It Is Time Now For Prayer—A reflection for the Davis Interfaith Thanksgiving

As advertised, I am Pastor Casey Dunsworth. I’m ordained in the Christian tradition through the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest Lutheran denomination in the United States. I serve at The Belfry, a little yellow house on A Street, home to our Lutheran Episcopal Campus Ministry to UC Davis. I also direct a program called LEVN, the Lutheran Episcopal Volunteer Network, a year-long faith-based service corps for recent college graduates.

Being in ecumenical ministry—two different flavors of Christianity living in harmony together—is a delight and a challenge. We have similar postures and practices for many facets of our life of faith, and we also diverge in several places. One of my favorite things about the Episcopal tradition, which I’ve learned from being adjacent to it for four years now, is that they believe that the way you pray shows what you believe. They have an important prayer book—the aptly-named Book of Common Prayer—which, ostensibly, contains all of the prayers, scripture readings, and orders of service an Episcopalian might ever need. While this is not my tradition or posture, I appreciate their consistency and the way they honor the church that has come before them as they continue on the way.

As a Lutheran, I agree with the Episcopal idea that the way we pray shows what we believe about God. How we communicate with God and what we expect to receive from God say a lot about who we think God is. Martin Luther, the 16th-century “founding father” of our tradition, was a man of many, many, many words. It is a bit ironic, in fact, that Martin Luther is quoted as having said, “the fewer the words, the better the prayer.”

In the Christian tradition and the Jewish tradition before it, we have always been in conversation with God. Our holy scriptures are teeming with thanksgivings, laments, joys, sorrows, celebrations, grievances, discoveries, questions, and answers. The beauty of our scripture is the richness of this language. One of the blessings of the modern Christian life is that so much has already been written and prayed and proclaimed, that the inspiration we need is likely within those pages. And it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows! There is real, deep angst in the words of our sacred texts. The people of God for generations have cried out in joy and in grief.

Two of my Lutheran clergy colleagues, Tuhina Rasche and Jason Chesnut, have a project whose titles I’ll let you Google later, but whose subtitle is “To convey a visceral Gospel, we must sometimes use visceral language.” When we pray, we need not self-censor. There is perhaps nothing we can say that God cannot hear.

Whether we want to “Praise God with trumpet sound; praise God with lute and harp! Praise God with tambourine and dance, with strings and pipe, with clanging cymbals; Let everything that breathes praise the Lord!” (Psalm 150:3-6 ish)

Or if we want to groan, “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul,  and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” (Psalm 13:1-2)

Or if we want to “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me praise God’s holy name.” (Psalm 103:1)

Martin Luther is also quoted as saying that those who sing pray twice. For me, personally, this is most certainly true. Singing praise or lament, singing by myself or in community, there is no experience holier. At the Belfry, before we sing and pray together on Wednesday nights, I remind everyone that God asks of us a joyful noise, not necessarily a beautiful one, and so everyone should feel welcome to sing out.

And why, then, do we pray? Søren Kierkegaard is a famous Danish Christian philosopher, and Lutherans claim him ever so carefully, as he was born into a Lutheran family, but later denounced the State Church of Denmark. Somewhere along the line, he wrote brilliantly on a number of topics and, most meaningfully to me, wrote these words: “the function of prayer is not to influence God, but to change the nature of the one who prays”.

When we pray, our petitions do not coax God into action. Our prayers engage us more deeply in the communities for which we pray; in the relationships for which we pray; in the world for which we pray.

...it is time, now, for prayer. I will invite you to participate as you feel moved. Each petition, or section of the prayers, will have a theme. I will say the phrase, “and, for this, the people pray,” at which time you can speak aloud for the room to hear, quietly to yourself, or silently in your heart.

Let us pray. Good and gracious God, we come before you this evening in gratitude for our lives, our communities, and our freedom. As we enter into this Thanksgiving Week, we remember all the people, places, and things for which we are grateful.

For this fragile earth, our island home. We pray for the enjoyment, care, preservation, and restoration of our environment. We pray for the creatures of the seas and skies, forests and fields. We seek your wisdom as we discern the courses of action necessary for the sustainability of life. We grieve for all those affected by wildfires and lingering smoke. And, for the earth, the people pray…

For our leaders; locally, nationally, and internationally. We give thanks for those in authority who wield their power for liberation, equity, and joy. We remember the courage of your prophets, who spoke truth to power. We seek your wisdom in our own leadership, that we may be accountable to one another and to you. And, for our leaders, the people pray…

For our communities; our siblings, parents, cousins, friends, and all whom we love. We pray for the safety, welcome, and celebration of all whom we encounter, that we might invite more and deeper cooperation. We grieve relationships that are painful, are ending, or are beyond repair. We give thanks for our communities of faith and shared values, that we embolden one another to live fully. And, for our communities, the people pray…

