothing brings out our childhood sibling squabbles like cramming us into a small space together for a week. And my mother loves every second of it, because her heart is full of love and joy in this season and she will always make sure there is room. There’s room for everyone in her home, and making sure we know there’s room is a priority for her. I wonder how I can take that spirit, her irrational spirit, how we can take Mary’s irrational spirit, God’s irrational unreasonable way of loving extravagantly, and embody it in our own lives. 

I think we act “irrationally” and “unreasonably,” at least according to the world’s measure, when we say yes, as Mary did, to God’s requests, even when what God is asking seems impossible. What has God been challenging you to do that seems impossible? What if you said yes? 

What if we acted like the angels, and carried messages of God’s grace, of hope, and of joy to the world. What unsuspecting people are longing and needing a message like the angels delivered? How can we work for peace in a world where peace seems so far off, like an irrational dream that can never be attained? 

What if we tried to live in lives patterned after God, in whose image we are created? We’d focus our attention not on the privileged and elite, but on the marginalized, those pushed to the fringes. We’d visit our contemporary equivalents of fields of shepherds and animal stables instead of places of wealth and status, and burst forth with pronouncements of divine favor. 

What if we’re irrational like Joseph, and humbly take our place as supporters of those we see taking big risks for God, even when it means we’re not the starring player, and even when no one else will lend support? 

When we commit to peace in a world of violence, when we reject the typical ways of measuring success, when we love in the face of hatred, and we love without condition, when we listen for God’s calling voice, and try our best to answer with our whole hearts, no matter what risks God is asking us to take - we are embodying this irrational season, making room for the child, and letting love, wild and bright, take root in our lives. Friends, my prayer for you this Christmas is that you may remember that this is an irrational season. To receive this gift of God with us, to make room for the child, we might need to be a little unreasonable. Instead of being reasonable this season, let’s be hopeful, and faithful. Let’s be joyful peacemakers. Let’s be irrational, extravagant, unconditional givers of love, and may that love, the love of God, bloom bright and wild in our world, in our hearts. Amen. 

Sermon for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, "A Widow's Mite: Praise or Lament," Mark 12:38-44

Sermon 11/7/21  

Mark 12:38-44

A Widow’s Mite: Praise or Lament

Last week in worship, we thought about All Saints Day and Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. These celebrations are about, in part, remembering people who have died, people who have been a part of our lives, and part of who we are, both individually, and as a congregation. But these celebrations are broader, too, than remembering our own personal saints, the ones who we knew in person. These celebrations call us to think of the saints of the whole Church - not just in this congregation, but all those who have shaped us. A favorite quote of mine comes from Native American poet Linda Hogan, “Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.” We think about the love of thousands that shapes us in this place, in this season. 

I’m new to Christ Church - I started worshipping here because Mark invited me when I started back at Drew for the PhD program last fall. I worshiped online with you, and was thrilled to be able to start attending in person this fall. But I don’t know many of you well yet, and I don’t yet know the stories and people of this congregation - the saints that have shaped this community of faith. That’s what’s so sacred to me, though, about celebrations of All Saints or Dia de los Muertos. I don’t have to have known your people, your saints for them to become mine, as I become part of this community. As I share in this community, I share in your stories. I’m a clergyperson in the United Methodist Church, and over the years that I’ve served in different communities, I’ve often felt that - I arrive to a new place of ministry, bringing my own memories of loved ones with me, and I arrive to meet, through my congregations, a new set of saints. I learn their stories, and they become mine too, a part of me too, even though I never met them. 

That sense of belonging - that when I become a part of this community, these stories, your stories, your people, belong to me too - that’s not just a mindset I think the community of faith holds when we’re thinking about remembered saints who have died. I think, actually, it’s what it means to be part of the living communion of saints, what we might call the body of Christ. It means being part of a community that strives to love like and love who God loves. It means that if someone belongs to God, they belong to us too. If we strive to love like God, we love who God loves and try to make them the recipient of our care and attention just as God has done. We become responsible for everyone for whom God is responsible. That probably sounds like an enormous task - and it is! It’s our whole life’s work! We’re responsible for one another because we belong to one another - not as in ownership of each other, but in relationship with one another, bound together by God’s love for us. We love God by loving one another well. 

