Run For Something

A year ago today I made my first phone call as a Candidate Outreach volunteer with Run For Something.

This morning I made my 63rd. 

Of those 63 progressives from 21 states, 10 were on ballots in 2021 and 3 are now elected officials.

On each call, I talk with someone who has witnessed an injustice in their community and has the courage to be part of the solution. They’re running for small-town neighborhood councils and they’re running for big-city school boards and they’re running for state legislatures. They’re former elementary school, middle school, and high school class presidents and they’re people who have never before considered a leadership position like this. They’re you and they’re me and they’re our neighbors.

It’s such a privilege to hear their stories and help them on their way to the resources, community, and support that they need to run a successful campaign and become a devoted public servant. These calls are the most consistently hopeful half-hours in my day.

If the state of electoral politics in this nation causes you grief, I encourage you to get involved with what RFS is up to. You can volunteer, like I do. You can donate to their PAC or to their 501(c)(3), both of which develop young, progressive leadership. Or, you can run for something.

God, I Thank You That I am Just Like Other People—A Sermon on Righteousness and Contempt

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.

Sometimes, the Gospel for the week is looking right at us. This week is one of those weeks. The first sentence: “Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt.” Right there, it’s us he means. It’s a straight up trap, because if you think it’s you, well, you’re right, and if you don’t, well, congratulations, it is. Because either you are the self-righteous who hold others with contempt, or, you’re the self-righteous who hold “the self-righteous who hold others with contempt” with contempt! Long story short, the author of this Gospel is saying, “listen up, y’all. This one’s for you.”

So now that we know this parable is straight up targeting us, what is it? Well, it’s a classic Jesus construction: there’s a Pharisee and a tax collector. Pharisees are regarded as being the most religious, most righteous, best ever dudes. Tax collectors are regarded as basically the opposite. To be a tax collector means that you are shaking down your neighbors for their cash all the time, and running off with it to Caesar, and none of it is every really trickling-down back into your community. So nobody likes you.

You’re probably thinking “well, I don’t want to be the tax collector in this scenario, so, am I the pharisee?" The Pharisee seems okay. He’s at the temple, and he’s praying: “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” I am literally the best at being a religious person, thanks for making me so amazing, you’re the best, God. We can hear the problem with this prayer, right? It’s like, so un-self-aware.

So, if we’re this Pharisee, “what are our own versions of this Pharisee’s prayer? Who are we grateful not to be?”[1]

This is so easy.

We are all human, and so we are all very excellent at comparing ourselves to everyone we encounter—for better and for worse—deciding whether we envy that person or would rather die than be that person.

We do this on seemingly unimportant scales all the time, right? Like with our majors; we can’t believe someone could possibly be getting a degree in that. Or with our professional sports affiliations; even if our team loses, at least we didn’t lose as badly as those guys. This year, the very obvious not-even-elephant in the room is the election. “God, I thank you that I am not like those terrible voters for that other party.” Woo—had that thought like 47 times today.

And recently, I had terribly self-righteous thoughts about InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. They are the nation’s largest Christian campus ministry organization—there’s a chapter here are UC Davis—and so they are home to many of your peers. A few weeks ago, they made a choice I disagree with. Any of their employees who support marriage equality and other protections for LGBTQ Americans are no longer welcome. They are supposed to notify their supervisors of their disagreement with the organization’s policies on sexuality, and transition out of their jobs next month.

It is part of our work as Christians to speak up about oppressive situations and systems in our midst, and to do our best to end them. It is understandable that these employees probably do not want to work for an organization whose ideals they don’t support, but this also removes entirely the possibility of discussion and compassion and maybe eventual change on the subject. This decision proclaims to all the students on 667 campuses around the country where InterVarsity is present that their pro-LGBTQ stances—and their LGBTQ identities—are not welcome.

I confess to you today, friends, that when I think about this I say, “God, I thank you that I am not like other Christians.” While this, momentarily, makes me feel righteous and excellent, it is not the point. There are plenty of things going on in the ELCA and the Episcopal church that we lament and that we confess and that we must work to change. We are not exempt from bad policies because we are not exempt from sin.

We know, because Martin Luther wrote about it a heck of a lot, that we are simultaneously saint and sinner. This is great, because it means that one wrong move doesn’t ruin everything. The thing about being simultaneously saint and sinner is that we’re always uncomfortable. We’re always giving ourselves a pat on the back, and then feeling like that wasn’t the right move.

