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Sermon, Sept. 5

The Letter of James is odd. 

James is one of a set of texts in the New Testament that we call Epistles – Greek for “letters.” Some of the Epistles were written to a particular church – or even a particular person – and address specific situations or questions; and some are more general teachings, probably circulated among many churches. James seems to be the second kind of Epistle. He says he’s writing “to the twelve tribes in the Dispersion” – a poetic way of saying that he’s writing to God’s scattered people, to Christians all across the ancient world. 

While fitting the general template, in other respects, James is pretty different from other Epistles. For one thing, James doesn’t have much to say about Jesus. In five chapters, James mentions Jesus exactly twice – once when the author introduces himself, and once in today’s text. Compare that with Paul who mentions Jesus seventeen times in the six chapters of his letter to the Galatians. 

James has many resonances with the Wisdom texts of the Hebrew Bible – texts that use poetic language to describe the ways of the world and offer moral guidance. Our Proverbs text this morning is a good example, and you can easily see the similarity with James. And like Proverbs and other wisdom texts, James covers a lot of ground in a few verses. James can be hard to preach because there’s so much you could unpack from any given passage!

Who wrote this text? The author introduces himself as James, “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus.” The traditional view – held by some modern scholars as well – is that this James was Jesus’ brother, who became an important leader in the church in Jerusalem, the mother church of early Christianity.

In the letter to the Galatians – which is one of the earliest Christian texts, possibly written only fifteen years or so after Jesus – the apostle Paul mentions James, the brother of Jesus, as a church leader in Jerusalem. Non-Biblical early texts also mention a leader named James. 

This James was probably not the same person as either of the disciples named James – because the Gospels say Jesus’ immediate family did not follow him, during his lifetime. But apparently James was a fairly common name! So it’s not a stretch to assume there was another James. 

Some scholars think that the oddness of the letter of James makes it likely to be a late text, perhaps written 100 years after Jesus or more – based on similarities of language and theme with other, non-Biblical texts of that period.  

Some scholars think the oddness of James makes it more likely to be very early. If James really was a prominent leader in the Jerusalem church, and possibly Jesus’ brother – and writing as early as the late 40s when the Christian world was still quite small – he wouldn’t have felt a need to explain who he was, or justify his Christian credentials. James doesn’t refer to the Gospels at all, which would make sense if it was written before the Gospels. He doesn’t talk a lot about Jesus – but he does sound a lot like Jesus. There’s a lot in James that closely parallels, or expands on, Jesus’ teachings. Which, again, would make a lot of sense for an early church leader – who maybe knew Jesus pretty well. The ways in which James has more in common with parts of the Old Testament than with other New Testament texts also makes sense for an early date, when most followers of Jesus were Jews.

I’m not a New Testament scholar and I haven’t read all the sources – but I do find the case for James as a very early Christian text to be pretty convincing, and that’s how I think of it. 

The Letter of James covers a lot of ground, but it does have a strong central theme: The call for believers to live a transformed life, in keeping with their new orientation as followers of Jesus. Last week I talked about integrity – about having our outsides match our insides, our actions match our values and intentions. That’s one way to describe James’ core message: Live a life that matches your faith. 

And it’s a message that transcends time and context. Reading James, I feel like he’s speaking to me – to us – a lot of the time. There are parts that don’t carry over as well, but much of James’ teaching feels pretty timeless: practicing generosity; guarding our speech so we don’t harm others with our words; being considerate of those in need; not being judgmental or greedy; being watchful about where the ways of the world – the social norms of our time and place – may be at odds with the way of Jesus. And so on. 

Integrity is always aspirational, always something we’re living into, step by step. And some of James’ words are important for me personally, as part of that work. They function as holy thorns in my side, urging me to live what I say I believe. In last week’s reading we had this passage: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like.”

I think about that text pretty often. About looking in the mirror of my faith and seeing myself honestly: where my life matches my deepest hopes and commitments, and where it does not. When I turn away from that mirror, what do I do? How do I act? What do I change? 

And then in today’s text, there’s this: “What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,’ and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

That passage gives me a good sharp poke now and then. I’m very clear that my salvation in Jesus Christ is God’s free gift. Our works – our actions – cannot earn God’s favor. But we are called to live lives shaped by gratitude and mercy – to live out love, as people who know ourselves beloved. As James says here: If our faith doesn’t show up in how we live, then what difference does it make – to us, to our neighbors, to the world? 

James’ description of faith that never manifests itself in acts of justice or mercy is harsh: he says that faith is as good as dead. I wouldn’t be so sharp in my own language. Living up to our own best intentions is demanding lifelong work. But James’ challenge rings in my ears now and then: You say that you have faith? Show me. 

So James’ strongest theme is the call to live in accord with what we believe. Not just keeping it in our heads and hearts but letting it spill over into our lives. Today’s reading gives us a look at the second strongest theme in James: the rich, the poor, and how folks in the middle respond to the rich and the poor. 

James starts with the question of a church’s hospitality to someone joining them for worship. He says, Your welcome should be the same, whether someone is visibly poor or visibly wealthy. If anything, you should favor the poor, whom, says James – quoting Jesus – God has chosen to be heirs of the kingdom of God. 

Later, in chapter 5, James preaches against the wealthy who become rich by exploiting their workers: “Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire… Listen! The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” 

The Sunday lectionary tactfully skips this passage!

James’ indictment of those who gather wealth through unfair practices is also a call to concern for the welfare of workers. Tomorrow is Labor Day, a federal holiday set aside to honor the American labor movement and American workers. Labor unions are a way for workers to organize so that they have the power, together, to ask those in charge – factory owners, company leaders – for what they need. Like any human movement, the labor movement is imperfect, but I’m deeply grateful for its contributions. Some of its accomplishments include the eight-hour workday and the concept of overtime pay; the weekend; workplace safety standards and equipment; sick days; child labor laws; and the minimum wage. 

But while there are some protections for some workers – there is so much left to do. One of the realities laid bare by the Covid pandemic was that all of us depend on low-wage workers, who in many cases don’t have much protection. While many Americans relied on Amazon to meet daily needs during lockdown, Amazon warehouse workers faced a grueling pace of work that took a toll on both bodies and minds. Food workers – those who plant, harvest, process, pack,  transport, sell and serve food – were deemed essential and required to stay on the job, but with few added protections. As a result, one study found that in California – which grows a lot of food – food workers faced a 39% increase in deaths, compared to a 22% increase across all working adults. Many low-wage workers don’t have sick leave – so they come to work sick and potentially help the pandemic spread, not because they are selfish or thoughtless, but because they depend on their wages and can’t afford to risk their jobs. 

The Covid pandemic has been especially brutal for health care workers. Nearly 4000 health care workers died of Covid during the first year of the pandemic in the United States; the World Health Organization estimates that over 100,000 health care workers have died of Covid worldwide. 

Even apart from Covid illness, the past eighteen months have been exhausting and traumatic for many health care workers, especially those directly involved in care for Covid patients. Maybe you’ve seen some of their anguish, frustration, and grief in viral social media posts. A friend tells me about another friend who did a stint in Covid care last year, and now experiences what I would describe as symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder when they step back into that part of the facility. 

This week it was announced that nurses in the UW Health system are seeking to re-form a union, as a way to advocate for themselves, their families, and their patients, in the face of challenges like deteriorating staff-to-patient ratios, recruitment and retention challenges, contributing to burnout and exhaustion. As one UW doctor said, “I want the nurses I work with to have what they need because their working conditions are patients’ treatment conditions.” (Source: https://spectrumnews1.com/wi/madison/politics/2021/05/20/uw-health-workers-push-for-union-voice_ )

One of the night prayers in our prayer book asks God to watch over those who work while others sleep, and to help us never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.

Our common life depends upon each other’s toil. It’s hard to put it more simply and clearly. 

