Third Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 7 June 21 2020

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Third Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 7 June 21 2020

Genesis 21:8-21,Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows. We have heard this proclaimed in many times and places. Do not be afraid. When the angel announces to Mary that she is pregnant, when the shepherds hear the proclamation of the birth of Jesus, when the spirit enters the room in which the disciples gathered after the resurrection. And each time, do not be afraid is followed by Good News. So why does the proclaimer precede the Good News with do not be afraid? I think because that Good News is not the same old news. That Good News harkens to a profound change in the way things have been. That Good News may sometimes be hard, transformative, Good News.

Let's take a look first at the reading from Genesis. This is the story of Hagar, Sarah's maidservant. Sarah is married to Abraham. They are very important people in Hebrew scripture. The story tells us that Abraham is the father of the Hebrew people, the progenitor, from whom all of us come. But in this point of the story, Sarah has not gotten pregnant and now she is very very old, beyond the days in which she could get pregnant. Sarah knows how important it is to have a child, God has promised that the entire Hebrew people will come from Abraham, and Sarah takes that promise seriously, and yet, no baby. The pressure's on. Sarah tells her husband Abraham to lie with her handmaiden Hagar, so that at least Abraham can conceive a child.

I tend to think that part of the reason Sarah wasn't getting pregnant all those years is that she was so stressed out and afraid about being the mother of the Hebrew people that it just wasn't happening. That's one of the things the doctors tell us, isn't it, just relax, don't be so worried about it, you'll get pregnant. What do they know? Hagar, Sarah's handmaiden gets pregnant by Abraham, and that child is named Ishmael. So now the pressure's off, and Sarah indeed gets pregnant, and Sarah and Abraham's child is Isaac. 

But even Sarah becomes jealous and envious and afraid. She casts Hagar and her son Ishmael off to wander in the wilderness and find their own way. Like it or not, that's the story. Sarah is really not much different than any one of us, is she? Which one of us has not gotten jealous, or envious, or even afraid, with the people and circumstances in our lives? That's the power in these stories, you and I fit right in.

Is there good news here? This is not one of Sarah’s best times. So much fear, and Hagar fears for her life and her son’s life. We can close our eyes and our ears to it, but the truth is whether literally or figuratively, there are those we cast off for fear of who they are. Actually, we do this a lot. Maybe you haven’t actually cast off someone, literally, but we still do it all the time. We cast people off when we discount their skills, or their gifts, or their abilities. We cast people off when we decide the color of their skin should keep them out of the neighborhood, or the school, or the store that you shop in. But the good news is here. The good news is that Hagar’s life matters too. Hagar and her child Ishmael were sustained in the wilderness by the water God provided, and Hagar became the grandmother of a great nation.

And then we have this passage in Matthew in which Jesus speaks of fear. Jesus has commissioned his twelve disciples and is about to send them out on a mission of their own, a mission during which they both exercise great authority and need to demonstrate profound trust. For while they will have the power to cast out demons and heal the sick, they are to take no money or extra provisions but rather depend upon the grace of God as shown in the hospitality of others. Do not be afraid disciples, your world will be turned upside down and inside out, but do not be afraid. Your assumptions about blood relationship and social relationship will be completely demolished, but do not be afraid.

Yeah, right. Fear dominates our lives -- fear for our loved ones, fear about an uncertain future, fear of disease, fear of upheaval in our streets and communities. Or fear of economic downturn, fear of where our next meal or rent payment will come from. It seems like sometimes fear surrounds us. But listen to these words, do not be afraid. And this passage from Matthew shakes us up, and sets us back down on our heads. There is nothing about this Good News that is easy. And yet we believe with every fiber of our being, that we are God's beloved. We believe with every breath we take in that it is God's love that wins. We believe with every breath we breathe out that God's spirit moves among us. And in those moments, and hours, and days of doubt and fear, we say the prayers, we gather virtually in hope that there will be a day when we can gather physically, we love and support one another, and again we glimpse the hope of God's way, God's love, God's healing, God's reconciliation, God's kingdom.

We create a new world with God, each time fear of the other is turned into compassion for the one who is different. We create a new world with God, each time fear of the unknown becomes a bold embracing of the new. We create a new world with God, each time fear of losing our job or our income, becomes the birth of a new idea. We create a new world with God, each time fear of losing our children or our family becomes the opportunity to say I Love you. We create a new world with God, each time acting out of prejudice becomes forgiveness and new relationship. We create a new world with God, each time our words bind and heal, and our actions invite and feed.

Be fearless for God. Be bold, be courageous. Be the change that this world needs.

