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A Sermon for 7 July 2019

A reading from Galatians 5:1, 13-25. This is believed to be one of the letters written by the Apostle Paul to the churches of Galatia – likely a Roman province Asia Minor located east of the Aegean Sea and north of the Mediterranean Sea. Listen for God’s word to us.

“For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. . . . For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. 14 For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” 15 If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another. 16 Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. 19 Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, 21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. 22 By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.”

This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.

 

Recently I heard an interview with Dr. Edith Eva Eger (Super Soul Sunday, OWN, 16 June 2019). A Doctor of Psychology, who is known to friends and family as her preferred name Edie, Dr. Eger was born in Eastern Europe in 1927. The youngest of three sisters, Dr. Eger’s father was a skilled tailor. Her mother, a pragmatic woman, became an adult child when her own mother died shortly after childbirth and Edie’s mother took on the duties of mothering the household. Dr. Eger might have had a promising career as a dancer. She even was training for the Olympic gymnastics team until her beloved coach pulled her out of practice in the early 1940s to let her know she no longer would be able to compete on the team because of her “background.” It made no difference that Edie was one of the most talented girls on the team – her eldest sister Clara a protégé violinist and her sister Magda a flirtatious beauty. In 1944, Edie was a young Hungarian Jew.

Now 91, Dr. Eger has released her first book – her memoir of the Passover when soldiers invaded her family’s tiny apartment. After a month of being held with 3,000 other Jews of her home city; Edie, her sister Magda, her mother, and her father were loaded on a truck; then transferred into the dark, over-stuffed cargo car of a train that emptied them before the man known as the angel of death. Standing before Dr. Josef Mengele, with a flick of his finger; he ordered Edie’s mother to the left – the line that led directly to the gas chamber of Auschwitz, the most heinous Nazi death camp. There stands the gate reading “work sets you free.” Unbelievably, Dr. Eger writes: “I could have remained a permanent victim – scarred by what was beyond my control . . . Early on, I realized,” she writes, “that true freedom can only be found by forgiving, letting go, and moving on” (https://dreditheger.com/). Certainly, she came to that lesson due in part to a lifesaving shred of wisdom her mother gave her when first the soldiers came to get them. Edie’s mother told her, “They can never control what you put in your own mind” (The Choice: Embracing the Possible, Dr. Edith Eva Eger, 2017). That wisdom taught Edie the difference between victimization – something she explains nearly all of us will experience in our lifetimes from the external forces of another – and victimhood – an inner belief that we are not worthy of any better treatment than what is given us by those who would harm us. A vibrant ray of light at 91 years of age, Dr. Eger is one of the few Holocaust survivors still alive today. If it wasn’t for an American soldier, who on 4 May 1945 noticed a slight movement amongst a pile of dead bodies, Dr. Eger would not have made it and gone on to become a celebrated psychologist who for fifty years has been helping others victimized by severe physical and mental trauma. Broken in so many ways during her time as a Nazi prisoner, Dr. Eger reports that the mantra that carried her through every horrific day at Auschwitz was the reminder: “if I survive today, then tomorrow, I will be free” (The Choice: Embracing the Possible, Dr. Edith Eva Eger, 2017).

Likely we’ve heard the word this past week. “Land of the brave. Home of the free,” our nation sings not just in celebration of Independence Day; but also at every major sporting event from football to hockey to tennis (“The Star-Spangled Banner”). Freedom is in our blood as Americans – though the history of what has happened here on the soil of this part of North America paints the picture of freedom for some. Enslavement, exploitation, and continued victimization for others. Now I don’t intend to get all political today – just because we’re a few days from the fireworks and fun of the Fourth of July. Rather, I want us to focus on what we know as Christian people. “For freedom,” the Apostle Paul writes, “Christ has set us free” (Gal. 5:1a).

Freedom in Christ is less about our desire to overthrow some far-off British king, and more like Dr. Eger’s inner attitude to forgive, to let go. In the interview I heard with her, Dr. Eger talked about those who survived the camps but didn’t know what to do once the day of liberation came. They had become so broken by their oppressor in the death camps, they barely knew how to face regular life again. After liberation, some walked back to the barracks in which they had been imprisoned. It took Dr. Eger’s starved, pain-wracked body over a full year to begin to heal. And her inner torment, most of her lifetime. She reports that she still can be taken back to that heinous year in Auschwitz with something as benign as a trip to Costco. The interviewer listening to her surmised it must have been like that too for African America slaves who finally found their freedom. We know from Scripture, it was no easy transition for our Israelite spiritual ancestors when at last the Pharaoh let them go and Moses led the racing people of God on dry land through the sea, only to live forty years as a wandering people in their journey to be free. Paul’s insistent words echo: “For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery” (Gal. 1).

