Grace in Galatia

a sermon preached at the Monroe Congregational Church
on May 21, 2017

An intro note: Last week we were the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 as leaders tried to settle a conflict and figure out the identity of the early church. As the organization grew over time, tension was mounting between the "Judaizers" who believed all Gentile Christians should convert to Judaism first and leaders like Peter and Paul, who didn't think it was necessary. This letter was written BEFORE the Council occurred, and may be part of the reason why the Council was called in the first place. I tried to write a more conventional sermon, but my drafts sounded like a re-hash of what I presented last week, so I went with a reflection in the first person colored by recent experiences in the Holy Land. What WOULD someone reading this letter think about its contents?  

Galatians 1:13-17, 2:11-21

We received Paul's letter a few days ago. I don’t know quite what to think. Our friend definitely

Market (Souk),
Old City Jerusalem

sounds frustrated with us! 

I remember the days when Paul first came to visit. We were so caught up living our own lives. It’s not easy to get ahead in a province like Galatia! My family works at the market here in Lyssa, we have a booth to sell spices. Our children are trained to call out the prices and what we have available to sell. My job is to smile and greet the customers, try to talk them into buying more than they came for. And my husband, well let’s just say, he knows how to work the scale in our family’s favor. 

So there we were, right smack in the middle of our busiest sales day, when I heard this voice speaking about a new teacher, just a few feet away. It was Paul. He was in his own makeshift booth, stitching together fabric for a tent. As he worked, he told his story to the customer. 

It was the same story he hinted at in his letter… how he used to be a Pharisee and committed all types of violence against this group of people who followed this man Jesus who they believed to be the Messiah. But then he had this otherworldly experience one day on the Road to Damascus and met Jesus, which was pretty amazing since he had been crucified and died many so days before. It was compelling enough a story for me to lean out of our booth to listen.

That’s when I overheard Paul telling his customer how this encounter turned him around and changed him forever. And now he dedicates his life to spreading Jesus’ message of unconditional, radical, boundary breaking love. 

Later that afternoon, a few of us invited Paul back to tell us more. He gathered us together in the center of town after the market was closed. He convinced us that following the example of Jesus – his ways of loving God, our neighbor, ourselves, was a better way to live than what we had been doing. 

Paul had a past, a violent one. We heard all about how zealous he could be. He told us again how that one fateful day on the road to Damascus changed his life forever.

And then he told us that if we too could learn to trust in Jesus, our lives would change. We listened, and learned that devoting ourselves to living the kind of life Jesus did meant we were already right with God! We could be forgiven for the mistakes of our past (which, for some of us, was a pretty long list). We too were promised a place in God’s family as a beloved child! Because of this love, our very lives would be forever transformed. 

Then he looked right at my family and told us that cheating our customers was wrong, but that it’s not too late to make it right. How did he even know? Imagine, a God that doesn't measure out grace like it’s a precious spice sold to the highest bidder. Forgiveness is possible. Love changes everything. 

Pretty hard to believe, isn’t it?

And it was hard to accept, too, at first. We didn't understand grace. We couldn’t fathom how a God we didn't know and couldn’t see would want to give us a gift we clearly didn't deserve and couldn’t earn. None of us could live up to what Jesus did and none of us deserved the grace that comes with following him. It's just all so different than what we've grown up with.

We were used to going to the Temple of Artemis to make sacrifices and participate in rituals. For us, it was about a half day’s journey to Ephesus. You’ve heard of Artemis, haven’t you? She’s the fertility Goddess, the Huntress. The Romans call her Diana. Devotees like us come from all over the world to celebrate her. There are huge processions honoring her feast days with music, dancing, singing, dramatic presentations with priests and priestesses chanting their allegiance. I’m sure that Artemis makes a lot of money for the city, too. In fact, the largest bank in all the world right now is housed in her temple!

From the time when we were young children we were told if we didn’t worship her the way she liked she would use her mighty power to take away all the things dearest to us. Whenever something bad happened, our first thought was “I wonder what that person did to anger Artemis?” None of us wanted to be on her bad side. Who knew what might happen! 

That goes for all the other gods and goddesses too. It was so complicated keeping track of all the festivals and holy days and obligations. All to avoid being destroyed. To be honest, we lived in fear.

Then along comes this Paul to tell us about a God that is the exact opposite of the one we think we know. A God we couldn’t see, or touch. One that didn’t have a temple we could visit or statue we could worship. 