In the witness of the scriptures, we see that God’s way of loving gives special attention to those who are the most vulnerable. In the Hebrew Bible, these people are sometimes called the quartet of the vulnerable - the poor, the orphaned, the stranger or foreigner, and the widow. God’s love and God’s commandments call for special care for those most at risk in the community. The most vulnerable belong to God in a special way, and so it follows that if we seek to love like God loves, the most vulnerable are meant to be special to us, too. We’re responsible for and to the most vulnerable. Perhaps today we would not think of the widow, the orphan, the poor, and the stranger in these same “categories,” but those most at risk in our society today are not so different, are they? 

When we read the gospels, we see Jesus live out a ministry that focuses on being in relationship with the most vulnerable people too. In our gospel lesson today, we encounter Jesus seeing and speaking about the actions of a widow, and so we should perk up, knowing already that widows are a particular focus of compassionate attention by God in the scriptures, and a marginalized group who God directs God’s people to consider with particular attention and responsibility. 

The second part of our lesson for today might be familiar to you. I learned this Bible story as a child, and it was always taught with the woman, the widow, being lifted up as an example of generosity and giving our all to God. Jesus sits down across from the temple treasury - imagine, someone planting themselves right next to the offering plates and just watching what everyone was putting in - and he notes, Mark tells us, that many rich people are putting in large sums of money. But then a poor widow comes and puts in a very small sum - two copper coins - a penny,  a mite, a tiny amount. And Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” We’ve read in Jesus’s comments praise and admiration for the woman. She, a poor woman, gave everything, unlike the wealthy whose contributions were comparatively practically stingy. She gave everything to God, and so should we, because God wants our everything, our whole selves. That’s a good message, isn’t it? And indeed, I believe that there is a strong challenge in being called to give our whole selves to God. 

It’s just that I don’t think that’s what is happening here in this text. I think we’ve read praise into Jesus’s commentary. But I think his words are a lament. (1) At the beginning of our reading today, the less familiar part of our passage, Jesus says, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows' houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” The scribes were lawyers and interpreters of the law of Moses. They were part of the religious aristocracy. Some scribes would have been members of the Sanhedrin - the religious tribunal before which Jesus was tried before his crucifixion. Jesus is frequently at odds with the scribes and Pharisees and other religious leaders, and his words here are no exception. He’s accusing the scribes, those who are meant to be knowledgeable about and faithful to the law of Moses, of corruption. Scribes, for example, would sometimes be responsible for managing the estate and finances of widows, legal trustees for these women who weren’t permitted to manage their own resources. And they sometimes charged exorbitantly for their services. (2) The fee was usually a part of the estate, but apparently some took the “widows’ houses,” leaving these women even more vulnerable and destitute than before, all in the name of fulfilling the religious law, all while maintaining their own status and position. 

When we take that first part of the passage with the second, the widow and her coins, I think Jesus is offering a lament. He’s saying: Look at how broken this system is - this system that is supposed to draw people closer to God, this system that is supposed to center those whom God has told us are ours to care for and love and especially attend to - instead, this system, set up in the name of God, has been manipulated so that those in power are taking from those without, so that those who are wealthy are taking from those who are poor, so that these men of high standing are able to exploit this women with no standing, so that she feels compelled to give her everything to a system that is all too willing to take everything from her. This widow should have been especially treasured. And instead, she’s got nothing left to give. And that we use her story to encourage people to give to church is like a strange gospel-gaslighting that does that exact opposite of what I think Jesus intended. We’ve focused on the widow’s offering, but I think Jesus wanted us to focus on the widow. To remember that she is ours, that we belong to one another in community, and in responsibility, that she should be a recipient of love and compassion and care, not exploitation.