I’m not sure we realize the precious gift we have in Christ – the one who shows us how to live free according to the Spirit of God alive in us. It’s easy to live according to the ways Paul calls the ways of the flesh – what I like to think of not as our physical bodies, but as our unaware, slumbering selves. Paul’s talking about living enslaved by the unconscious impulses that arise. Like the automatic anger that can overtake when we feel hurt. The unexamined gnawing that drives us to act destructively. The impulsive, involuntary way we do something without even stopping to consider the harmful consequences to ourselves and others. Living like this – the way so many live – is not at all living free. It is the way of living as those who have submitted ourselves again to the yoke of slavery.

Dr. Eger tells a story that gives a good example. One day an angry 14-year-old arrived at her office for court-appointed therapeutic interventions. Just a few minutes into the session, he exploded that he wished all Jews were dead. Dr. Eger had not made mention of her ethnicity. She did not tell of the horrors of the kind of treatment she experienced even as a young girl when other children would spit at her and call her names because she was Jewish. As the teen filled with such hate sat before her in her office; for her to begin to help him heal, Dr. Eger describes finding a way within to regulate what might seem like the natural reaction to snap back. Instead, she breathed deep, called upon a calm still place within, and created the kind of safe space between her and the boy where the trauma of his life could be processed. That’s living free – by the Spirit. Not reacting out of her own space of hurt. But opening herself instead in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

“There is no law against such things,” the Apostle Paul writes (Gal. 5:23). These fruits, as they’re called, show that within we are totally free – not at all enslaved, no matter the outer circumstances of our lives. To live according to the fruits of the Spirit is the very reason Christ has set us free. The very gift we receive when we embrace the truth that the Spirit of God dwells in us and wants just a little more room inside to guide our thoughts. To direct our actions. To transform the very way we see everything that is before us. Living by the Spirit, that inner Presence expanding in us to be like the rudder of the vast ship that is us, this is the way in which we live free. Surely that’s an independence we all can celebrate!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2019 (All rights reserved.)

True or False?

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A Sermon for 16 September 2018

A reading of Mark 8:27-30.  Listen for God’s word to us.

“Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”  29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”  Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.”  30 And Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

And one more reading.  This one is a reading of James 3:1-12.  Listen for God’s word to us.

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.  2 For all of us make many mistakes.  Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle.  3 If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies.  4 Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs.  5 So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.  How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire!  6 And the tongue is a fire.  The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.  7 For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8 but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison.  9 With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.  10 From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.  My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.  11 Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?  12 Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs?  No more can salt water yield fresh.”

This is the word of God for the people of God.  Thanks be to God!

 

Today’s sermon is a True-False pop quiz!  So, buckle up and get ready – now!

There once was a mother whose young adult son was taken in the middle of the night from their small home.  Such brutal police raids had become common around there at that time.  Their land was being ripped apart by the color of people’s skin.  Years later, in open court, the police officer involved stood before the young man’s family.  He told of the way the son’s body was beaten, bloodied, and buried by the police.  In great shame he said:  “I am sorry.  Now I see how wrong it all was.  I am so sorry about what I did to your son – to you.  To us all.”  It was hard to hear.  But at last this momma knew what had happened.  Tears streaming down her cheeks, with great courage she said:  “Thank you for facing me to tell me the truth.  I forgive you.”

True or false:  the tongue has great power.

There once was a twelve-year-old girl living in the rural South of the United States.  She was happy with her single momma and sister, living in their little trailer outside of town.  Everyone knew the pre-teen as being rather sweet.  A well-mannered child, who sang in the church choir and went weekly to prayer circle with her mother and sister.  But she also was a little different – some sort of problem at birth which left her a bit behind other kids.  The school bus picked her up daily to take her off to school.  Every day she was poked and teased and had her pigtails pulled on the bus.  The driver never said a word.  One morning, she just couldn’t take the name-calling any longer.  She pulled a handgun from her backpack, and it was as if this sweet, innocent, bullied child snapped.  Reports said no one was “injured.”  No shots ever fired.  She would spend the next two years of her teenage life in jail.

True or false:  the tongue has great power.

There once was a vivacious little girl.  She was creative and imaginative and so much fun!  ABCs didn’t come easy for her.  Neither did her 123s.  The further along she went in school, the more she couldn’t learn in the way the teachers taught.  Every day became a nightmare.  And homework time:  a knock-down drag out – leaving her often to go hide under her bed.  Frequently she was heard telling her family she was dumb.  Stupid.  She just couldn’t learn.  One year she got a teacher who said:  “I know how I can help.”  Though differently than all the other children, the little girl began to learn!

True or false:  the tongue has great power.