Do not be afraid. You are God's beloved. Amen

Second Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 6 June 14 2020

Second Sunday after Pentecost Yr A Proper 6 June 14 2020

Genesis 18:1-15, (21:1-7), Psalm 116:1, 10-17, Romans 5:1-8, Matthew 9:35-10:8(9-23)

As I hear this scripture from Matthew in these days, I wonder if it was spoken right into our time and place. Jesus is proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, the hope and the reality and the nearness of the kingdom. The sign of that proclamation is healing and compassion. And the call is to each and every one of us, to go out into the world to proclaim the kingdom is near and to bring healing to those who will receive it, and that we will be like sheep in the midst of wolves. Matthew lays out the good news of kingdom building right next to the difficulty of bearing that same news into a world that has so much trouble receiving it, a world that is filled with grief, a world that is in upheaval.

You see, Jesus offers a very different reality of kinship, or of being related to one another. Jesus is speaking into a world in which worth and value are based on your bloodlines and your pedigree. We hear it in two ways in this story. First, Jesus sends the apostles to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, they’re the synagogue leaders and council elders, the magistrates and political officials that will threaten the mission of the disciples, these are insiders and people in power, not Gentiles or the Samaritans. And, secondly, Jesus describes the upheaval that will happen in families, brother will betray brother, a father will betray his child, and children will rise against parents. These seem like very harsh words, don’t they? Matthew uses harsh words in his gospel, even the way the parables are told seem harsh. Harsh words are not bad words, they are words that prick our ears, raise our eyebrows, and sometimes offend us.

But what is happening here is that Jesus is telling his followers that this good news of love, relationship, forgiveness, hope, will wreak havoc on the world as they know it. In fact, in the parables that follow, we hear the same good news. The kingdom of God looks like a world in which everyone is related to God and to one another. And Jesus is the one to incarnate that world, Jesus is the one who brings that reality to bear on the world those first followers lived in, and Jesus is the one who brings that reality to bear on the world in which we live.

I wonder if that’s not where we find ourselves today. In the midst of upheaval that not only reminds us but brings the reality right into our living rooms, the reality that we are all related. That kinship in God’s kingdom does not rest on markers that we in the world create, markers of skin color, or anything else. And we are reminded that the sign of the proclamation that we are all related it is healing and compassion.

Because that’s what Jesus does, into the upheaval Jesus brings healing and compassion and no one is left out of God’s relationship with God’s beloveds. Jesus heals the leper, the centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother in law, many possessed with demons, and Jesus stills the storm. And Jesus casts out the demons from the man in the tombs, he heals the paralytic, he restores a girl to life, and returns the woman into the community when she touches the fringe of her cloak. Jesus upends the order of the day just by healing people.

How do we get to healing and compassion today? I think we get there by engaging in truth-telling and reconciliation now. And that takes listening, lots and lots of listening. It takes listening to the stories that our black and brown brothers and sisters tell us about daily life, the stories underneath, the stories that make you and I say, no, that can’t be true. It takes listening to the stories of those who are indigenous to this land and acknowledging that they were here first. Listening to the truth of our brothers and sisters puts us on the road to reconciliation. That is the road to healing. That is the path that we must take to move closer to the kingdom that God dreams for us.

Bearing that work of truth and reconciliation that can be the bridge to healing opens us up to the wolves. And it is the wolves that will stop us in our tracks and eat us up. You’ve heard it said that we can’t be blamed for our rotten history, and slavery is way in our past anyway. You’ve heard it said that we can’t be blamed for the genocide of those who were on this land before the Europeans came to occupy. But those are the wolves talking. Those are the voices of oppression and racism. And it’s not about blame, it’s about change. There’s an old Cherokee parable. One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, "My son, the battle is between two "wolves" inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith." The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

Let’s not feed the evil wolf. Let’s not assign blame, let’s set down our arrogance, our superiority. Let’s feed joy, love, hope, kindness, and generosity. Let us be the ones who bear the good news into the world, the good news that we hear in the creation when God said, it is good. Let us bear the good news that God yearns to be in relationship with all of us because creation is good, we are good.

We are witnessing a quickening, a spirit rising, a new song moving us forward toward the beloved community. We are seeing a moment when change is possible and because of our collective voices for justice, change is happening. Let us move toward the beloved community as we hear the truth, let us be a part of the healing. Let it be so. Amen

Trinity Sunday Yr A June 7 2020

The Trinity by Kelly Latimore

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Trinity Sunday Yr A June 7 2020

Genesis 1:1-2:4a, 2 Corinthians 13:11-13, Matthew 28:16-20, Psalm 8, or Canticle 13 (or Canticle 2)

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the name of the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer; Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-giver. These are all ways for us to imagine Trinity. These words are attributed to St. Patrick, who in the face of the forces of darkness bound himself to the trinity. “I bind unto myself the Name, the strong name of the trinity; by invocation of the same, the three in one, and one in three, of whom all nature hath creation; eternal father, spirit, word; praise to the lord of my salvation, salvation is of Christ the Lord.” We may struggle to understand the doctrine of the trinity, but there is no struggle in the experience of the relationship of God, Jesus and spirit spilling over into humanity, you and me.