There’s dignity and significance in most human work. But Labor Day and the letter of James invite us to be especially mindful of those who keep our society and economy running, for low wages and with few benefits or protections. CNAs and grocery store shelf stockers; bank clerks and mail carriers; farm and factory workers; bus drivers, first responders and child care workers; and so many others. 

May one of the lessons we carry away from the Covid pandemic be a deepened awareness of just how much our common life depends upon each other’s toil, and a renewed commitment to the wellbeing of all essential workers.

May the apostle James provoke us not only to wish our neighbors peace, and health, and food, but to do what we can, when we can, to help ensure the wellbeing of all God’s people. 

Let us pray. 

Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good; and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out of work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

— Collect for Labor Day, the Book of Common Prayer, p. 261

Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfilling employment, and receive just payment for their labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

— For the Unemployed,  the Book of Common Prayer, p. 824

 

Source for figures about food workers, and more information: 

https://foodchainworkers.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Food-Workers-Organizing-on-the-COVID-Frontlines-FINAL.pdf?link_id=1&can_id=1e3f40f0f0b23ebbd5900d42b6cdb30b&source=email-subject-line-30&email_referrer=email_1086129&email_subject=new-report-today-we-are-not-disposable-food-workers-organizing-on-the-covid-frontlines

Announcements, Fellowship, Formation, Kid-friendly, Ministries

Fall Fellowship & Learning Opportunities, 2021

This fall and winter, our adult formation and fellowship offerings focus on forming small trusted networks – whether oriented around a shared journey like grief, parenting, or discernment, or simply a small group that meets often to share and pray.  Eighteen months of pandemic life have shown many of us that we need more trusted friends to help sustain us in difficult times – and one of the most important ways people grow in faith is in conversation with other faithful folks. So I’m excited to be able to offer the opportunities below.

Besides these new offerings, there are existing groups within the church that always welcome new members, including the Wednesday and Saturday book groups, and the Monday morning art group. (All are currently meeting online, but hope to return to in-person in time.) Our youth groups also function as holy communities for those who participate. New kids are always welcome, even if they’re not otherwise involved in church or attend another church.

If you feel a tug towards gathering with a smaller group of fellow Dunstanites, but don’t see something here that feels like the right fit – or even have an interest in convening your own group – let Rev. Miranda know!

If you are interested in any of these opportunities, talk to Rev. Miranda, call the office at 608-238-2781, or use the Contact Us form on this site.

SMALL GROUP OPPORTUNITIES… 

Contemplative Prayer Group: Jamie S.  would like to convene a small group that will meet on Wednesday evenings (7:30 – 8:45) three times a month to explore and practice different approaches to contemplative prayer together. This group will get started in October. It will gather online at first, with the option to move to in-person when circumstances permit.

Weekly Fellowship Group: Marian and Chris B. will also be convening a small group to meet on Thursdays at 7pm, for regular conversation and shared prayer.

Bereavement Group: Grieving the loss of a loved one is the most difficult and painful of life’s experiences.  Maybe your grief is recent, or perhaps a long-ago grief still often comes to mind. Join a circle of companions who are going through similar experiences. Healing often begins when people are able to share their grief stories, their struggles, their questions, and what is helping them come to terms with their situation. The group will be facilitated by Gloria Alt, spiritual guide and Certified Bereavement Companion through the Grief Training Center of Wisconsin. We will meet over Zoom Thursday evenings from 6:30-8, or Saturday mornings from 9-10:30.  The groups will meet for 6 weeks beginning September 23/25.

Group Spiritual Direction: Do you ever feel you’d like to meet with others who are on a path to encounter the Holy more deeply?  Group Spiritual Direction is an opportunity for a small group (3-4 people plus facilitator) to meet on a regular basis to support one another in their spiritual lives. The unique process for Group Spiritual Direction incorporates times of silence, structured times for sharing for each individual, and group response arising out of reflection and intercessory prayer. The group would meet every other week for 4 sessions, with the possibility of going on after that if group members wish to do so. (There would be a nominal charge per session if the group continues; cost should never be a barrier to participation.)  The group will be facilitated by Gloria Alt, a trained spiritual guide. The group could be focused on Discernment and Transition, for those exploring a new season in life; on Grief and Loss; or on general reflection on life and where God is at work.

DROP-IN OPPORTUNITIES…

Spirituality of Parenting is a monthly gathering after the 10am service. People for whom parenting is part of your spiritual journey are invited to a time of sharing and mutual support. This offering will be hybrid, with the opportunity to join in person or online.

Drop-In Heart Check is a monthly opportunity for shared reflection on the week, using the tools of the Ignatian Examen. (You don’t have to be familiar with the Examen to participate!) We will gather after the 10am service. This offering will be hybrid, with the opportunity to join in person or online.

Younger Adult Gathering: There is interest in re-convening a monthly Younger Adult Gathering – for folks under 40, more or less. If you’re interested, let Rev. Miranda know! I’m especially looking for people to help plan and convene these gatherings.

FOR KIDS & YOUTH…  We’ll begin the year with outdoor Sunday school for all ages, during 10am in-person worship on Sept. 12 and 19, and continuing in October.  StoryChurch on Sunday evenings will continue as an online offering for younger children.
Take-home materials will be available for those who prefer to stay away from in-person gatherings for now.
A Scripture Drama Club will meet after 10AM church once a month to prepare a drama for the following Sunday. This gathering will be hybrid – you can join in person or online, and we welcome actors for both Zoom and in-person church.
Our Middle High Youth Group will continue to meet over Zoom this fall, while our High School Youth Group expects to start meeting in person soon.

Saints, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, August 22

Put on the whole armor of God, so that you can stand your ground on the evil day… 

There’s something so satisfying about a good visual metaphor.

The “armor of God” passage in the final verses of the letter to the Ephesians seems to be based on armor of Roman soldiers, which people would have seen on a daily basis: A belt, a breastplate; shoes or rather, sturdy sandals; a big honking shield; a helmet, and a sword. This author is using a familiar image to invite believers to think about how to equip themselves for the struggles they face as a community. 

While appreciating the image, we might find ourselves tempted to hold the militarism of this passage at arm’s length. The idea of preparing ourselves for battle may not sit well. We’re Midwesterners. We’re nice.

Mennonite pastor and writer Melissa Florer-Bixler writes that one of the dominant ways we respond to conflict is by assuming that people who harm others are simply misunderstood – or maybe doing what seems best to them, in a way we could empathize with if we knew their whole story.  In this approach, writes Florer-Bixler, “The way to overcome our enmity is by creating spaces where the falsehood of being enemies is unmasked [and] we will discover that we all want the same things.”

But what if we don’t all want the same things? What if some of our differences are too consequential to overcome with a friendly chat over coffee, or a unity vigil? 

Florer-Bixler says the OTHER dominant way we respond to conflict is by assuming that anyone different is an enemy, “a threat to that for which I’ve worked and that which I love…Anyone who stands in the way of my commitments must be eliminated.”  If you believe you’ve never had those thoughts or feelings – that you’ve never experienced a flash of blind hatred towards someone who seemed to represent the opposite of all you hold dear and true – then pause and examine your conscience again. Perhaps you are the exception. But most of us, no matter how nice, have been there. 

Either the enemy is just misunderstood… or they’re an existential threat that must be removed. The first approach can lead to a naive and ineffective idealism.The second, to intractable cycles of fear, suspicion, and harm. 

Is there another way?

Florer-Bixler says there is another way. A Christian way. Her book is called How To Have An Enemy. And in it she argues that Christians can have enemies – in fact, should have enemies… but that true Christian enmity is something very particular. 

Enmity, says Florer-Bixler, is “a relationship between people… that recognizes how a person uses their power, actively or passively, to harm or dominate another.” (28) Power isn’t inherently bad; we need power to act, to change, to protect, to improve. But if our calls to unity and mutual respect ignore power and differences in power, they can only ever lead to a false and temporary peace. 

