God loves you. You are free. Go tell everyone else. (Acts 2:1-21)

On Monday afternoon, Jonathan and I were walking through Berkeley for lunch, and he casually asked—as he kindly does when he knows I’m preaching—“What’s your sermon about?” 

I said, “Pentecost!” And he, as a secular Jew, rightfully said something like, “Right. Whatever that is…?”

I tried to explain, loosely, that it’s the 50th day of Easter and we celebrate the Holy Spirit coming to the Apostles. This slough of church words did not unfurrow his eyebrows.

I tried again: The apostles were all gathered together for dinner—it was 50 days after Passover—and were locked in their upper room in Jerusalem again because they were still afraid. Things hadn’t quite settled down with the powers that be, and the apostles were struggling to proclaim the Gospel that Jesus had given them.

The thing is, I think, they were so used to Jesus being around, providing direct instructions day after day, that once left to their own devices, they realized how much they’d relied on him to do the work of the church. They felt lost.

Before he died, Jesus had told the apostles, “I will not leave you orphaned…God will send you an advocate to be with you…” (John 14). As usual, I imagine that what Jesus said and the disciples heard were not exactly the same. They likely expected some…person to show up and take the lead. Have you ever felt like that? Like in a “Jesus take the wheel” kind of way? You and Peter both.

So in this Acts story, they’re behind closed doors, whispering the good news to one another, paralyzed with fear. And for good reason! The leaders that killed Jesus are still the leaders. Politics are tenuous, and nobody wants to be made an example. The apostles face a tough choice—stay safe and quiet or take the risk and go public? “Will the movement be ruled by fear? Will the apostles be contained and confined? Rendered timid and silent? Pentecost comes with a bold answer—no.”[1]

Herein lies the deep subversive nature of the Pentecost event and of the early church.

Pentecost was and is a public display of our freedom from fear, found in the liberating power of Christ crucified, emboldening us to speak the truth of the Gospel aloud.

In the Acts of the Apostles, the powers and principalities are wary of this freedom to speak. They try to discredit this revolutionary act by claiming that those bold enough to speak are crazy or drunk.
No earthly power can match this empowered community of believers—preachers, fishermen, widows, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, women, children.

The promise that Jesus made to the apostles—that they will have this power—is of course tied to conflict and persecution. Remember when he warned them that they would be persecuted for being associated with him (John 15)? Welp, this is it. But he also said that in those scary times, the Holy Spirit would empower them to speak their truths even more boldly.

Pentecost means the apostles can go into their community and say “Jesus the Christ is risen—alleluia! You are free from sin! You are free from bondage! Get up—walk! Be healed! You are my sister, my brother—eat at my table! Drink and be filled! You are the beloved child of the living God! No high priest, no king, no excuse for a civic leader can chain you anymore. You are free.”

Here, now, in 2015, where are we? Are we locked in the upper room, fearful of where our truths may lead? Are we cautious to identify ourselves as Christians? Are we cautious to say “God loves you” when we meet someone who clearly believes otherwise? Are we cautious to say “come eat at our table”?

Because here, now, in 2015, it’s not hip to dig Jesus. It’s not hip to say “God loves you” in public. And the Religious Right has commandeered so much of our precious holy language that when we say “My faith informs my politics” we have to explain really hard what we don’t mean.

Proclaiming liberation is still unpopular in our world of war, mass incarceration, police brutality, racism, sexism—we have much to fear.

But after today, after the Pentecost has come, we are free. We are free to be bold. We are bold to proclaim that Jesus the Christ is risen—alleluia! We are bold to proclaim that we and every living thing are free from the power of sin and death.

When we see or hear the “good news” being used to exclude, hurt, control, or otherwise disempower our sisters and brothers, we are bold to say enough now! No more!

When we see or hear the name of Christ used to justify violence, oppression, racism, misogyny, sexism, heterosexism, imperialism, patriarchy, war, slavery, or silence—in our churches, schools, government, families—we are bold say enough now! No more!

The question I leave you with, dear sisters, is not “if” you will boldly proclaim the liberating truths of the Gospel –but when, where, and how.

May you be emboldened by the power of the Holy Spirit this day and always. Amen.



[1] Bill Wylie-Kellerman, “In the Boldness of the Spirit: Fellowship and risk before the authorities” Sojourners.

Documented

So this weekend I had more free time than usual (I think I'm finally like not actively "moving" anymore!) and it's spring break here at the university so our workweek is a bit lighter, and so of course I spent it on my couch. I did also ride my bike all over town (to work! Like a real Davis resident!) so technically I just spent like...a lot of time on my couch.