Trying to figure out the trinity, trying to define a trinity doctrine, trying to intellectualize trinity is not helpful to us today, but relationship is.

Because Trinity really is relationship, and it is this relationship, this community, that our images try to convey and our words try to describe. The story of creation sets the stage. Humanity is created by God, and created in God’s image, the reflection of love and wholeness, which God does intend for creation. In God’s own image God created humankind, and God’s own image includes amazing diversity. Human beings are the expression of God’s fullness, of God’s love, of God’s wholeness. And God’s creation is about the interrelatedness of all the created order: every living creature, all of the animals, the waters and the land, the stars in the sky, the planets in their courses.

Trinity is about this relationship in and through and among the created order. Trinity is the real world in which we live, the real world of God’s love for humanity, for God’s deepest desire to not be alone and outside of creation, but to be in, among, and through creation. The reality of God’s deepest desire to love humanity is incarnated, it is in the flesh, in Jesus. Jesus, who makes God’s presence known, Jesus, who lived, loved, suffered and died. Jesus, in whom God began the new creation on that first Easter morning. Jesus who was raised from the dead and who ascended leaving the presence of Holy Spirit with creation, with us. Holy Spirit, present in the water, the flame and the oil of baptism, present in the bread and the wine, present when we gather together, present in the space in between while we remain apart. Present in the sending out into the world to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God. Present as we are about the mission of sharing God's love in the world.

Trinity is about a reality of community over against individualism. Trinity encourages participation and welcomes diversity. Community, participation, and diversity look a lot like the church we strive to be, a diversity of which we fall far short. Each person interdependent with the others, where there is no room for any one to be self-aggrandizing and in the system each person empties oneself to be filled by the others, just as Jesus emptied himself to the love of humanity. Participation by all is essential to the matrix; the entity, the body of Christ cannot live without the participation of each of the parts. Diversity presupposes inclusion, and inclusion is the acceptance of all God’s children. We join together, while honoring the diversity among the many, in a unity that does not seek uniformity.

Trinity is one in all and all in one, therefore, we are created in the image of trinity. We are created in the image of diversity, unity, and overflowing love.

Trinity is a very clear picture of God’s intention for humanity. Justice, mercy, compassion. And as we continue to witness, over and over and over again, the killing of our black and brown bothers and sisters, Trinity shows us the way of relationship. But it isn’t enough, it isn’t enough for us to talk about this amazing relationship. And friends, it isn’t even enough for us to know that Love wins. It isn’t enough for us to say we treat all people equally. Because what we see outside our windows, down our streets, and in our cities is not about equality, it is about a country that has built itself on the systematic oppression of those who are not like us.

These sound like harsh words, don’t they? We want to say it’s not my fault, I can’t be blamed, I treat everyone just the same. I love everyone. And as true as that is, it isn’t enough. It is simple to say, I love my brothers and sisters, no matter the color of their skin, but we don’t know what it’s like. We don’t know what it’s like to be prevented from buying any house you want to buy, because there is a deliberate system keeping black people out of particular areas. Now you may say that doesn’t happen anymore, or that never happened, but it did. And today we are seeing the results of that. You see, when you buy a house, any house, any place you want, you are making an investment, building wealth, you may have inherited something from your parents, you may have something to leave to your children, but at the very least you have provided your children with a decent education because you live in a neighborhood that has a good school because of your property taxes that you pay on the house that you could buy. A house, an education, all build wealth and opportunity. Even if you have a middle-class job, the color of your skin keeps you from the middle-class house. And the next generation falls further behind, and hope begins to fade.

Or how about the GI bill. The promise was made to every person who served in the military that they could go to college. What they didn’t say, was that colleges offered one seat for black soldiers, and unlimited seats for white soldiers. Promises made, promises broken.

And I know your first reaction is to be defensive. I know that because I am that way too. But as you get defensive, get curious also. Ask yourself why this makes you defensive, and expose yourself to the lives and work of black and brown people, and open yourself up. Listen to the stories, just listen.

I speak from experience. I spent 12 years in Rapid City SD, listening to my native brothers and sisters. Listening to their stories, listening to their heartache, listening to their joys and the beauty of their culture. I can’t fix or solve any of that, we can’t fix or solve any of that. But we can listen, and we can walk next to our brown and black brothers and sisters. And we must listen because it’s important to our spiritual health. Remember, God is fully and completely present with us, that is what Trinity is about. And God is fully and completely present in every body, and for every body to matter, black and brown bodies must matter.

We bind unto ourselves this day, the strong name of the Trinity.

Thanks be to God.