The Christian enmity that Florer-Bixler describes is not a moral failure or a sin against the call to love our neighbors. Rather, it’s a naming of reality as a necessary step towards change. “In Christianity,” she writes, “we do not resolve enmity by destroying our foes or finding middle ground with them. Instead, Jesus ushers in a different system – a new way of living that changes the order of power itself.” (91)

When Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, that’s not a call to passivity or to accepting a harmful status quo. Nor is it the low-stakes warm and fuzzy spirituality of someone with no skin in the game. Remember, Jesus’ enemies conspired against him and killed him! 

Rather, love of enemy means calling other and self into a new order freed from those entrenched relationships of harm. Florer-Bixler writes, “We love our enemies when we extend an invitation to a form of life where those who have the power to destroy others no longer exercise the self-destruction of hatred, hoarding, and violence.” (41)

Florer-Bixler wonders provocatively whether churches could become places of cultivating shared anger. (63) She points out, “If we lack anger at injustice, we are unable to rightly discern and act in the world.” (69) Might a church hold space for people to study and talk and pray and “discover how to be angry about the same concerns, and then how to bear that anger together as a creative force to build something new”?  

Let’s be clear that none of this is easy. Accurately naming our enmities demands serious discernment – of self, society, and Scripture. The self-work is necessary because it is very easy to think that God hates what we hate.  Each of our hearts and minds have been shaped by forces and ideologies that we despise. Florer-Bixler says that when we undertake this work seriously, “we discover lingering within us our own participation in the destruction of others.” (65)

We can also be pretty bad at discerning the times, and where Jesus’ message calls us to solidarity and action in today’s world. Our judgment is clouded; many things that seem normal to us are likely outrages in God’s eyes. For example: Most of us would probably agree that the Civil Rights movement and its work for desegregation and voting rights were morally right and necessary. But during the 1960s, most American white people opposed the freedom rides and sit-ins. The urgent moral calls of our era may be no more clear to us than they were to white Christians in the 1960s. 

And finding direction in Scripture, while essential, is not easy. The Bible does not offer a clear list of where we should stand on every issue that faces us today. Instead, as Florer-Bixler says, “there is the Holy Spirit, the Bible, and us.” (138)

Discerning and naming our enmities is demanding work – yet Florer-Bixler argues that it’s essential work. Faithfully facing our enmities, she insists, is living the Gospel:  “The good news of Jesus Christ is for the redemption of the world, for victims and victimizers, for oppressed and oppressors, for the way destruction is borne in each of us… We are freed from the logic of death, from the gods of scarcity and violence, from a politics where some prosper at the expense of others, and from the fear behind power, control, and coercion that are the operational center of the old order.” (32)

That passage really resonates with our Ephesians text: “Our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the Archons, against the Powers, against the Cosmic Rulers of this present darkness…” This author fully realizes that those cosmic forces of evil are manifest in human forces and systems, hearts and minds.  They join Florer-Bixler in acknowledging that the flesh-and-blood people who cause harm are just as bound as those whom they harm – by those gods of scarcity and violence, by the cosmic forces of this present darkness. 

There’s a deep generosity and clarity in suffering persecution, perpetrated by human beings, and being able to say, The true enemy here is something else. Something that also entraps my persecutor, my enemy; something from which both of us need – and deserve – deliverance. 

Jon Daniels would be 82 this year, if he were still alive. He was 26 in 1965, when he heard Dr. King’s call for allies to come to Alabama to stand with the growing civil rights movement. The Magnificat, Mary’s song of courageous hope, drove him from his seminary studies in Cambridge, to Selma, where he joined in organizing and picketing,  and tried to integrate the local Episcopal church. 

Christian enmity was at the heart of the civil rights movement, with its strong commitment to nonviolent protest. That refusal to return violence for violence was a bid for the conversion and transformation of enemies, rather than their destruction. It was an invitation to a whole new form of life where those with the power to destroy others no longer use it to harm or exclude. That movement prepared for battle after the fashion of our Ephesians reading: arming themselves with truth and justice, peace and faith, salvation and the word of God, while their enemies prepared tear gas and dogs, clubs and guns. 

On Aug 13, 1965, Jon Daniels, with about 30 others, went to a small town in Alabama to picket segregated businesses. On Aug 14, they were all arrested, and taken to the nearby Hainesville jail.  On August 20, they were released with no warning – meaning there was no one ready to pick them up and take them to safer territory. 

It was a hot bright August day. A small group – Jon Daniels, a white Roman Catholic priest, and two black protesters – approached a small store there in Haynesville, hoping to buy a cold drink. They were met at the door by Tom Coleman, a white volunteer sheriff’s deputy, wielding a shotgun.

Coleman pointed the gun at one of the black protesters, a young woman named Ruby Sales. Jon Daniels stepped between Ruby and the gun. Coleman fired – and Jon was killed instantly. 

The cosmic powers of this present darkness – the small, bitter gods of scarcity and violence – were manifest in Tom Coleman’s flesh and blood that day. And they won – temporarily. 

Coleman was acquitted by an all-white jury, on the basis of a nakedly absurd claim of self-defense. But Daniels’ death did lead to change. The Episcopal Church had been neutral at best towards the civil rights movement. But Daniels’ martyrdom and Coleman’s acquittal galvanized the church. Presiding Bishop John Hines spoke out in outrage. And a new movement – led in part by Episcopalians – worked to integrate Southern juries, a step away from the all-white juries which had long protected a racist society. 

(Source: https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2015/08/13/remembering-jonathan-daniels-50-years-after-his-martyrdom/) 

It’s important to me to talk about Jon in August, every few years. It’s also important to say that his is not everybody’s path. Most of us are called to live for the Gospel, not die for it. 

Jon Daniels knew his enemies. 

He discerned the times; he heard Dr. King and the Mother of God calling him to solidarity, as part of movement on behalf of others. 

He dwelt deeply with Scripture.

He did the self-work: he kept a journal. In it you can see him grappling with his own motives, mocking himself for white-savior thinking, and striving to come closer and closer to Jesus in the why and how of his presence in Alabama. 

Jon Daniels buckled on the belt of truth and the breastplate of justice, so that on that evil day he would be able to stand. To confront his enemies with the possibility of another way. 

The transformation that Jesus – that God – wants for us is a transformation that liberates oppressor and oppressed, privileged and marginalized. It’s not just flipping the script of domination to put the formerly powerless on top, but a truly new order.  Florer-Bixler writes, “We don’t need new oppressors, new wealth, or new social classes. We need a new world.” (93) 

Let us pray. 

O God of justice and compassion, you put down the proud and mighty from their place, and lift up the poor and the afflicted: we give you thanks for your faithful witness Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who, in the midst of injustice and violence, risked and gave his life for another; and we pray that we, following his example, may make no peace with oppression. Help us put on the whole armor of God, that we may stand firm on the evil day; and give us, like Jon, the wisdom to know our enemies, the courage to confront them, and the visionary love to long for a new world for everyone; through Jesus Christ the Just, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

scripture, Sermons

Sermon, July 11

Today the lectionary introduces us to Michal, first wife of King David. This is the end of Michal’s story; she is not mentioned again. And if this is all you knew, you might think of her as jealous and judgmental. 

But we know more about Michal, daughter of King Saul. That’s the richness of the books of Samuel and Kings: with many of these characters, we learn enough to see, at least a little, who they are, and how their experiences shape them.

So to do Michal justice, let’s go back to when the *text* first introduces her, back in First Samuel chapter 18. 

Michal’s relationship with David begins with hero-worship. David has just killed Goliath, the Philistine giant, and then joined her father’s household. Sometimes he plays music for Saul when Saul’s dark moods seize him. But more often he’s leading Saul’s army into battle – successfully! The women of the land sing, “Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.” 

Michal’s brother Jonathan has sworn fealty to David, offering him his armor and sword as a gesture of loyalty and love – for Jonathan loved David as his own soul. It wasn’t just Jonathan; the text tells us, “All Israel and Judah loved David.” And Michal, too, loves David – this handsome young warrior poet. 