You may not know it, but it only took a speech or two.  Explanations of how the country’s economic demise was their fault.  Newspaper ads portraying them dirty, sub-human.  That’s de-humanization.  The process that has to happen in order to go against our own biology which is wired NOT to kill our own species.  One man was able to whip a crowd into an amazing, fear-incited frenzy through name calling and tribal sorting and de-humanizing some in order for some others to go against our natural, instinctual drive to connect.  A plan was born of how to return this presumably superior race to greatness. The rhetoric was:  be wary of certain neighbors.  They’re not like us – not human.  Do not trust them.  It’s all their fault.  The year was 1924, Germany.  A holocaust of eleven million people began – six million who were Jews.  According to one source, the other five million were “gay people, priests, gypsies, people with mental or physical disabilities, communists, trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anarchists, Poles and other Slavic peoples, and resistance fighters” (https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/6555604).  By the time it was all over, somewhere between 50 and 80 million people lost their lives in World War II (https://www.historyonthenet.com/how-many-people-died-in-world-war-2/).

True or false:  the tongue has IMMENSE power.

Do you know the words by the former slave, great abolitionist, and woman’s suffragist, Sojourner Truth?  Words she spoke at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851, pre-Civil War, when gathered Christians – mostly white women and men – were arguing over whether women should be allowed equal rights in a burgeoning democracy.  It helps to know a little about the stature of this 6-foot-tall, chiseled, old grandma, who was born into slavery in New York but earned her freedom in 1827.  Her mere entry into the church assembly stirred the northern crowd that wasn’t too sure they wanted to mix their plea for women’s rights with that of the slaves of the South.  Sojourner listened long to the arguments, then finally rose to speak.  She’s quoted as saying:  “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere.  Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place!  And ain’t I a woman?  Look at me!  Look at my arm!” she said bearing her muscular shoulder.  “I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me!  And ain’t I a woman?  I could work as much and eat as much as a man – when I could get it – and bear the lash as well!  And ain’t I a woman?  I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me!  And ain’t I a woman?  Then they talk about this thing in the head; what’s this they call it?  [and a member of audience whispers, “intellect”]”.  Sojourner continues:  “That’s it, honey.  What’s (supposed superior intellect) got to do with women’s rights or negroes’ rights?  If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?”  Pointing to a pastor, she continues:  “Then that little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman!  Where did your Christ come from?” Sojourner, the uneducated slave woman eloquently argued, and I quote her:  “Where did your Christ come from?  From God and a woman!  Man had nothing to do with Him.  If the first woman God ever made (mother Eve) was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone” (as throughout time has been an argument against mutuality for women).  Then, Sojourner said:  then, “these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right-side up again!  And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.”  (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/sojtruth-woman.asp).  Woo!  The eye-witness response was recorded as being “roars of applause (while Sojourner) returned to her corner leaving more than one of us with streaming eyes, and hearts beating with gratitude.”  The witness wrote:  “She had taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the slough of difficulty turning the whole tide in our favor.”  The reporter quoted:  “I have never in my life seen anything like the magical influence that subdued the mobbish spirit of the day, and turned the sneers and jeers of an excited crowd into notes of respect and admiration.  Hundreds rushed up to shake hands with her, and congratulate the glorious old mother, and bid her God-speed on her mission of ‘testifyin’ (again) agin concerning the wickedness of this (here) ‘ere people’” end quote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain%27t_I_a_Woman%3F).

True or false:  even if some still are threatened by this one, isn’t it true that the tongue has great power?  Enormous, beautiful, miraculous, world-changing power!

We could go on.  An innocent insinuation on Facebook.  A text that quickly gets around.  One-liners that ring throughout history.  Words that change the trajectory of lives.  Words like:  I love you.  I am proud of you.  You matter to me.  You are precious in my sight.  . . .  We even heard it today from the lips of that great disciple:  “You are the Messiah!” (Mark 8:29).  Two thousand plus years later, thirsty souls still profess the name:  Jesus the Christ, God’s anointed one.  Savior.  Lord of all!  . . .  Indeed, the tongue has amazing, life-altering power!

The book of James is the New Testament’s only work classified as Wisdom Literature (Mark Douglas, Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 4, p. 62).  It seeks to teach the faithful the importance of living the faith.  Though many of the Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century rejected James all together.  In particular Martin Luther himself, who spoke of the book of James as “the epistle of straw” (Ibid.); the grand offense being wisdom’s claim that “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (James 2:17).  And I guess due to their context in which notions of the grace of God had become something one had to do a work to earn, we can understand the concern.  Nonetheless, the wisdom the book of James seeks to teach is that true religion consists of three marks:  “care for orphans and widows in their distress, (keeping) oneself unstained by the world” (James 1:27), and speaking rightly.  For the tongue, like the smallest flicker of a flame, is able to set ablaze an entire forest (James 3:5).  Mature faith is evidenced by these three marks.

Even if you got a few of the true-false questions wrong today, our charge is to go into the world to live the life-giving truth.  May the blaze our words be the start of love’s revolution!

In the name of the life-giving Father, the life-redeeming Son, and the life-sustaining Spirit, Amen.

© Copyright JMN – 2018  (All rights reserved.)