Who else is Jesus calling to our attention? To yours, to mine? As I think about this widow, this woman who was at risk and vulnerable and exploited, I think about the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women - that’s November 25th this year. Unfortunately, it coincides with Thanksgiving Day, where I’m afraid, ironically, our thanksgiving to God might mean inattention to the very matters this day seeks to highlight. The focus of the Day this year is the Shadow Pandemic - “Since the outbreak of COVID-19, emerging data and reports from those on the front lines, have shown that all types of violence against women and girls, particularly domestic violence, has intensified.” (3) “Violence against women and girls is one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence, stigma and shame surrounding it.” (3) How can we pay attention to those who are hurting? God has asked us to love one another, and God has asked us to bring to the center those who are marginalized as an act of love. How are we caring for the women and girls who endure such pain and violence? Do we recognize corrupt systems that bring harm and violence to the vulnerable? Jesus is trying to help us take note, that we might love like God loves - and God notices the pain of God’s people. 

Jesus’s lament over the widow ends Chapter 12 in Mark’s gospel, but the division of chapters is something that is added later into the scriptures by interpreters, not by the writers. If I was the interpreter, I would have made the chapter break a couple of verses later. Because what Jesus says and does right after his lament about the widow feeling compelled to give her all to the temple system?: Jesus exits the temple, and one of his disciples comments on how big the stones are that were used to construct the building. And Jesus says, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon the other; all will be thrown down.”

Jesus was right - the temple was soon destroyed. Jesus’ words about the temple were used against him when he was on trial before the Sanhedrin - he was accused of blasphemy and of wanting to overthrow the religious leaders so that he could rule. Or he is counted by gospel interpreters as foretelling the destruction of the temple as a kind of predicting the future. But for me? I think Jesus’s words tie in so clearly to what he’s just been trying to say. He looks at the temple, at this house meant to be God’s house that instead is a site of exploitation of the vulnerable, and he says: “Someday, this system of oppression will be no more. It will all be thrown down.” That, to me, is the good news of this text. The systems of oppression will be dismantled. 

Sometimes this dismantling of systems can happen with a system-wide failure that brings everything suddenly to a halt. But more often dismantling systems of oppression require taking it apart stone by stone, just as that great building that the disciple so admired was put in place stone by stone. When we think about the oppression of women, violence against women and girls, violence against the vulnerable in our context, today, in our communities, in our lives - what is one stone we can work on removing from a structure of patriarchy, dominance, exploitation, and oppression? Stone by stone, with God’s help, we can dismantle oppression. 

To be a community, to be the body of Christ, we have to care for one another, our response to God’s love for us, our way of demonstrating our love for God. As we follow in the rhythms of Christ, we learn to notice those who have been overlooked, and to make it our priority, our passion, and our privilege to throw down any walls, any obstacles, and structures and systems that prevent God’s beloved from being drawn to the center of our attention, of our hearts. Amen.  

1. The sermon title and this question come from David Lose’s reflection here: David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2015/11/pentecost-24-b-surprisingly-good-news/, “Pentecost 24B: Surprisingly Good News,” In the Meantime.  

2. Haslam, Chris, “Comments,” http://montreal.anglican.org/comments/bpr32m.shtml 

3. https://www.un.org/en/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day 

Sermon for the Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost, Year B - Mark 10:35-45 by Brigid Dwyer

My friend, Brigid Dwyer, a current Drew STM student, gave me permission to post her fantastic sermon, which she preached today at St. George's Episcopal Church, in Maplewood, NJ. I really love her take on James and John in Mark 10:35-45. I encourage you to give it a read! 