We were excited and intrigued by what Paul had to say. A few of us organized a group that got together regularly to talk about his words and pray. We’d gather at someone’s house and eat a meal together, sharing what we could. My family was happy to contribute the spices: rich zaatar, bitter herbs, precious salt all the way from the Dead Sea. Others brought roasted lamb, fresh pressed olive oil, bread or wine. 

Men, women, children – all levels of privilege and wealth sitting at the same table, gathering as equals. Can you imagine? The first time we ate together, it was terribly awkward. Who got the first pass of the hot dish? Who would say the blessing over the food? In time, we got used to it. Paul taught us that eating together was a reminder of God’s grace, and it wasn’t so important to do it the right way as it was to eat with the people God loves – which it turns out, looking around our table, is pretty much everybody. 

And we took up a collection to help those who were struggling: the widowed, the orphaned, the disabled and diseased who begged on the streets. The funny thing is, I knew the poor had always been there. My family and I were accustomed to walking past them quickly on our way to the market. But something about living as a follower of Jesus kept me from looking away now. I felt compelled to contribute, to help. Maybe it was all the love.

Sounds pretty ideal, doesn’t it? Well, it was, as long as life was good and bad things didn’t happen. But eventually, they did. People in the community had the same challenges they always had before they followed Jesus: loved ones still got sick, a neighbor’s house burnt down, our good friend was unfairly arrested right in front of our booth as a threat against the Pax Romana. 

And Paul, by then, had moved on to Syria with his missionary friends Prisca and Aquilla. He wasn’t around to counsel us, to tell us what we were doing wrong that would cause so much sadness and pain. 

I guess that's why we started listening to those traveling teachers from Jerusalem who stayed with us that one time. They too were followers of Jesus, but they told us that Paul’s teachings were incomplete. The only way we could be right with God was to give ourselves to the laws of Moses first. For some of us, that meant the next step was a painful surgery. Until then, we had to stop this custom of eating together until all were clean under the law. And forget about having women at the table, they should eat at a separate location in the kitchen, away from the men. 

Before you judge us, you have to understand that when Paul moved on, we all felt a little bit like a newborn colt standing on shifting sand. Wobbly.

It seemed like a good idea at the time, after all, Paul told us that Jesus himself was an observant Jew. We were desperate, and this was something tangible that we could do.

It makes sense why sounds so upset with us in this letter. He heard the news. We were trying to fix it, which meant that with our actions we were trying to regulate God’s grace. None of us, being Greek and Roman, knew how to follow all those laws. In learning and adopting them, our focus and energies were being exhausted. Why did we take something so simple, and make it so complicated? I don’t have an answer. Do you?

We were even more shocked in that section of his letter where Paul calls Peter out. Right in front of everyone! I’ve never met the man, but I’ve heard that Peter-Cephas-The Rock isn't someone you go up against. Paul did just that. Peter was acting like us, not honoring the good news of Jesus. Sure, it was OK for him to eat with us when he arrived in town, but as soon as James and the other leaders showed up, he was too good for us. Or we were too unclean for him. I guess if a man like Peter can make a mistake, we can too.

This much is clear to me now: we're not made right by things we do but by what God does in us. We can't be made right by even our own piousness or faithfulness or the hours we spend in prayer – even though those things can be lifegiving. God’s love is a gift – given freely. I may never understand how God could be full of that sort of Grace but I'll take it! Amen.

Conflict In Community

Conflict happens!

A sermon preached
at the Monroe Congregational Church
on May 14, 2017

Acts 15:1-21

Jesus never said it was easy to be a disciple. At least he left them tools to work with, friends and community to share the sacred work, rules intended to build up the community. It’s not that surprising that one of the very first conflicts in the early church was about who was in and who was out. The apostles, disciples and elders had to decide whether to stretch the body to include those who did not share their religious heritage, or draw a sharp distinction and create two levels of membership: Jewish Christian and Gentile Christian.

Scripture says this caused no small amount of tension, as more and more of those Gentile newcomers began showing up to worship and participate in community. The tension morphed to outright verbal conflict, with everyone picking their side of the debate. The conflict was important enough for Antioch to send a delegation to Jerusalem to try and settle it once and for all, which seems like a very expensive way to come to a decision. Eventually, as the story goes, the early church settled on grace, mercy and inclusion as shared values.

To be honest, I am conflicted about conflict. 