Saul likes the idea of binding David to him through a strategic marriage… but he also kind of likes the idea of having David be killed by the Philistines, Israel’s enemies. So Saul lets it be known that he’d be very glad for David to marry his daughter, if David can bring him 100 Philistine foreskins. He hopes this challenge might get David out of his hair for good… but of course David, being David, simply goes and does it. 

This only deeps Saul’s fear and hatred, and he makes up his mind to get rid of David. But Jonathan and Michal are determined to save their beloved. Jonathan pleads with Saul to have mercy on David, and Saul relents – but later, in a dark mood, he changes his mind again, and sends killers to David’s home. 

This time it’s Michal who saves David; she helps him escape out the window, then creates a “dummy” David in the bed, the classic pillow-under-the-covers, plus some goatskin for hair. She used the “dummy” to put off the assassins – claiming David couldn’t come out because he was sick. It delays them long enough for David to get well away. When her father asked why she helped David, choosing her husband over her father, she claimed that David had threatened to kill her. 

The Bible tells us far more about the love between David and Jonathan than David and Michal. The text tells us twice that she loved him; it never claims that he loved her. He flees their home apparently without a backward glance, though he has a heart-wrenching farewell scene with Jonathan before escaping to the wilderness.  

David flees to one neighboring land, then another; and as he travels, he gathers followers. And Saul takes poor abandoned Michal and gives her as a wife to another man, named Palti. 

Here’s how David finally becomes king, years later: Saul and Israel’s army are fighting the Philistines, again. And the Philistines win. Most of Saul’s sons are killed – including Jonathan. Saul throws himself on his own sword to avoid the shame of being killed by the enemy. 

David and his little personal army aren’t at this battle; they’re busy chasing down some raiders who had attacked their village. When David hears of Saul and Jonathan’s deaths, he sings a great song of grief about the death of these valiant warriors. Soon thereafter, the people of Judah,  the southern part of the land of God’s people, anoint David as their king. 

But the last of Saul’s sons, Ishbaal, survives the battle and becomes king of Israel, the northern part of the land.  More years of war follow, with David’s house growing stronger and Saul’s house growing weaker. Sometime during those years, in a moment of tentative peace, David asks Ishbaal to give him back Michal as his wife. 

I can imagine a couple of reasons for the request. Maybe David rankled at the dishonor of having his wife – one of his wives; he’s collected several more – given to another man. Maybe for the possibility of a son who would combine Saul and David’s lines, and be the next king of a united nation. Sadly, it probably wasn’t because he loved her or missed her. 

Ishbaal agrees to David’s demand, and Michal is taken from her second husband, Palti. The text tells us, “Her husband went with her, weeping as he walked behind her,” until Ishbaal’s general ordered Palti to go home. So Michal is given away a third time, taken from a husband who apparently loved her, and given – again – to David, who, like her father, sees her only as a pawn. 

Finally, a couple of enterprising warriors assassinate King Ishbaal. This is a pattern with David: People conveniently kill his enemies for him, and he has the luxury of keeping his hands clean and being outraged and grief-stricken, while still reaping the benefits of their actions. David has the assassins publicly executed… and then when the tribes of Israel come to him and say, “Now you can be our King too,” he says, Well, OK. 

So the kingdoms of Judah and Israel are united, with David as their great King. A great King who takes more and more wives and concubines, and begets a great many children. 

And as kind of a gesture of national pride and unity, David and his army set out to bring the Ark of the Covenant to his new capital city, Jerusalem. This isn’t the ark Noah built, though it’s the same word in Hebrew. This ark was built during the wilderness years, by Israel’s finest craftsman, to hold the stone tablets on which Moses had received the Law of God. A holy box to hold the world’s holiest treasure. A box so holy that if someone has not prepared themselves to approach it, and simply reaches out a hand to steady it on uneven ground – that person might get zapped to ashes. 

And as they enter Jerusalem in triumphal procession with the Ark, David and those with him are so filled with holy joy that they dance wildly to the music of lyres and harps, tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And David danced and leaped the most wildly, the most fervently of them all, dressed only in a simple linen skirt. 

I think we can take it that the linen skirt was pretty skimpy, and that David was putting on quite a show – and probably really didn’t care. After all, if being King doesn’t mean you can dance naked in the streets, what’s the point?… 

Michal daughter of Saul looks out of the window, and sees David leaping and dancing before the Lord. The New Revised Standard translation says, she despised him in her heart. The Common English Bible says, she lost all respect for him. Either translation gets the idea across. 

What’s going on here for Michal, as her heart turns against a man whom she once loved? She has been through years of coldness, betrayal, loss, and never having what she actually wanted. Of course she’s jealous – the remark about the servant girls hints at how much she minds all David’s dalliances. She’s also contrasting her husband with her father, Saul’s dignity with David’s extravagance. David is one of those people who is just – very. He has great big feelings: those flares of anger, joy, grief, desire. He has great big ambitions. He has great big piety, devotion to God.  Michal just wishes he would act like a king. And David says, Deal with it. I am who I am, and God likes it. 

The text says that from that time on, Michal had no children. I think what we are to understand is that their relationship – never strong – is irrevocably broken, in this moment. Maybe this is the last time David and Michal speak to each other. Maybe Michal lives out the rest of her lonely life unloved and untouched in some corner of David’s household, watching the rest of his wives and concubines talk and laugh and fight and nurse their children. 

So why tell Michal’s story?… Well, at the most superficial level: to fix the lectionary. If you only hear the Sunday texts, Michal comes off pretty badly. If you know her whole story, it’s different. 

Let’s go a little deeper and wonder why the Bible tells us Michal’s story. If all that mattered was the end of Saul’s royal line, the text could have told us much less about Michal. But instead it gives us enough to trace the contours of her life and the ache of her heart. I think that’s because the larger story that this part of the Bible is telling is about how people lose control of their own lives, suffer and struggle, because those with power, and those seeking power, don’t count the costs – or don’t care. About the way that ordinary people, and even not so ordinary people, get caught up – and ground up – in the machinations of the powerful and the ambitious. 

So why do I tell Michal’s story? Why make space on a Sunday, every few years when it rolls around in the lectionary, for this ultimately rather sad story? There are a couple of reasons I think it’s important. For one thing, often people look at the awful stuff that happens in the Bible and they are put off, because they think that if it’s in the Bible, that means the Bible – and those whose faith is grounded in the Bible – think that awful stuff is OK. 

But the voice of the text doesn’t think that stuff is OK. I think the Biblical text pities Michal, just as we do. That’s a really really important point for our engagement with the Bible in general and the Old Testament in particular: Yes, there is some terrible stuff in there: senseless violence and bitter injustice and cruel betrayal and so on. The thing is, the text KNOWS that stuff is terrible. The Bible has much more complexity and narrative sophistication than a lot of folks realize. Michal’s story is a good example. 

For another thing: Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis says that there are two kinds of Christians. One kind sees us as profoundly separated from the Old Testament. In this view, the Old Testament is interesting but also quite strange, and not really relevant to Christian faith or life. Lots of folks take that view, consciously or unconsciously – including many Episcopalians. 

The other kind of Christians, says Davis, see the Old Testament as “an urgent and speaking presence”, a compendium of stories of human and divine relationships that have never lost their power and relevance. From this perspective: The reason Michal’s story is compelling is that it’s not so strange or unthinkable. The stories of women who get to make few of their own choices, controlled by the men around them – those stories still happen. The machinations of those seeking political power, and those victimized by their ambition – those stories still happen. The stories of relationships that start out sweet, then turn first sour, then bitter – those stories still happen. 

The Bible tells the story of Michal, among so many others, to show us that kings aren’t the only people that matter – to history or to God. To call us to pay attention to those struggling in the brutal currents of human history, and to care what happens to their lives and their hearts. And that, beloveds, is deeply congruent with the life and witness of Jesus Christ – who taught us to seek God and serve God among those the world sees as unimportant.