Fortunately, the focus on my passion planner this week is "L E A R N" and my to-do list includes "use that brain for excellence, girl" and so the time on my couch was only like 1% March Madness, #OnWisconsin. I dug into the long list of documentaries that have been piling up on my Netflix queue. [PS! Somewhere along the line they changed it to say "My List" instead of "Queue" and I find that to be very uninteresting.]

I started almost embarrassingly with two films that I should have watched a few years ago when they were new but have somehow just never gotten around to because I am terrible. But now I am less terrible because I have viewed and loved them and learned from them!


This was so fascinating. It features impressive women from multiple generations of feminism and leadership in media, politics, and education. It discouraged me--tragic statistics about young girls, in particular--but encouraged me, as I think about what I am capable of and what we are capable of. Watch it.

The Invisible War

This made me weep. It is absolutely deserving of its Academy Award nomination. The infamy of sexual assault in the US military has been front and center for a while now; I'm hopeful that we will not continue to let our veterans down. Watch it.

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I had on my queue the famous miniseries documentary Half the Sky, and I watched about a half hour of it before I started to feel...icky. It has a lot of red flag "white savior" things going on. I read Nick Kristof's columns, usually, and I think that he and Cheryl WuDunn (his wife and colleague) do excellent work to raise awareness and bring human trafficking to the global stage. And so I want them to keep working, because I want women to be liberated around the world. But I don't want the Western world to believe that homogenized brown women are liberated by white men. I've been told to read this book (by great white women I love) a number of times, and have just always felt...icky. If you don't know anything about human trafficking, watch this. If you want to learn more, find sources written/produced/headquartered outside the white, Western world. And then share those with me.

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Werner Herzog is weird, and I have a weird fascination with media about prison/crime (my favorite book is Truman Capote's In Cold Blood) and so I saw this on a "best docs on netflix" list sometime ago and grabbed it. It was weird. It's the story of two men who were convicted of murder--one sentenced to death, one to life imprisonment. Herzog talks to their families, mostly, and there are these silences and staring...it's haunting and it feels very real. Maybe don't watch it.

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Makers: Women Who Make America

This was a three-part PBS miniseries documentary situation, and I watched all three back-to-back because it's CRAZMAZING (as the great April Ludgate-Dwyer might say). I learned so much about the history of feminism in the United States, for better and for worse. There's so much more to learn (my favorite thing to learn!) and I am scouring the universe for more rad women's stories. I think this documentary is reasonably self-aware about its limitations as far as inclusion of women of color, gay women, transwomen, etc., as it moves through how the movement itself addressed the wide variety of American women. We can always do better. So many of my heroes are on film here (HRC, Sanda Day O'Connor, RBG, Gloria Steinem) and so many women whose legacy I didn't even know I was made of. Watch 'em all.

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This blog doesn't have a whole lot of "engagement" going on, but I am all about the crowd-source, so,  let me know what great documentaries you've been watching--or books you've been reading, let's be real--about subjects that bring you to life. 

Healing -- Luke 8:26-39


I Kings 19:1-15
Psalm 22
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer, Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

But you may be feeling a little heavy right now, after hearing the texts for today. We talked about that as we were reading through these texts at Bible exploration on Tuesday. We noted that Elijah is the definition of desperate. And, though we didn’t read it this morning, know that the psalmist repeatedly begs God to come to her aid. This man of the Gerasenes is tormented by demons and abandoned by his community.

And this is a little confusing, because recently, it was Easter, and more recently Pentecost, and so we’re all joyously resurrected and we’re empowered by the fire of the Holy Spirit! Right!? But sometimes it can feel like that sort of…wears off after a while. And so in these stories, we get a look at what life looks like when we’re in need of resurrection and in need of the Holy Spirit’s cleansing fire. When we just get stuck in the stuff of life. When we feel so low, or so broken, or so outcast. When there’s just a rut we can’t quite get out of. When the responsibilities of everyday life just feel like chaos. When we feel we’ve exhausted all the possibilities and there’s just no energy to continue.

In our story from I Kings, Elijah has just run out into the desert, fleeing for his life, and feels like all is lost and that he just could not possibly go any further. But God has a different idea about that. God nourishes Elijah and sends him out to a new city to do a new thing. And we’re hip to that this year! It’s the ELCA’s year of Always Being Made New. In everything that we’re doing this year (and every year) God is making all things new. God is taking the exhaustion of our lives and restoring us to the whole, full people that God created us to be.

But it’s not so simple. For this man among the Gerasenes, whose demons have caused him to be chained and shackled and left in the darkest corner of his community, “always being made new” seems far from reality. He is constantly tormented by the legion of demons in his mind, and by the rejection he’s received from the people around him.

They fear him. And he probably fears himself. His anguish is so overpowering that he breaks the chains that the people have bound him in. He lives in the tombs, among the dead, the furthest from his society it is possible to be. They have, essentially, left him for dead. So it is not just him, but also them, who need to be healed and restored to wholeness. Most human communities are guilty of relegating some group to the outskirts.