In the name of the One, Holy, and Living God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

The ordination process is grueling. Today, it takes years  just to get to seminary, but in earlier days, you could be  already enrolled and taking classes and be told “no thank you,”  or “not yet.” It is certainly not something you start flipping  the script on lightly. And Jonathan Daniels did not do that lightly. In March 1965 he voluntarily took a semester away  from Episcopal Divinity School to return to Alabama, where he  had been helping in the fight to end segregation. He knew this  might cost his ordination, but he was prepared to sacrifice  even that, and so much more, to faithfully carry out the work  of the Kingdom of God. Two weeks earlier, he had first  arrived in Alabama, expecting to spend the weekend. Instead,  he and a few others from EDS wound up staying a week, and  then coming back, having taken a leave of absence from  seminary. He expected to march, to work hard, to humble himself and take orders, and to send time in jail, and he did all this. But five months after he arrived in Alabama, he pushed Ruby Sales out of the way of a bullet that wound up  hitting him instead. He was not expecting to become a martyr,  but that’s precisely what happened. 

Jonathan Daniels’s feast day is August 14th, making him  what we colloquially call a “Saint” of our church. In 2015,  there was a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his  martyrdom. Icons have been written and statues have been  sculpted onto cathedrals with his image, and he is among those  remembered in Canterbury Cathedral’s Chapel of Saints and  Martyrs of Our Time. Jonathan Daniels fully drank of Jesus’s cup, shared in his baptism, and there is no doubt in my mind  that he sits today at Jesus’s right or left hand in glory. 

Judith Upham was a classmate of Jonathan Daniels. She  got on the same planes from Boston to Atlanta, missed the same flight home at the end of the same weekend, took the same semester off, went to the same marches, worked side by-side in Alabama helping the movement. When Jesus asked  her, “Judy, are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be  baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” she also  replied, “I am able.” But she was not in Hayneville when  Daniels was arrested, imprisoned, and finally shot.  

Judith Upham did not have to drink that particular cup,  and the Church is better for it. Just as we’ve received  Jonathan Daniels’s witness through his martyrdom and  sainthood, we’ve received Judith Upham’s through her life and  ministry. When the Episcopal Church approved the ordination  of women to the diaconate in 1970, she felt her own call to  ordained life, and in 1977, she became one of the first women  to be regularly ordained as a priest in our church. She  continued to make holy trouble for the cause of justice for all  God’s children as the rector of Grace Church in Syracuse – an  integrated parish at a time and place where such things were even rarer than they are here and now. And while there, she offered up Grace’s sanctuary to the local Metropolitan Community Church, where they were performing, among other  ministries, weddings of people who had matching genders.  Many of us remember that this was a big deal in the mid-‘80s. In some places, it still is. Rev. Upham is now retired in the  Diocese of North Texas, where she’s continuing to build God’s  kingdom. 

No one goes into a mission expecting to be martyred, but  reading interviews and stories, I am convinced that both  Daniels and Upham understood that martyrdom was a  possibility. Given the number of people who’d already been  killed doing civil rights work, how could they not? And they  both willingly – not reluctantly - walked into that. And, like  James and John, they both signed up for more. It cost Daniels  his life. For her part, Upham was given a different, but no less  important ministry.

And here’s where I’m going to give the kindest possible  reading to those sons of Zebedee. Between last week’s Gospel  reading and this week’s, there are three verses that tell us  they’re on their way to Jerusalem, and show Jesus telling the  twelve for the third time, and in the plainest language, that  he’s going to be executed. And it’s right after that that  James and John ask about sitting with him in glory.  

Two things about that: First, the lectionary skips that  preceding section entirely, and many versions of the Bible  break it out between two section headers, so even if you’re  reading Mark 10 as part of your devotional practice, it will  look very removed from the bit we read today. But that is not  necessarily how it was conceived. Ancient manuscripts didn’t  break out sections, or paragraphs, or even words. They look  like a continuous wall of Greek letters, and you even have to  do your best to figure out which letters go together to form words, never mind chapters. So, yes, we have centuries of scholarship telling us that the bit about Jerusalem, arrest, and execution are a separate paragraph, but we don’t  absolutely have to read them that way. 