Uncategorized

Bulletin for July 11

9AM Zoom online gathering: We use slides during worship that contain most of this information, but some prefer to follow along on paper.

Sunday, July 11 Bulletin

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…
1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

Church Seasons & Holy Days, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, July 4

David is Israel’s most famous king – remembered as Israel’s greatest king. But he wasn’t Israel’s first king. The first king was Saul. 

It’s easy to focus on David. We all know he’s the main character here. The great king of Israel, whom God favors. Whose kingship is long remembered as Israel’s greatest era, which people in Jesus’ time yearn to restore. But today, as David is crowned king in our Scripture reading, I want to pause and talk about Saul. 

In the eighth chapter of the first book of Samuel, the people of Israel demanded a king. The prophet Samuel warned them that having a king will cost them; but they insisted. Immediately, in chapter nine, a man named Kish sends his son Saul to go look for some lost donkeys. Having no luck, he hears that there’s a prophet in a nearby town and determines to ask him where the donkeys are. He finds Samuel – who tells him that he is the chosen king of Israel. (And also that the donkeys have been found.) 

Why Saul? Well, honestly, the usual reasons, it seems. He’s tall and handsome. He’s the son of a wealthy father and belongs to the right kind of family – in this case, a Benjaminite. We still put guys like that in charge of things a lot.

The accounts of Saul’s kingship are SO SHORT. He becomes king in first Samuel chapter 10. Then he has one good chapter, where he wins a battle against his people’s enemies – kings were military leaders in this time – and everyone is excited about him. Then, almost immediately, he does something that upsets Samuel and/or God, and starts to lose favor. In chapter 14, Saul’s own son Jonathan starts to undermine his leadership by being more bold and successful in a raid on the enemy than Saul.  Saul has a few more military victories – but in chapter 15, God tells Samuel that God regrets choosing Saul as king, and in chapter 16, God sends Samuel to find and anoint David as God’s choice for the next king. Chapter 17 is the David and Goliath story, where we see hints that this bold shepherd boy has more going for him than Saul, King of Israel.

At this point God has un-chosen Saul and chosen David, but there are still FOURTEEN CHAPTERS before Saul’s death. For most of that time David is living in the wilderness with a little band of 600 malcontents, running away from King Saul and his army as they try to seek them out and squash them. 

We don’t know how long Saul was king. Chapter 13, verse 1, reads: “Saul was blank years old when he began to reign, and he reigned blank and two years over Israel.” The numbers that should be there were lost so long ago that nobody can even guess. We don’t know whether Saul’s kingship was really short, as it seems, or whether it was longer and the Biblical text just doesn’t really care about Saul. 

What went wrong with Saul? The first incident that causes Saul to lose God’s favor happens in chapter 13 – very soon after he becomes king. The Philistine army is preparing to attack Israel. They are superior in both numbers and equipment, and Israel’s troops are terrified. The prophet Samuel promised Saul that he would come within seven days and present an offering to God that would secure God’s help during the battle ahead. So Saul waited seven days; but Samuel didn’t come. Meanwhile more and more of his fighters were slipping away, day by day, afraid of death at the hands of the Philistines. Israel’s odds, already poor, are getting worse by the hour. 

So Saul makes the offering to God himself, to ask God’s favor and help. And the moment he’s finished, Samuel walks up and yells at him. “You have done foolishly! The LORD would have established your kingdom for ever; but now your kingdom will not continue.”

Here we only have God’s rejection of Saul in Samuel’s words. Maybe Samuel was just mad. A couple of chapters later, in chapter 15, Samuel is still addressing Saul as King, and sending him to destroy the people of Amalek, avenging a grievance from the time of Moses. Saul is specifically charged to kill EVERYBODY – men, women, children, and livestock. Saul and his army fight the Amalekites and win – but they spare the best of the livestock, and keep other valuables as well. 

Then God speaks to Samuel: “I regret that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from following me, and has not carried out my commands.” Samuel confronts Saul, who insists at first that the only spared the best of the livestock so that they could sacrifice them to God… but eventually confesses that did it because he listened to the voice of the people, who wanted to keep the animals instead of killing them. Saul is distraught; he seizes the hem of Samuel’s cloak and it tears. Samuel looks him in the face and says: “Just so has God torn the kingdom of Israel from you, and given it to another.”

Saul’s failures are not great. But they’re also not terrible. They’re kind of boring, honestly. Commonplace. Impatience. Anxiety. A little ordinary human weakness and greed. And listen: Saul didn’t ask to be king. It’s not like he put himself forward as the best man for the job. In fact, back in chapter 10, when Samuel first gathers the people to present and anoint Saul as their king, Saul hides. 

If we take the text at its word that Saul was God’s choice: Why would God have chosen Saul?  It’s an interesting question. Maybe God knew the people, who had this very fixed idea about their future king, would only accept someone who fit those ideas.  (The text stresses that Saul was VERY tall.) Maybe God knew Saul wouldn’t be able to carry the burden of leadership – and felt that that would be a valuable learning experience for the people. Maybe Saul was genuinely the best candidate Israel had to offer at the time.

Or maybe God’s choosing and rejecting of Saul is simply part of how those composing this text are making sense of the messiness of this chapter of their people’s history. 

Saul probably would have lived a reasonably happy life if he hadn’t become king. It’s that role and its pressures that start to break him. And he does break. David comes along and he’s younger and cuter and braver and more successful in battle and more favored by God… Saul’s own children, his son Jonathan and daughter Michal, both fall in love with David… and Saul can’t take it. He can’t say, “Hey, good for him! I’m lucky to have him around!” His jealously and insecurity spiral into hatred and paranoia. I wish I could tell you the whole story! 

Saul failed as king. There’s no question about it. But he is a tragic figure, not a villain. I pity Saul. 

Like every historical document, First Samuel tells its story with a particular viewpoint and agenda. And this text’s perspective is not actually that Saul was a bad king and David was a great one – but that kings in general are maybe not as great as you might think. 

The Fourth of July is an interesting time to think about history. And I don’t mean just history as “things that happened in the past,” but history as a human process. History as a way of making meaning of both past and present. History as a human process often simplifies events, or tells them with a particular slant.

Lots of things that seem glorious were actually really messy. Lots of things that seem predestined, inevitable, could easily have gone otherwise. Lots of people who seem like noble heroes were actually deeply flawed… and some of the people who seem like villains – or nobodies – are really interesting, and worth our understanding and compassion.

In today’s Gospel when Jesus says that prophets aren’t honored in their hometown, he’s pointing at an aspect of this truth. When you know someone well, you know the whole picture, for better or worse. It’s harder to idealize or romanticize.

Many churches don’t mark the Fourth of July, Independence Day, our chief national holiday. I have deep respect for that choice. Better to ignore it completely than to engage it shallowly. At St. Dunstan’s we often to share a few readings from American history, as our observance of the day – as an exercise in living with the ambiguity of history. 

Facing that ambiguity can be uncomfortable. We see that in the current wave of pushback over schools teaching American history with greater attention to the voices and experiences of different groups, and to our nation’s many failures to live up to our boldest ideals and aspirations. Many folks have a real visceral reaction to the idea that our national history is not as glorious and inevitable – that our great men were not perhaps as great – as we learned in elementary school in decades past. 

How do we cope with that ambiguity and discomfort? Well, for me, one big answer is my faith – my identity as a Christian, which is a higher loyalty than my citizenship as an American. Using my understanding of God’s intentions for humanity – things like mutual care, justice, and wellbeing for all – using that as a yardstick, I can measure the successes and failures of my city, state, and nation. I can look for the places where movement towards better is happening, or could happen – and strive to support it, with my time and voice and resources. 

When we hold up the realities of our common life agains our shared values and aspirations, and find ourselves yearning and crying out for better, we join a chorus that spans nearly 250 years. 