This is not specific to the Gerasenes, nor is it specific to the Galatians. This portion of Paul’s letter includes some of his more famous words. It is written that we are no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. We are one in the body of Christ. Paul would not have written this if the community at Galatia was a model of inclusivity. Clearly, they’re struggling with the desire to use the law to exclude people from the Christian community. In this new community, the only law is radical love—everyone is welcome to the table. 

Theologian and author Jim Rice has put the words right in my mouth. He writes, “Christ has rendered obsolete the practice of separating and judging on the basis of race, ethnicity, religious lineage, gender, economic status, or class. The human tendency to divide and denigrate is deeply ingrained, but God's way of equality and unity is the new order of things. The consequences of that profound revelation are still unfolding.”

And that could not be more true. There are ills that plague us as individuals and as communities. And we have a problem not only with the original divisions but with the solutions to the divisions! We have found ever-deeper ways to alienate one another, with divisions that are not from God but are of human creation and human misunderstanding.

And so like this man, we need not only to be healed of our demons and restored to the community of care that surrounds us, but also like the Gerasenes as a whole, our communities need to be made aware of the profound ways in which we separate ourselves from one another, and we need to be reconciled and restored.

Proclaiming that the radically equalizing love of God in Jesus the Christ has the power to heal us, first implies that we are in desperate need of healing.  We need to be healed of our own, deep, personal maladies. Our feelings of inadequacy. Our fears of isolation and abandonment. Our addictions. Our traumas of abuse or of neglect. Our scars of betrayal and distrust.

We need to be healed of our destructive compulsions. We need to be healed of our shameful silence. We need to be healed of the ways we try to stifle our pain and heal ourselves through different, damaging behaviors. We need to be healed of the shame we feel from that which has excluded us and relegated us to the fringes of our communities -- whether it is mental illness, physical disability, gender identity, citizenship status -- or a perceived social ill like our history of abuse or our divorce or our criminal record. Or our sin so painful, we have never been able even to speak it aloud.

Of all these things, we need to be healed. And we will not be healed by the wave of a wand or the snap of fingers. We will not be healed by our will alone. We will not, either, be healed solely by the power of someone other than us. We will be healed by the radical love and grace of God in Jesus Christ, of that much we can be certain – and we must claim that we are broken in order to be made whole. We can begin to be healed by acknowledging that we are in deep need.

This will take time. And this will take tears. But through the depths of our despair -- through the wind, the fire, the earthquake, the sound and the fury of the chaos that surrounds us! Through it all, God will be alongside us in the sound of sheer silence. God will speak to us in that still, small voice.

That still small voice that, when we could not get out of bed to face the troubles of our own souls, said, "get up!"

That still small voice that, when were debilitated by our anxiety and our fear into the paralysis of isolation, said, "do not be afraid, I am with you."

That still small voice that, when we thought all hope was lost, when all options had been exhausted, when there was nowhere left to go, said, "follow me."

It will be that still small voice that offers us encouragement when no one else will. It will be that still, small voice that calms the storms that rage around us. It will be that still, small voice.

And once we have heard that still small voice, we will be able to use our own. We will be able to speak from the depths of our hearts about the need for healing in our world. Because we have seen that we need healing not just on individual levels but on the corporate level. We need to be healed from our predisposition toward hating one another and fearing one another. We need to be healed from our insatiable thirst for violence.

We need to be healed from the infectious diseases of systemic and institutionalized racism, sexism, classism, heterosexism, xenophobia. We need to be healed of the military-industrial complex and of the prison-industrial complex. We need to be healed of the scourge of the failure of the war on drugs and with it of the mass incarceration of people of color. We need to be healed of the epidemic of gun violence in our classrooms and in our suburban shopping malls, yes, but also on the forgotten streets of our ghettos.

We need to be healed from our destructive desire to consume whatever is in our path, no matter the economic or environmental consequence. We need to be healed of the consequences of authoritarian dictators who have ravaged their countries and torn their people apart.
It all starts with a still, small voice. A still, small voice that reminds us that, under the new law of Christ, we are no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, woman or man, black or white, citizen or immigrant, republican or democrat -- we are all one in the body of Christ.

And while our differences should be celebrated as we work together to be that body of Christ in this world, it is imperative that we recognize that our invaluable contributions are just that -- no more valuable than the contributions of any other, and certainly no less. We as a people bring so many gifts to this table, all of which are welcome. And we also bring all of our hurt to this table, all of which is welcome. This is what we mean when we say all are welcome. This is what we mean when we say come as you are.

Come to this table of grace, to be celebrated and to be healed and to be restored and to be loved. And leave this table to celebrate and to heal and to restore and to love. Return to your home and tell everyone what God has done for you.

Amen.