On the one hand, I know from experience that some measure of disagreement can be healthy. When conflict is managed from a place of love and respect it can become an impetus to change. As people come together, discuss their differences with warmth and empathy they might learn something important. Reconciliation has a sacred quality when it helps us to restore relationships. Friendships can heal. Marriages can be saved. Partnerships can be strengthened.

On the other hand, conflict also carries with it the possibility of becoming entrenched, abusive, long lasting and soul crushing. I was reminded this week of the infamous Hatfield and McCoy’s family feud. You may or may not know it began in 1870 as an argument about which of the two families owned a particular hog. What could have been managed as a tiff between neighbors became a decades-long family war, with many acts of violence committed on each side. PF learned this summer that to this day it is still being grumbled about by modern day descendants living on the Kentucky/Tennessee border!

Transforming conflict can sometimes feel darn near impossible. I want to believe that humanity can pull together to create a new, sacred world where there are no enemies. I want to believe that we can come to some agreement on the big issues that seem to fracture and divide us. But I’m not so sure anymore. The Cold War has been over for almost 30 years, but we’re still afraid of Russia. Democrats seem to be the sworn enemy of Republicans and vice versa.

Is there something in our humanity that requires us to have an enemy, a scapegoat to blame, or at the very least someone to disagree with? I wonder.

Jesus taught that humanity could expand beyond hatred and conflict into a state of justice, peace, and love.

But it’s not just Jesus who says this. Most world religions try to get us to step out of the hating our enemies and into loving them. This is not an easy task for those of us who haven’t yet reached the Buddha’s enlightened state, or felt something of Jesus’ personal connection to the Creator, or had flow through them Gandhi’s inward peace that led him to non-violent protest.

Their ideas about love were radical and stood in the face of political and economic powers that saw the need for enemies, scapegoats, and continued conflict. Seeing love as a power greater than the Empire eventually got Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr., among so many others, killed.

This “love your enemies” thing that Jesus talks about so much is difficult. Remember the beatitudes? “Blessed are you who are reviled and persecuted for righteousness sake.” I think Jesus was speaking to any one of us trying to expand our love toward those with whom we are in conflict.

Love your enemies. That doesn’t mean work on changing them or even necessarily agreeing with them. Love means that you see their humanity at its core and understand that we all share something in common, even if it is not ideology. Love their humanity so that together you might collaborate on bringing God’s kin-dom to reality.

Collaboration can only happen after we see the simple similarities both sides can agree on. Of course, this means that both must be willing to even sit in the same room together. What do we share, what is it about you that is the same in me?

A conflict over resources means that we might need to stop talking about ownership and instead focus on our shared values. If we can’t agree on our values, then maybe we can agree on our identity as children of God or that we are both part of something greater than ourselves.

And if we can’t quite get there, we might go back to the basics and just take time to breathe. At that point, we are biological beings needing the same thing—air to fill our lungs and flow through our blood bringing fresh oxygen to the whole body.

Studies show that deep breathing lowers blood pressure, reduces the fight or flight instinct, and gets us into a more peaceful frame of mind. One of the pastoral counseling tricks I’ve used with struggling couples is to have them look into each other’s eyes for five minutes in complete silence. Their bodies will do something extraordinary, they will start to breathe in sync with each other. Afterwards, couples report feeling hopeful that whatever they were struggling with can be worked on as a team.
Next time you are locked in battle with your significant other, try it!

In fact, I’ll bet you can love someone – anyone - at that level.

In a deep and profound way, this can help us to see the other as human, not just as our adversary. Which can help us step out of the need to win the competition and be right.

At our core, we share biology, the need for oxygen and water and food and shelter.
At our core, we love our children (both our biological ones and the ones we encounter in this community).
At our core, then, maybe we can agree not to hurt each other, out of love for our children.
At our core, we might remember that you are beloved of God, just as I am, and God’s love is not a scarce limited commodity owned by one person or group of people; it is an abundant, impartial, ever-expanding, miraculous gift that is our responsibility to share.

It is all too human to want to call forth our enemies to try and challenge them, change them, win the argument or hurl out a good insult. But when we do, it’s a challenge to our faith.

We gather each week in this safe harbor, for an hour or so, to rest in the peace of God’s love. I don’t know about you, but I need a safe place where I can drop anchor, away from the fiery storms of Facebook and Twitter and the evening news, away from bickering partisanship, scapegoating and sworn enemies.