Let’s share a few such voices now, and pray that their words may inspire us to deeper commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, and democracy that are the foundation stones of this nation, and to God’s dream of mutual care, justice, and wellbeing for all. 

Sermons

Sermon, June 6

The readings for this Sunday are here. 

Notice how early this passage is, in Mark’s Gospel. It’s the second half of chapter 3. We are not very far into the story, here. Jesus has done some healing and teaching. He’s drawn some crowds, gathered some followers. He’s scandalized religious leaders by holding the Sabbath lightly.  And done some exorcisms, driving evil spirits out of people – important context for this passage. 

Some religious scholars from Jerusalem have come to Capernaum, the city where Jesus lives in Mark’s Gospel, to check out this new rabbi. And this is their assessment: He is possessed by Beelzebul, and he exorcises demons by the power of the ruler of the demons. 

Beelzebul is a great demon name, right? It’s probably adapted from the name of a Philistine god. Sometimes it meant a particular major demon; sometimes it’s just another name for Satan, the Accuser, understood in this time to be the ultimate ruler of the forces of evil. 

So, people are accusing Jesus of using demonic power to cast out demons, and Jesus says: That doesn’t even make sense. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. And then he offers some hints about who and what he really is: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man.” Satan, or Beelzebul, is the strong man here – and Jesus is the one plundering his house, freeing people from their bondage to evil spirits.

And then Jesus says this: “Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”

This saying has perplexed and alarmed people for a long time. Dorothy Sayers, mystery novelist and theologian, wrote a satirical piece in 1939 about shallow Christian teaching, including this line: “There is a sin against [the Holy Spirit] which damns you for ever, but nobody knows what it is.” No-one wants to commit an unforgivable sin – but what does it mean to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit, and how is one to avoid it??

Thankfully, when you read the whole passage, it’s pretty clear what the sin is. Blasphemy is a fine old-fashioned chewy church word; it means to speak falsely, with ill intent, about God or holy things. The blasphemy against the Holy Spirit here is that people see Jesus healing and casting out demons by the Holy Spirit’s power, and call it evil. They see God at work and cry out, “Satan!” – failing to recognize God doing what God does: mending, liberating and restoring. 

Biblical scholar Richard Swanson writes, “Their claim is sinful because it imagines that they understand God so thoroughly that anyone who disagrees with them must be animated by a foreign force.  Their principle is simple: if I don’t understand it, it must be evil…. In the face of the complexity of real life, [such] certainty is blasphemy… a blasphemy that we mistake for faithfulness.”

I’d like to turn to our passage from First Samuel, for a bit. This is one of my favorite texts in the Old Testament. I love it because Samuel is spot on, here, anthropologically speaking. 

It’s absolutely true that in human prehistory and history, increases in centralized power have usually come with an increase in inequality, and loss of autonomy and increased extraction of wealth from ordinary people. There are benefits too – but there are real tradeoffs in becoming a more complex and hierarchical society. Samuel names that, in this eloquent warning. 

With this passage, we begin our walk through the books of Samuel and Kings this summer. The narrative here is building on the book of Judges, which precedes it, as the chronicle of how God’s people lived during the first few generations in the promised land. Their leaders were judges who spoke and acted on behalf of God. The judges didn’t have a lot of power – people came to them with disputes, and looked to them in times of war. And the judges were a real mixed bag. We’ve encountered Deborah and Gideon in our Scripture dramas, and you may remember Samson from Sunday school stories. From the standpoint of the Biblical text: Deborah was pretty good, Gideon had his ups and downs, and Samson was not great. There are others whose stories are not fit for Sunday sharing. Samuel is a pivotal figure. He’s the last judge of Israel, and the first great prophet since Moses, who anoints Israel’s first and second kings.

God’s people should have learned from the time of the judges that human power is profoundly imperfect. Leaders will not always be wise or good or effective. Yet now they’re asking for a human leader with MORE power, MORE ways to make their lives difficult.  And they insist on it. They really want it. They want a king to govern them and fight for them, and to be like the other nations,

So Samuel, and God, give them a king. And then another king, and more kings after them. It’s a wonderful, complicated, ambiguous saga, which we’ll explore in the months ahead. 

There is, I think, a thread that connects this text with our Gospel. Let me try to put words around it. It has to do with our human resistance to new understandings, especially when they complicate things that we want to be simple. 

We often resist and struggle with new understandings and ideas, especially when they complicate things that we want to be simple.

But God is often at work in the new, the strange, the complicated. As God tells the prophet Isaiah: My thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways. 

Samuel is trying to help God’s people think more broadly and deeply about this big change – but they will not listen. Their idea of what a king is and does is fixed and clear. Our king will be exactly the kind of king we want. Hush with your nuances and ambiguities.

Jesus is trying to help this crowd understand that something big is happening here – that the goodness at work in the world is wilder and stranger and stronger than they think. But many of the things Jesus does and says fall outside the bounds of expected religious behavior. So he must be evil and/or mentally ill – “beside himself,” in the language of the text. Anything that doesn’t fit in our boxes can’t possibly be good. 

A lot of the people around Jesus can’t – won’t – really see what he’s doing or hear what he’s saying. But some of them DO. That’s crucial. Human short-sightedness and bias, lack of imagination and empathy, rigidity and fear of new ideas – those are big barriers. But sometimes our minds and hearts do open. Sometimes we’re able to come to grips with the complicated truth. Sometimes we manage to recognize the holy at work outside the expected boxes. 

June is observed as Pride Month, around the world. It’s a time to celebrate lesbian, gay, bisexual and pansexual, transgender, queer, non-binary people, and the full continuum of gender and sexual expression, in all its variety. It’s a time for people like me, heterosexual and cisgender, to listen, and learn, and strive to keep broadening and deepening our understanding and our allyship. It’s also a time when many communities hold memorial services – for those lost to AIDS, to hate crimes, to self-harm. 

The lives and witnesses and friendships of LGBTQ+ people have been absolutely central in my own life of faith and ministry. My intention to be an ally is personal; it’s a commitment to stand with people I love. But it’s not just personal. It’s also theological. Sharing friendship and ministry and study with LGBTQ+ people has deepened my understanding of God and God’s work in human hearts and human history. As my friend Eric likes to say: God is bigger. Bigger than our boxes, our categories, our expectations. 

Right now there’s a coordinated effort across the country to stigmatize transgender people and constrain their choices. There have already been over 100 bills introduced in state legislatures this year. Many prohibit transgender kids, youth and young adults from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity; others limit transgender youth from accessing appropriate medical care. So far, seventeen bills have become law.

What’s behind all this? For some people there’s a real sense of anxiety in the idea that something that seems natural and fixed – biological sex at birth – could turn out to be less clear-cut and more changeable. The existence of transgender people complicates something that they want to be simple. If you’ve studied humanity and the natural world, complexity and diversity are not surprises; but not everyone has that framework. 

For others, there’s a misguided sense that broadening the space for transgender people to be on the outside who they are on the inside is somehow a threat to women and girls. And for still others, there’s a cynical calculation that those kinds of doubts and fears can be used to drum up anxiety and mobilize voters. 

Our congregation includes the parents and grandparents of transgender people. I have transgender colleagues. Our kids have transgender friends. If you’re hearing my words right now, your extended family of faith includes transgender people and their families. 

Today’s text from Mark is a powerful Gospel for Pride month. The LGBTQ+ community knows all about authority figures labeling what they don’t understand as evil. This text warns us in no uncertain terms against the kind of certainty that refuses to see God at work in people and places that don’t fit certain preconceptions. And Jesus shares the experience of many LGBTQ+ people of finding that the family that raised him can’t fully be his family anymore; that he needs to find and gather a new family, who can hear him, and love him, and walk with him. 