For peace; in our hearts, in our homes, in our schools, in our public squares. We pray for an end to violence, war, oppression, and degradation. We pray for those who are fleeing violence, that they may find safe harbor. And, for peace, the people pray…

We know, O God, that you are the healer of our every ill. We give thanks for healers in our communities, of our minds, bodies, and spirits. We grieve that which cannot, in this life, be healed. We pray for healthcare providers, researchers, faith healers, prayer teams, and all those who contribute to our wholeness. And, for healing, the people pray…

For our ancestors, elders, saints, and all the dearly departed. We give thanks for their lives, their witness, their teaching, and their blessed memory. We name aloud those we love who have died.

Into your hands, gracious God, we commend all for whom we pray, trusting in your mercy. By the many names you are known, we pray, Amen.

A Tale of Two Prophets—A Sermon on Fishing, Farming, and Following

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.

Have you been out to the MU when the street preachers are there? You know, the guy reading the Bible out loud—out very loud—and perhaps with a sign that says something like THE END IS NEAR or another alarming pronouncement. Sometimes, there’s even more than one of them at a time. Are we familiar? Okay, so those guys believe that they are doing what Jonah was doing in our story.

“Forty days more and Nineveh will be overthrown!” Jonah yelled, presumably, throughout the center of town. The guys by the MU believe that they, too, are telling the sinful masses the truth about the punishment in store for them from God if they do not change their ways. Do you think those guys are effective? I haven’t looked at any data, per se, but I would be surprised if a significant number of UC Davis students were moved to repentance from their efforts. In part, because—as of the time I was writing this sermon—our city has not been overthrown.

Tonight’s two stories—Jonah and Jesus—go sort of nicely together. They have things in common and ways that they differ. Both men are prophets, proclaiming the will of God. Jonah was, as the story goes, recently in the belly of a large fish; Jesus is inviting fishermen into the kingdom of God. That one is definitely a stretch, but I just like that we have a latent fish theme. The stories have some contrast, as well. The people of Nineveh, where Jonah is prophesying, are rich and powerful. The fishermen on the seashore, where Jesus is prophesying, are not.

When you think about the stories of the prophets, what do you remember about how the citizens of the place usually respond to the prophets? Not very positively, right? This is what is so weird about Nineveh, did you notice? They heard Jonah’s prophecy, and call to change their ways, and then they...changed their ways. “And the people of Nineveh believed God” it says, and “they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.” That’s kind of surprising. It’s especially surprising that they seem to have done so immediately. They didn’t ask clarifying questions, they didn’t make excuses, they just...did it.

And that’s true in Jesus’ story, too. One of my favorite things about the Gospel according to Mark is that, in it, everyone does everything immediately. You may begin to notice that, as we go through this Gospel this year. The immediacy is so apparent, that in my seminary Greek class, when we were learning to translate, we learned the word “euthus” so well because we saw it so many times. I’ll always associate that with these stories. Mark’s is also the shortest Gospel, probably because he doesn’t waste time with details and detours. Whatever Jesus is doing, we get to the point—immediately.

So, Jesus heads down to the Sea of Galilee and says “follow me,” and the men on the shore immediately drop their nets and follow. Immediately! They ask no clarifying questions, they make no excuses for why they can’t. And, frankly, this is where my ability to identify with the original 12 disciples often hits a wall. I rarely do anything immediately. I rarely do anything without asking a laundry list of clarifying questions. I have a lot going on, and dropping my nets—or my work, or my plans, or my relationships—is just not something I see myself doing immediately. Fortunately for me, God seems to have plenty of time, and just pushes me to get to the point eventually.

Did you notice the oddness of where Jesus goes to collect his disciples? The seashore. These fishermen are not powerful, or rich, or well-known, or well-connected.

Living here in Davis, we are adjacent to a world-class university and just across the causeway from the capitol of the world’s sixth largest economy. We know a thing or two about the halls of power. If you’re looking to make waves here, you go to the top of the food chain, right? The chancellor of the university, the members of the state legislature.

We're also in the neighborhood of an agricultural behemoth known as California’s Central Valley. There are tons of other valleys around here—Capay, Anderson, Napa—and they all grow the food that sustains much of the United States, and, arguably, the world. If you have lived in California for your whole life, you probably take for granted that abundance of produce we have here, and the length of our growing seasons. The strawberries for sale at the Davis Farmers’ Market in August are truly a wonder of the world.

The farmers there, week after week, are keeping us alive and well. They are very likely not wealthy people. Their livelihood is determined by an incredible number of uncontrollable factors—weather, pests, consumer preferences, market prices, other farmers’ yields—and this is a risk they take season after season.