The good news is that all of that isn't the way that God wants things to be.  Once, we were fractured by resentment.  Once, we defined ourselves by fear.  Too often, we still do.  But we are God's people and we have been made to be so much more.  In Christ, we are already so much more. 

Our human tendency towards division is strong, but the roots of our God’s love is stronger.  Through the power of the gospel, we come together as one, as a people knit together by the experience of God's grace. Once we were strangers, but now we know that through God’s mercy, we can treat one another as sisters and brothers.

And because we have received mercy, it is incumbent on us to show mercy to others.  Like Peter, Paul, Barnabas and James insisted, we have been freed to love those people whom the world in all its divisiveness tells us every day we should hate.  That love doesn't make our differences and disagreements fall away, but it allows us to hear each other despite them. Simply put, we can refuse to be enemies.

Yes, that’s pretty counter-cultural. Even fantastical, and people tell me sometimes that it's maybe just a little naïve. And it certainly takes work.  Real work.

It would be so much easier to ignore the people with whom we have fundamental disagreements, to avoid them at all costs and cover our ears. It’s a challenge to honor the humanity of those who might not recognize the humanity in us. It's much harder to journey alongside people who have a different understanding of the world than we do.  But the God who called us out of depths and into the light empowers us to be a place and a people to take just this on.

Monroe Congregational Church, how are we, together, going to put LOVE to work? Amen.

You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught

Al Bustan neighborhood, Silwan, Jerusalem

Sermon preached at the
Monroe Congregational Church, UCC
On May 7, 2017

Acts 8:26-39
This is my first Sunday back with you after a sabbatical as a short-term missionary with the World Council of Churches in the Holy Land, and my head is still fresh with memories. I hope you’ll indulge me in sharing a moment that reminds me of the scripture story Gary just read for us.

One of our daily routines was to provide protective presence for Palestinian high school students attending the Al Bustan Municipal School in a village outside of Jerusalem known as Silwan. It sounds like something grand, but our work was really just to stand there with our vests on, greet the children and watch them walk up the hill to school.

That doesn’t seem hard, does it? Why travel halfway across the world to become a glorified babysitter? Why did our presence there matter?

Studies show that non-violent protective presence decreases the level of violence; people behave better when other people are watching.

And there had been a lot of acts of violence lately… teens throwing rocks at soldiers, soldiers throwing tear gas canisters and shooting rubber bullets in return. If you are a teenager who regularly walks past soldiers who you consider to be foreign occupiers you might be tempted to tell them to get the hell out. And on the flip side, if you are an inexperienced young Israeli soldier just a few years older than the students, you might retaliate in any number of violent ways.

So our non-violent, international presence was supposed to help everyone within this system of violence and retribution be a little less reactionary. That was the goal, at least.

So there we are in this village, we’re kind of new and the teens don’t know us yet. For all they know we could be Israeli settlers, come to take control of their land. We didn’t do a great job introducing ourselves, because none of us spoke much Arabic at the time. And that’s on us.

The morning started off pretty quiet, soldiers had not yet arrived. A group of teens began to gather about 20 feet away from us, whispering, laughing and looking sideways at each other. That’s when an older boy, probably about my son’s age, picked up a small stone and threw it in our direction. His friend picked up another and followed his example. The first thrower missed. The second one hit my right foot (not hard enough to hurt).

Right in that moment is when I heard the still, small voice within me say “go talk to them”.

“Hey!” I called out. “Saba Ilher” (which is Arabic for good morning)…

And I began walking up the hill towards the group of kids. When I reached them, told them what my name was “Isme, Jennifer”, that I was from America. I asked them who they were, and they responded with laughter and smiles at my faulty Arabic.

Most importantly, they put the stones down.

Now, I could have left the moment that boy aimed the stone at us, hopped on a municipal bus and returned in safety to our placement house. But listening to that inner voice, going to talk with them, was exactly what was needed to break the cycle of violence and fear.

Not forever, mind you, but at least in that moment.

In order to follow that inner voice, I had to put away my fear. Maybe that’s easier for me because I work with youth. For some reason, most middle-aged people like me usually get a little nervous around teens. Maybe that fear ramps up when the teens are Muslim and come from a rough neighborhood that has seen too much violence and poverty.

Fear fuels prejudice.