The Episcopal Church has committed to the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people. But we still have work to do – plenty of it. I wonder what work we have here, at St. Dunstan’s? I wonder what steps, small or large, would help us live up to that rainbow sticker by our front door? Not because it’s trendy – not because it’s good marketing – but because we have seen and known God, healing and mending, liberating and restoring, in the lives and vocations and partnerships of LGBTQ+ people. 

I had almost finished this sermon when I had a moment of doubt. I realized that, for some, this will feel like the second week in a row that my sermon has asked you to care about something that might not have fully been on your radar before. 

It’s not something I would think twice about in another time, but we are deep in the awkward phase of re-emergence, friends. People’s needs and hopes and concerns are all over the map. People are bruised and fearful and yearning – people out there, and people in this church community. Your parish leaders are trying to listen well and wisely. Somebody said on Twitter, We all need gentleness, and we’re all too tired to be gentle. I keep thinking about that. 

I read this sermon over and asked myself if I could make it say something else. Go a different direction. And I couldn’t. This is what was there for me to preach. But this is what I can offer.  

I’m asking us to think about greater awareness and stronger allyship – for those of us who have the luxury to choose to be allies – as part of our re-emergence. Back when all this started, we said: You know, this is TERRIBLE –  but normal was’t that great either. Back when all this started, we said: When we rebuild, after, let’s rebuild better. Back when all this started, I preached a sermon to our whole diocese about how surely, surely, we would come out of all this with a more profound and lasting understanding of our human interconnectedness. 

So: This is rebuilding, better. This is following through. This is returning to community, to common life, with a broader sense of who community includes, and why community matters. 

And like everything else about our re-emergence and rebuilding, it’s going to be slow and stepwise. Everyone will take it at their own pace.  Everyone will participate and contribute as they can, when they can. And that’s OK. 

Let our slow steps be guided by the kind of nation and community and church that we long for in our best and boldest moments.  

Let our rebuilding be renovation, which literally means making new – a new “normal” that includes redress of past wrongs and care for the vulnerable and welcoming each as they are. 

And let the God whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways, help us see and trust goodness at work in the world, wilder and stranger and stronger than we can imagine. 

Amen. 

 

SOME LINKS…

Dorothy Sayers, “The Dogma Is the Drama” –

https://www.gutenberg.ca/ebooks/sayers-strong/sayers-strong-00-h.html#toc02dogma

Richard Swanson on this Gospel:

https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2018/06/06/a-provocation-third-sunday-after-pentecost-june-10-2018-mark-320-35/

On anti-transgender bills:

https://www.wxyz.com/news/2021-is-a-record-year-for-anti-transgender-bills-including-one-in-michigan

Grounds, Sermons

Sermon, May 30

Lectionary texts for today are here. 

Today’s Scripture texts are full of the mystery and awe of God. We hear Isaiah’s vision of the divine throne, surrounded by the seraphim with their six mighty wings, the very floor trembling with the might of their voices as they cry out God’s praise, the air hazy with incense smoke. 

Our Psalm echoes that sense of the power and wonder, even terror, of God enthroned in might… The voice of God shakes the wilderness! 

And then we have poor confused Nicodemus, who has every reason to stay away from Jesus, and yet comes to him by night, drawn to him like a moth to a candle… Here’s my favorite image of Nicodemus and Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.  It’s actually a study, not a finished piece, but I love the quality of twilight and mystery here. It fits the conversation in our Gospel text, in which Jesus tells Nicodemus: if I speak of heavenly things, you simply won’t be able to understand. 

Awe and mystery. Flame and smoke and trembling earth. God is bigger and stranger than we can perceive or understand. 

But we have been given glimpses, fragments and hints. And we know this: that God’s ineffable unity, God’s one-ness, also somehow contains multiplicity. God holds community, relationship, within Godself – Father, Son, and Spirit; Source, Word, and Breath; Wisdom, Love, Might. The Holy and Undivided Trinity. 

And then there’s our passage from Romans: All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God… who cry out “Abba! Father!” by the spirit of adoption that God has given us. It’s a provocative and beautiful contrast with the other texts. Paul sees us called into relationship with the awe-inspiring Mystery at the center of things. He sees that figure on the heavenly throne, shrouded in smoke, and suggests that we climb up on its lap. Because that God, mighty and mysterious, has named us as their children. 

God’s Threeness within Oneness teaches us to understand that relationship is at the very heart of the Holy. And we are invited into relationship with that divine Mystery. God loves us, and calls us into love. What does that look like? 

Elsewhere, in his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul offers this well-known reflection on holy love – “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Or as Presiding Bishop Michael Curry put it in a sermon a couple of decades ago that I’ve never forgotten: God loves you just the way you are, but He isn’t going to leave you that way.

That aspect of love – the part of love that calls us to better and clearer and truer – makes me think of my friends in the recovery community and some of the things I’ve learned from them. In the Twelve Steps, steps 4 through 6 call for making a fearless personal inventory. Admitting your wrongs to God, yourself, and others, and becoming ready for God to help you change. Eventually, if you keep up the work, you arrive at Step 9 – which involves making amends, fixing what you’ve broken and setting things right, as much as may be possible. 

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 

Your own fearless personal inventory is your work do – though I am glad to be a companion in that work. But I’m speaking here about our vocation as God’s people – together. Our collective examination of where wrongdoing weighs upon us, and where there is truth that needs to be told – and rejoiced in. 

This past Friday was the anniversary of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, signed by President Andrew Jackson, not quite two hundred years ago. It’s one of many dates when the U.S. government took steps against the Native peoples of this continent – but it’s perhaps the most famous such date, leading to the displacement of the Cherokee people and the Trail of Tears. 

There are other dates of local significance to us. September 15, 1832, when a treaty with the Ho-Chunk people, then known as the Winnebago, forced them to cede all their land south of the Wisconsin River, including where we now live and worship. Later, November 1, 1837, another treaty formally removed the Ho-Chunk entirely from Wisconsin – though many refused to leave, and had to be rounded up and driven out in 1840. 

The tribes were paid for the land. But the payments and terms were quite limited. And the tribes were not given a choice about these treaties. They were made an offer they literally could not refuse. 

Ancient Ho-Chunk stories tell of their birth as a people at a place near Green Bay, called Red Banks. As best as anyone can tell, the ancestors of the Ho-Chunk have known and roamed ten million acres of south central and western Wisconsin, for as long as there have been people here at all. Until.

Until population growth in the new European settler nation to the east led to inexorable westward expansion. Until land speculation made the removal of Native peoples profitable.  Until lead ore was found in southwestern Wisconsin, drawing a flood miners into Ho-Chunk territory. 

We know that this area, the region around the lakes, was very special to the Ho-chunk and their ancestors, who called it Teejop. We know that because of documents from the contact period, because of the passed-down memories shared by Ho-Chunk today, and because of the mounds – because over hundreds of years, people marked this sacred landscape by creating images of birds and bears, deer and frogs, out of the earth itself. The closest surviving mound is about half a mile away – a fox.

The ground on which St Dunstan’s stands became the property of the US Government in the 1830s, through treaties and the removal of the Ho-Chunk. It was eventually sold to the Heim brothers, Joseph and Anton,  immigrants from Germany. They settled here in 1848, with Joseph’s fiancé Theresia; built the brick farmhouse we call the Rectory, and cleared and farmed the land. 

Anton’s son Ferdinand lived a very long life – born, probably in the rectory, in 1865, he lived until 1950. As far as I can tell, he lived on the family property his whole life, though in the 1930s he started selling parcels off for development. 

In a 1915 interview, Ferdinand recalled his father Anton’s stories about how, long after their official removal, the Ho-Chunk were still coming around. They would camp on the shore of Lake Mendota, probably right around where Marshall Park is now. There they would hunt, trap, and fish, as they had for generations. 

Ferdinand added that they were great beggars, stopping at the farms to ask for food constantly, and that his father had had to put fences around his hay mows to keep their ponies from eating his hay.