Second: Remember how I said, “no one goes into a mission  expecting to be martyred?” Well, that’s certainly true today,  and it was true in the 20th century, too. In the 1st Century  among the followers of Jesus, though, things were a little  different. By the time this gospel was being written, there  were already organized persecutions in the name of Emperor  Nero against the followers of Jesus. Early Christ-followers  took martyrdom very seriously. They believed it to be a high  calling, and the firmest display of faith a person could show.  They spoke of it in terms like “coming into glory.” Some  stories told of people actively wishing for martyrdom. So where am I going with all that? Let’s just imagine for a moment that, instead of saying, “we’d like to be the two most important people hanging out with you up in Heaven after  all this is over,” James and John are like, “We’ve heard you,  we know how this is all going to go down, and we want to walk  with you through it. Please let us.” They’re asking Jesus to  help. They’re asking to be part of his ministry, no matter  where it takes them.  

This world is weird, and we are living in a particularly  weird moment in history. We are teetering on the edge of a  multinational fascist takeover, not only here in the United  States, but also in Brazil, the UK, eastern Europe, India, the  Philippines. No one who has the power to do so is coming to our  rescue, at home or abroad, because fascism is good for the  rich and powerful, even if they don’t want to get their hands  dirty with it. In the United States this looks like, among other  things, direct legislative attacks on people marginalized by  their race, national origin, sexuality, gender and gender identity, and against poor folks from all walks of life. And we watch this all happening, feeling frustrated, helpless, and angry. And then we remember Jesus, and, even if for just one  moment, we might think to ourselves, “here I am, Lord. Send  me.” 

What does Jesus tell us when we’re ready to jump in with  both feet? Let’s start with what he doesn’t tell us: He doesn’t tell us  “No.” He doesn’t say, “I’m sorry, child, but I have someone  more competent in mind, someone with less to lose, someone  more worthy.” In fact, he says quite the opposite. Look at the  following paragraph in this light: The other apostles are telling  James and John to stay in their lane, to remember their place.  They’re fishermen, no one special. This work is for special  people (and please note that none of them were up there  volunteering). And Jesus says (and I’m paraphrasing), “Fellas. This is their place precisely because of who they are. Precisely because they’re ‘just fishermen.’ The other side gatekeeps who can join the struggle. We’re not like that.  We’re better than that. You’re better than that. I’m just  some dude from Nazareth and I’m out here doing this work and a whole lot more, and so can they. And so can you.” 

And so can we. 

But what does he tell us?  

First, he asks if we know what we’re doing. This isn’t  gatekeeping, this is love. This is a friend checking in to make  sure we’re safe. This is when the person at the protest with  the bullhorn says, “if you didn’t take the training, stay back  and don’t get arrested.” Or when the organization that offers  services to the unhoused gives its volunteers training on  compassionate detachment. And it’s also the groups that  ensure that minoritized bodies are kept out of harm’s way as  much as possible at direct actions. Or, and this one can get forgotten in the excitement, remembering to pray for God’s help in discerning your role in establishing God’s Kingdom. 

God is love, beloved. God not only needs us efficient and  effective, but God craves our well-being. Taking care of  ourselves while we do God’s work is both an act of resistance  against the State and an act of devotion to our creator who  loves us. 

The other thing that Jesus is doing is managing expectations. I remember one of the first protests I went to  – a group of us from high school drove down from Pennsylvania  to Washington DC, assembled in the Park behind the White  House, and loudly demonstrated against increased nuclear  armament. (I went to Quaker school. These were school sponsored trips). There were loud chants, captivating  speakers, music – the whole Washington protest experience.  It was thrilling. We drove back up I-95 buzzing, woke up the next morning and, materially and politically, nothing had changed. Now, even at 17, my rational brain knew not to expect the president to call  a press conference and resign.  But it made the moment a little anti-climactic.   

This work is long, and frustrating, and we don’t know how  it’s all going to work out, and in the year two thousand twenty one of the common era we are still having to protest the  state’s efforts to keep Black people from exercising their  right to vote. And, as Jesus says, clear as day: glory is not a  given. But we press on because Creation is worth it. God is  worth it. We are worth it. 