Why am I waxing poetic about farmers right now? Well, we don’t live on the Sea of Galilee, and so we’re not intimately acquainted with a first-century diet and economy based on fishing. We’re in Davis, CA, where we’re blessed to be intimately acquainted with our farmers, and an economy that is fueled in large part by vegetables.

This, then, is where I imagine Jesus scooping up disciples. They’re in Dixon and Winters and communities like those all over the northern half of California, planting and tending and harvesting and then trekking to markets like ours in Davis every Saturday morning. I can imagine Jesus walking through the rows of strawberries, telling sun-worn farmworkers that he would make them cultivators of people.

Jesus would not waltz into Governor Brown’s office and invite him to join the movement, as he did not waltz up to the throne of Rome and invite Caesar. Jesus knew that those whose day-to-day lives were already leaps of faith, interdependent on the earth and each other, would be the ones brave enough to join him. The ones who knew the power of small things done with great love. The ones who had been tossed about by the waves of injustice, and seen the fruits of the labor of their collective.

Grassroots organizing is perhaps a buzzword to us, now, in the age of online connection for political and community changemaking. For Jesus, though, it was an entirely new way of life. These fishermen, and the others who joined John the Baptist and Jesus’ movement were not the people whose opinions were usually sought after, were not the people whose work was usually valued, were not the people usually in control.

You and I live somewhere in between these locations; students at a university, but not its administrators; citizens of a global superpower, but not its governors; members of the largest protestant denominations, but not its bishops.

Do you think that those distinctions matter in the eyes of God, or are true measures of your worth in the world? No, certainly not.

Do you think that, out of whatever circumstance you find yourself in, Jesus calls you to be his disciple? Absolutely yes.

Will you follow? Will you fish? Will you farm?

...immediately?

They'll Know We Are Christians By Our _________

I preached this sermon to the good people of Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, Davis.

___

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

I’m sort of going to start with the punchline this week. The Hymn of the Day is an old favorite, “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” Do you know it? I hope so. I hope you also recognized it in my sermon title, with that last noun left intentionally blank.

The lectionary texts for this week—and the state of our nation and world—lead me to wonder just what it is that we look like. What is it that makes it known we are Christians?

In his letter to the Galatians, this is the Apostle Paul’s concern, too. The church at Galatia is a group of pagan converts—not Jews. Some in their community are rabble-rousing on the question of circumcision. Should these new Christians need to enter into God’s covenant with Abraham in order to enter into the new covenant in Christ’s blood? Paul says no. Paul says, “For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” He does not mean, as many a preacher might say, that the new covenant is superior to the old, and that uncircumcision is better than circumcision. Neither is sufficient for salvation, he says. Those who are in Christ are a new creation, in which the status of the flesh is not ultimate. He brings it up as if to say, “the divisions you have created are not the point, but since you still think in this black-and-white, circumcised-and-uncircumcised way, I will make it plain for you.” “He insists that ‘only the love we show one another, not our physical markings, testifies to the God we serve.’”

Sometimes we wonder about why it’s relevant to read these old letters. They're not written to us or to people very similar to us at all, right? First century residents of the Roman Empire lived a pretty different life than 21st century residents of the United States of America. The reason we find these seemingly antiquated words to be, rather, timeless is because we are not as different as we believe ourselves to be.

When was the last time you “detected” someone “in a transgression” (as Galatians 6:1 indicates) and—instead of rolling your eyes, cutting them off two miles later, yelling back, plotting your revenge, or simply sulking—decided to “restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” When someone has committed an offense against me, my first reaction is rarely gentle. But this is step one in our Christian life. Basic human-to-human kindness.

Maybe, they’ll know we are Christians by our kindness.

Next, in this Galatians text, Paul implores us to “bear one another’s burdens.” Here in Christian community, it is not every man for himself. We are one in the Spirit.

The great Elie Wiesel—Holocaust survivor, author, and Nobel Peace Prize winner—died yesterday at the age of 87. He was famous for his words, and he said a lot of things. But what I will never forget are these words of his: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference; the opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference; the opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference; the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

We cannot be indifferent to the suffering of others. The suffering of any among us is the suffering of us all. The burden of any among us is to be the burden of us all.

This is the first sermon I’ve preached since 49 beloved children of God were murdered at Pulse in Orlando. At first, I hesitated to bring it up, like it’s already old news, just three weeks later. As I worked on this very paragraph earlier this week, I got a notification on my phone from the Associated Press that the death toll in the terrorist bombing of Ïstanbul, Türkiye’s Atatürk Airport had been raised to 36. [It has since been raised to 41, with 239 injured.] This morning, I woke to the news of over 100 dead at the hands of Daesh in Baghdad, more than 20 of them children.