For the Heim family, the persistence of the Ho-Chunk in returning seasonally to this beloved place was an annoyance. Governor Dodge – who governed the Wisconsin Territory for much of the 1840s, after being involved with the massacre of the Sauk tribe at Bad Axe – saw it in the same light. In a speech in 1840 he observed that “the presence of these Indians had given the pioneer settlers great annoyance, and their peaceable removal west of the Mississippi River was a subject of congratulations among the settlers.” 

But even some contemporaries saw the displacement with different eyes. John de la Ronde was a French-Canadian trader who knew the Ho-Chunk well. He served as an interpreter for a group of United States soldiers who were breaking up and clearing out Ho-Chunk settlements in 1840. His account is heartbreaking. 

In one case, he describes a group of Natives who asked to “bid goodbye to their fathers, mothers, and children,” before being forced to leave their camp. When de la Ronde and his companions followed them, they found them on their knees, kissing the ground where their loved ones were buried, and weeping. The captain of the party exclaimed, “Good God! What harm could these poor Indians do among the rocks?” 

It is interesting and complicated to think about all this on the weekend of Memorial Day – a day when we’re invited to remember and honor those who have died in battle. In northern Indiana where I grew up, a frequent field trip destination was Battleground, the site of the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 – where William Henry Harrison and his troops defeated the Shawnee leader Tecumseh and the alliance of tribes fighting with him to push back white settlers’ incursions. (Harrison later leveraged that victory into a successful presidential bid, then promptly died of pneumonia.) 

There’s a great big marble monument at Battleground to the white soldiers who died in that conflict. But I don’t think there’s any monument to the Native fighters who died there for their people and their land. 

Who counts as American? Who do we consider our war dead? And does honoring them mean that we endorse their causes or celebrate their victories? … 

Removal did not really work, on the HoChunk. They kept coming back. (Much to Anton Heim’s annoyance.) 

When it became possible for them to buy land, they bought land. Though it’s a tiny percentage of the area their ancestors once knew and loved and lived on. 

The Ho-Chunk are still here. Striving to pass on their language and culture to their children; striving to protect their young and their vulnerable from the impacts of systemic racism and poverty. 

The land that I/we are sitting on right now was beloved to a people from whom it was taken,160 years ago. 110 years later, it was given to a little group of Episcopalians who wanted to start a new church on the west side of Madison. 

Can we love these grounds – as we do – without taking in and taking on the history of how they came to be ours? Can we love the sacred earth of this place without asking what love requires of us, with respect to the people who first knew it as sacred? 

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 

Telling and receiving this story – these difficult truths – is the very beginning of that fearless inventory I mentioned earlier. It is heavy work, which is why it needs to be shared work. (If you feel called to share it, let me know.) 

But I think it’s essential work… that it is the work of love. We respond to the holy interconnectedness and mutuality within the heart of God by striving to name and restore what has been rent asunder and lost. The God of mystery and awe calls us from comfort, to learn, and change, and mend. The God who loves us like a parent will be with us every step of the way, to encourage and guide us.

Knowing this history – and seeking the Spirit’s guidance as we wonder what it might look like to make amends – this is part of our faithful response to the three-fold Mystery that knows each of us by name, that knows every tree and wildflower of this place, and that calls us, always, deeper into love. 

A concise history of Ho-Chunk displacement:

https://www.mpm.edu/content/wirp/ICW-105

A little about the Ho-Chunk:

https://wisconsinfirstnations.org/ho-chunk-nation/

De la Ronde’s account is one of the primary sources linked here: 

oursharedfuture.wisc.edu/primary-sources/

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Homily, Pentecost, May 23

This homily follows a short play based on the life of Symeon the Holy Fool. 

Symeon the Holy Fool first came to my attention because the middle school youth group chose him as their favorite, in this year’s Lent Madness saint popularity contest. When we needed a story to share in May – I looked up Symeon, and found his biography, written by Leontius, who was a bishop in Greece in the 7th century. We’re sharing that story today, on Pentecost, because Leontius tells us repeatedly that Symeon’s strange behavior was guided by the Holy Spirit at work within him. 

What is the Holy Spirit? In the early years of Christianity, Christians began to talk about God as having three different ways of being. Those three aspects are separate. For example: Jesus talks about both God the Father, and the Holy Spirit, as being different from himself. Yet they are also all part of the One God. 

We use the word “Trinity” for that three-ness in one-ness. It is a mystery that may stretch our minds, but the church has come to know it as truth: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Source, Word, and Power;  The One who creates, the One who befriends, the One who empowers – the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

So: the Holy Spirit is part of God.  But somehow different from God the Parent and Source, and from Jesus, God the Friend. 

The idea that God’s Spirit was at work in the world was not something that came along with Christianity.  In the beginning of Creation, God’s Spirit moved across the waters of chaos. The Old Testament talks about Lady Wisdom as an aspect of God, who welcomes and guides those who seek her.

In today’s Pentecost story, the early Christians receive the Spirit of God in a new way.  The Holy Spirit helps them speak God’s good news in a way that others can understand. The Epistles, letters and sermons from the early decades of Christianity, tell us some of the other ways our faith-ancestors experienced the Spirit: The Spirit helps us know what to say, when we speak for God. The Spirit helps us pray, when we can’t find our own words. The Spirit gives us gifts and skills to use for the common good. The Spirit binds us together into one household of faith across our differences. The Spirit working in a human heart, or a human community, can bring love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

You might have noticed that I sometimes use “She” when I’m talking about the Holy Spirit. I don’t really think the Holy Spirit is a girl. But the church has used “He” for God for so long, in so many ways, when we know that God isn’t really a boy either. Using “She” for the Holy Spirit can help us remember that God is bigger than male or female as we know them. And that all kinds of humans are made in God’s image. 

The Church has some special things we do together where we invite the Holy Spirit to join us and make something happen, though what we are doing. Those things are called sacraments. 

The Eucharist is a sacrament. I ask God, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to take ordinary bread and wine and set them apart and make them holy, so that they can be Jesus’ body and blood for us. 

Baptism is a sacrament. When we baptize baby Dahlia this afternoon, we’ll ask the Holy Spirit to make the baptismal water holy, and to mark her as belonging to God forever. 

Marriage is a sacrament. Yesterday at Natalie and Howie’s wedding, we prayed for their spirits to be knit together in God’s spirit.

Confirmation is a sacrament. When some of our youth were confirmed last fall, and when Bishop Lee visits us this summer to confirm some people, he will pray over them and ask that the Holy Spirit will increase in them more and more. 

Those sacraments, those rites, are very special – even the ones we do often like Eucharist! But the Holy Spirit is willing to show up at not so special times too. The Holy Spirit is meant to be a friend and helper in daily life. And I have found that when I remember to call on her, she is. 

She can help us discern – choose a path well and wisely. She can help us find words of comfort, encouragement, and truth. She can give us courage to do what’s right even when it’s hard. She can help us notice what we might not notice on our own – when that noticing might be a gift to us or to others. 

And yes, like Symeon, if we’re really listening to the Spirit, she might sometimes nudge us to do something surprising, even something that seems foolish – if that surprising or foolish thing will help someone, or do good in the world. 

Here’s a big word for us all: Invocation. It means to call on something. The Church has always taught God’s people to call on the Spirit… to invoke the Spirit.  It’s not magic – we can’t control or manipulate God. But the Holy Spirit likes to be invited. We have to open a door to let her come in and help us. It can be as simple as saying, out loud or in your heart: Come, Holy Spirit! – and then, paying attention, patiently. Holding an open space inside yourself. 

If you like magic words, though, there’s a wonderful word that early Christians used: Maranatha! It’s in Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, and it means, Come, Lord! Maranatha! 

Try saying that with me: Maranatha! 

Come, Holy Spirit! Maranatha! Bless your church and your people; work within us and among us; heal us, connect us, encourage and empower and guide us, today and always. Amen!