There are many kinds of prejudices that mess up the world. There is nationalist prejudice. Today there are children who will be carefully taught to hate Israelis, to hate the Palestinians, to hate the Arabs, to hate the Iraqis, to hate the Iranians, to hate the Russians, to hate the Japanese, to hate the North or South Koreans.

There is racial prejudice. People have been taught that blacks are inferior to whites, that First Nations people are lazy, that Mexicans are dirty, that Asians are taking our jobs. There are religious prejudices too.

From the time he was a little baby, Philip had been taught to be prejudiced against Gentiles like the Ethiopian Eunuch.

Just like the classic Roger’s & Hammerstein song from the musical South Pacific…

You've got to be taught to hate and fear,
You've got to be taught from year to year,
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!

Philip was carefully taught by his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. He was carefully taught by his friends and classmates. He was carefully taught by his rabbis who quoted selected scripture that made it seem as if his prejudice was God’s will.

But all those little tiny boxes that we keep trying to separate ourselves with, God continually tries to pull us from. Philip is led by God into relationships with people who don’t know Jesus Christ, and he winds up sharing his faith. I was led into friendship by God with a group of scared Muslim teens, and we wound up sharing laughter and joy.

In the Bible reading for today, we don’t discover yet that Philip had four daughters who become prophets. Imagine their family dinners… four preachers! My poor parents just have the one, that’s more than enough suffering for one family.

Philip had been carefully taught what the role and position of women was to be. Women were property, like farm animals that were to be obedient. He was taught that women should know their position in life and accept it, that they should not speak unless they were spoken to – except in church when they should be silent. But his daughters had been anointed to spread the gospel in public.

In the Book of Acts, we find stories about men and women whose hearts are filled listening to the indwelling Still-Speaking Spirit of God inside of them. Being filled with the Holy Spirit, Philip was sensitive to the Holy Spirit’s voice inside of him: “Get up and go Philip. Philip, go to Samaria. Philip, go to Gaza. Philip, go to the black man. Philip, go to the eunuch. Philip, go to your four daughters who are prophets.”

And he listened to that inner guiding voice, too. It wasn’t merely his conscience. It wasn’t an angel with flapping feathery wings; it wasn’t an auditory hallucination; a dream or a nightmare. It was the inner guiding voice of God, the Spirit of Jesus.

Like Philip, we too can listen to the inner guiding voice as God talks with us about our marriage, our kids, changing careers, or being on the swim team. Listen. What do you hear? Amen.

Re-Entry

It is finished.

My colleagues in the initiative have (for the most part) all returned to their home countries, families and jobs. We have begun the task of unpacking, giving gifts to loved ones and appreciating the many blessings of our lives. We are putting together advocacy plans even as we take a deep breath and try to get the knots out of our backs from all the stress.

We were told during training that these people we spent so much time with would become good friends. Thanks to social media, goodbye doesn't have to mean what it once did. As long as we continue to stay connected by the tether of electronics we will be able to keep in touch over the miles. For this, I am most grateful.

We did it. I say "we" because the past three months of sabbatical have definitely been a team effort.

My family stood by my decision to live in a conflict zone and accompany people who don't really have a choice in the matter when it comes to security. Yes, there were dangerous moments, which is a burden I'd rather my loved ones not have to carry. On the hard days (and the easy ones) staying connected to family and friends helped me turn from despair towards hope.

I owe my husband Clark a deep debt of gratitude. He supported my decision to live in Israel/Palestine and reminded me that what I was doing was important. I appreciate my mom for listening and letting me authentically be who I am. She let me name my fears and reminded me that I am called to be brave.  My children, Cady and Zack, thrived beyond my wildest expectations - despite the occasional stresses in their lives.

And finally, the church. What can be said about a community that commits to wrapping me in prayer AND feeds my loved ones fresh, delicious homemade dinners a couple of times a week? If food is love, it is crystal clear that we are cared for and I am most grateful.

Sabbatical is supposed to be a time when lay leadership of the church is "handed back the reins", and I hope to find out more soon about how that all went for them. And I hope that the deep joy I have seen from our teens and their advisers on creating Youth Sunday this year without me will be a lasting reminder of their strength and spirituality. You did it, too!

My focus in the next month or so will be to reconnect with our elders, our lay leaders and those in crisis. Relationships are so important, and separation is really hard. Give a hug to someone close to you today. Remember the people of Israel and Palestine who are working towards a just peace and end to conflict. Commit to non-violence today in word and action, Refuse to be enemies.