There is hardly time for the sun to set on one act of violence before we’re mourning another.

Certainly, they’ll know we are humans by our violence.

In the aftermath of violence, we are quick to pray and to mourn with our loved ones and to post on our social media feeds about how we cannot believe this has happened again. We write letters to our congressional representatives about their responsibility to keep us safe, to keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, to keep bad people away from us. We wonder in private and in public about what it is that has driven these terrorists to do what they have done, what has made them so angry, what has made them so fearful. Rarely, though, do we as a nation confront these reasons head-on, before the next act of violence shatters our peace. Rarely, though, do we as a Christian community get out in front of this hateful political rhetoric—for fear that we are muddying the line between church and state.

Our violence, then, is not always gunfire, or suicide vests, or roadside bombs, or even fists. Sometimes, our violence is verbal. And sometimes, our violence is our silence.

They know we are Christians by our silence.

In these United States, whose independence and freedom we celebrate this weekend, we are well-versed in the inalienable rights of our Constitution. Our freedom to speak is, to me, the most precious. According to the First Amendment, we are free to speak our minds and hearts in the public sphere. We are not free of consequence, but we are free of prosecution. We confuse these two, a lot. And folks from every political persuasion and religious affiliation share in this freedom. Sometimes, that drives me nuts. Quote-unquote Christian voices, in particular. How quick I am to say, “Oh, no, I’m not that kind of Lutheran. I’m not that kind of Christian. I’m not that kind of American.”

They know we are Christians by our divisions.
They know we are Christians by our hate.
They know we are Christians by our fear.

Dear friends, it doesn’t have to be this way.

The human distinctions we have made (race, gender, class, ability, nationality) are not from God. Do not misunderstand me—they are real, but they are not from God and they are not ultimate. The Apostle Paul has invited us into a “distinction-free form of life.”

They can know we are Christians by another way. They can know we are Christians not by our silence, or by our divisions, or by our hate, our by our fear.

When you encounter violent speech—even when it’s subtle—you can say something. If a racist, or sexist, or classist, or ableist, or xenophobic word is uttered in your presence, you can counter it. You can. When the “Christian” voices in our nation and world are not saying what you’d say, or what you believe Jesus has said, you can speak up.

You, Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, are a Reconciling in Christ congregation and for that, thanks be to God. We, the Sierra Pacific Synod are a Reconciling in Christ synod, and for that, thanks be to God. We, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America are, a place where we claim All Are Welcome. We can proclaim that truth much louder than we do.

As followers of Jesus we are a people of non-violence. In the kingdom of God, there is no need for a stockpile of assault rifles. We can proclaim that truth much louder than we do.

They can know we are Christians by our prophetic voices.

And in our Gospel lesson for this week, Jesus sends us on our way! He sends 70 disciples into the neighboring towns—to “every town and place where he himself intended to go (Luke 10:1). Some among the 70 were likely hesitant; before, they had always gone a step behind Jesus—not ahead—watching him interact with people, hospitable and not-so. Some others were probably chomping at the bit, ready to take their discipleship out for a spin!

Jesus tells them as they go on their way to be certain that, upon entering each house, they proclaim the nearness of the Kingdom of God—“Peace to this house!” they’ll announce.

One of the surprising take-aways of this text is its emphasis on hospitality—not just provided, but received. We are well aware that our Christian vocation emphasizes being welcoming to strangers. We know that when a new person moves into the house next door, we should introduce ourselves and maybe bring over some cookies or a bottle of wine to say “welcome to the neighborhood!” We know that when a family we don’t recognize is in church on Sunday morning we should introduce ourselves and be sure they know when Vacation Bible School is.

This text though, turns hospitality from passive to active. Hospitality must also be accepted. We cannot just welcome others into our homes, to our tables, to our cultures, to our norms. We must go where we are foreigners. We must feel what it feels like to be a guest. Provide hospitality to strangers, yes, but also allow strangers to provide hospitality to you.

They can know we are Christians by our mutual hospitality.

The first half of 2016 has been quite an adventure, and shows no signs of slowing, let alone stopping. We can be discouraged by this. We can throw up our hands and refuse to participate any further. We can double down on our divisions.

Or, we can be the transgressive radicals Jesus calls us to be and we can instead speak peace to each house we enter. The peace of God which passes all understanding. “God’s peace is a peace founded on life, rather than death. On relationship, rather than enmity. On engaging and accepting mutual hospitality, rather than building walls of division.”

They can know we are Christians by our peace.
They can know we are Christians by our hope.
They can know we are Christians by our love.