So, what about our protagonists, James and John, sons of  Zebedee? They were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee when  Jesus called them to follow him, and they did. We know they  left behind jobs and community, and they may well have been  supporting families. They expected to follow an itinerant rabbi. But by this time in the Gospel, they’d seen, and that rabbi had explicitly told them, that their ministry was going to  be so much more. And they fully bought into that, and asked  to follow Jesus wherever he led them. 

No one was sitting for interviews back then, so everything we have is apocryphal, but we do have legends. For  James, he’s known today (outside the Gospels) as St. James  the Great. He brought Jesus’s message to Spain, and was  brought back to Jerusalem and beheaded by Herod for his  efforts. His body was then returned to Spain, and pilgrims  walk the Camino de Santiago year-round from France to his  tomb in Santiago de Compostela in honor of his ministry. 

John’s legacy is a bit more complex. Modern biblical  scholars tend to dismiss these traditions, but for our  purposes here, they are a lot more important. Most legends  have him as the author of the fourth Gospel, and call him John the Evangelist. Some conflate this position with him being marked as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” in that Gospel, and some even stretch his legacy out to make him the author of  Revelation and the Letters of John. In any event, the one  thing that all of the legends agree on is that John, son of  Zebedee, died at a ripe old age of natural causes. He spent  the bulk of his life spreading Jesus’s message around the  Mediterranean, and was instrumental in the formation of the  early church. Both John and his brother, when asked if they  could drink Jesus’s cup and share in his baptism, replied, “we  are able.” And both men made good on that promise, wherever  that took them.  

So today, I hope we can look to these bold apostles, who,  even before they risked their bodies, risked the ridicule of  their companions, but put themselves out there anyway. And  prayerfully, mindfully, in those moments where we feel called  to - as the old prayer goes - offer ourselves, our souls, and  bodies to God, I pray we can answer as they did: 

We are able. Amen.

Sermon, "Rough Draft Prayers," Psalm 124

 Sermon 9/21/21  

Psalm 124

Rough Draft Prayers

Years ago I took a unit of CPE, Clinical Pastoral Education, and I worked in the NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, of a local hospital. It was often heartbreaking work. And I still remember a conversation with one family, whose newborn was fighting for his life. I remember them talking to me about praying to God and that they wanted to just pray for God to save their baby, heal their baby, but...they wouldn’t let themselves pray for that. They didn’t think they could ask God for that, but that they could only pray for God’s will to be done, even if “God’s will” turned out to be that their child would die. I was still learning how to best listen and how to respond when people are inviting you to share in their pain in such profound ways. Their willingness to talk to a 23 year-old chaplain intern about their ailing infant was a sacred gift to me that I didn’t take lightly. I was learning, trying very hard not to tell people what to do and how to feel in a misguided attempt to “fix” things for people. But I really did want to let them know that they didn’t have to edit their prayer for God. They could pray to God exactly what was on their hearts, even if they thought it was somehow selfish. They could cry out: God, please, please, please, spare my child. That would be ok. In fact, I believed - believe - God wants that. Our raw, rough draft, edit-free prayers. The real stuff we’re thinking. Our broken hearts. These are the simple prayers: Help me. Save me. Save them. I love you. I hate you. Where are you? Did you forget about me? Thank you.  

Sometimes the Psalms strike me as prayers like that. They read almost like they’re coming from the moment of crisis, or from seconds after the worst of something has passed. They’re written from the trenches of war and violence, from the depths of grief, from the heights of joy, from the moment of the realization of great love, from our loneliest moments. The Psalm we’re looking at today gives me that sense. I read in it a profound sense of relief, immediately after a danger has passed. Wow - God - if you hadn’t been on our side, we wouldn’t have survived. God, without you on our side, we’d be dead right now! We were attacked, about to be eaten up, about to be drowned in the flood waters, the strength of our enemies. My animal studies ears perk up at the imagery and meanings here: God, we were almost prey to the teeth of our hungry enemies, predators. God, we were birds caught in a trap, struggling, struggling, but because of you we broke free! God - you, you, were our helper, you who made everything that is. Thank God. Phew. Utter relief, survival against the odds, and abundant gratitude - we’re still living. We’re still breathing. We’ve made it. Can you resonate with the psalmist? Have you ever felt such profound relief from danger? Have you ever felt with such clarity: If God hadn’t been with me through that, I’d be lost right now? 

But, as much as I might imagine the “gut response” nature of this psalm, the authentic thanksgiving after surviving some kind of life-threatening attack, I can’t help but cringe a bit at the opening lines. “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side.” Indeed, the psalmist implores all Israel to make this claim - “if it wasn’t for the Lord being on our side against the attack of our enemies…” The idea of God taking sides - taking the side of one over the other, against the other - there aren’t many situations where that holds up to thoughtful theological scrutiny. As Pastor James Howell writes, “Some of the thinnest, most atrocious theology we overhear in our culture is about God being on the side of … the white people, or the [pure] people, or the people of a certain religious inclination, or those who are straight, or think the Bible is literally true” and so on. (1) Being sure that God is on your side, supporting your actions - well, as a private prayer describing your relief at having a survived a life or death situation - it makes sense. But this psalm is one of a collection of Songs of Ascents - Psalms meant for corporate worship, words said by people together, over and over, usually disconnected from immediate urgency, no longer the hurried response of a people just surviving attack. It’s a gut respond, rough draft prayer that becomes codified, until everyone knows: “God is on our side.” And I can’t help but imagine different peoples and regimes using this psalm, casting themselves in the role of a victim, and all others as the enemy, and God as on our side: “If it had not been for God being on our side, let America now say” for example. The implications give me chills. The words sound dangerous. Arrogant. 

What do we do then, with a Psalm like this, a perhaps earnest prayer written in desperation that is said and said and said again, prayed not by the oppressed but by the oppressor, used not by the prey but by the predator, said not by the weak but by the strong and powerful, said not in the heat of the moment, in the midst of gut-deep relief, but with careful planning? 

We’re perhaps in a perfect context to consider such a question. We are, physically, virtually, at a Theological School. Students are busy, busy, busy, reading and writing and submitting assignments. Sometimes, of course, what my professors get from me is my too-hurried response, an assignment left till the last minute, my hurried, unedited thoughts that contain myriad typos and worse, rushed claims and conclusions that don’t hold up to scrutiny. But hopefully and thankfully usually, what we turn in isn’t just or ultimately a first draft. We have “delete” buttons that allow us to rewrite clunky sentences. We have friends and family and tutors that read our first drafts and give feedback. We submit paper proposals and listen to the wise questions from our professors that help us refine our thesis. We get grades and feedback that help us on our next attempt. Our first draft is worth something, but it also isn’t our final draft, thanks be to God! 

I think scripture can feel to us like a final draft. It’s been published, after all. What chance is there to amend now? And maybe we don’t want to amend the heartfelt gut-reaction texts, even though we are now very much not in the heat of the moment. But I think our process of engaging the text - as individuals and as communities of faith, can be like an ongoing revision of our theological first drafts. Together, we can figure out whether God is on our side, or whether we are on God’s side, or how God is even on the side of our enemies, or whether we’d rather really be side by side. Wrestling, we can refine an understanding of God’s preference for being on the side of the poor and marginalized, and where our place is in relation to God and God’s people. We can edit our placement, deciding whether it is best to plop down a Psalm or any text into any setting, or if there’s a best time and a best place to set a text to build up community instead of creating divisions. To see a prayer or a text isn’t to devalue. Instead, it’s meant to leave room for more learning, room for wisdom - our own and others, room for feedback, room for the perspective we gain over time. 

I’m thankful for our rough draft prayers, muttered to God on the spot in our times of deep need, because I believe God welcomes every word from our heart. And I’m thankful that we have the opportunity to go back, examine our claims about God and faith, and submit some revisions. And then do it again and again. Amen.  

1. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/the-holy-innocents/commentary-on-psalm-124