Some people don’t like Christians because they think we’re hypocrites. They think that, if we call ourselves Christians, we are all set and do everything perfectly and are never mean and always drive the speed limit and never say a swear word and always volunteer to do the dishes and never buy anything expensive because we’re donating all our money to charity. I think these folks have it upside down. Christians are not perfect—far from it. We know so! At the start of every service, what’s the first thing we do? You can cheat and look at the bulletin. Confession!

We begin our evening together by confessing our sin. We say, to God and to one another, that we have failed. We have messed up. We have done things wrong and we have known they were wrong even as we did them. And we have not done something right and known it was the right thing even as we didn’t do it. We have stood idly by as a situation we had the power to change went on, badly, without our intervention. We know it! And so we say it.

“We confess that we have turned from you and given ourselves into the power of sin. We are truly sorry and humbly repent. In your compassion forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things we have done and things we have failed to do.”

Every week, we say those words (or some like them). “Confessing our sins as a group helps us know that we are not alone in falling short.” [2]

Part of the power vested in me—mine because I wear this stole, this vestment—by my ordination is the power to declare to you the forgiveness of all your sin. I am not the one who forgives you, that’s not the power I have. God forgives you, and I am entrusted with the responsibility of reminding you.

When I was serving my internship during seminary in Colorado, I had the privilege of getting to know the chaplain at the nearby women’s prison. She told me about the way she mediated conflict between the women, by insisting that as they told their side of the argument with someone, her name had to be followed by “precious child of God” as a reminder of everyone’s belovedness. For example: “I am so tired of listening to Donald Trump, precious child of God, as he insults so many beautiful groups of Americans.” This to say, dear ones, that “we are all created in God’s image,” but “those other people, those people we are secretly glad we are not—they are created in God’s image, too.” [3]

Wherever you find yourself in this parable, wherever you find yourself in the story of God, you are beloved. You, precious child of God, are forgiven. You are justified. You are a sinner and you are a saint. And so is everyone else. God, I thank you that I am just like other people: messy, joyous, awkward, clever, ambitious, righteous, forgetful, silly, beloved. Amen!

Act! -- A Sermon on Micah 6

I preached this to the good people of Davis Lutheran Church and Lutheran Church of the Incarnation at their midweek Lenten Evening Prayer. The theme for their Lenten season is "Continuing the Covenant of Baptism" and the focus for this week was "creating justice and peace throughout the earth." The text Jeff and Dan selected for me to preach on was Micah 6:6-8. Funny how the Spirit moves, sometimes.

I went to college at California Lutheran University. It’s a great institution, and I’m so proud to be an alum of an ELCA college. While I was a student there, I worked in the library as a Writing Center tutor. I helped undergrads and grad students write papers, and plan research and presentations. I did this because I love words, and because I am a grammar nerd. So when I looked at this passage from the prophet Micah, I was struck by the punctuation. 

In these three verses of Micah, as translated by the New Revised Standard Version, I noticed that there are five questions. There is not one declarative sentence. There’s one independent clause, but it’s attached to a question via a semicolon. “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

There’s a lot to question in this world. In this prophecy, Micah speaks on behalf of the people, asking their questions. The first four questions are about what to give to God. What to offer? What is enough? What will please the Lord? I have sinned, and now I need to remedy that. The questioner is, seemingly, distraught. But as the prophet replies on behalf of YHWH, with, I assume, a light chuckle, the questioner already knows the answer. “God has told you, O mortal, what is good,” he says. Sure, we know, but we don’t always do.

As Martin Luther would remind us, we are simultaneously saint and sinner. We have sinned against God and against one another, probably today. But Micah, prophet of God, says to go forward, treating one another justly, kindly, and with humility. It’s a new day.

Yesterday morning, I saw on Facebook a photo of an ELCA colleague of mine, Sylvia, wearing a clerical collar and holding up a sign that says “Love, not Hate” and she’s standing next to a woman with a sign that says “do justly, love kindness.” They’re at a protest outside a Donald Trump event on the campus of Lenoir-Rhyne University, an ELCA college in Hickory, NC. They and hundreds of other Lutherans and people of faith gathered to sing hymns, and to pray, and remind us all--like this text from Micah does--of our simple responsibilities.

Inside the event, a Christian minister spoke in advance of the candidate, calling out Democratic Socialist candidate Bernie Sanders’ Jewish identity. He said that Senator Sanders “gotta meet Jesus” and “gotta get saved.” [1] This is not okay.

We cannot, ever, disparage our sisters and brothers of the Book--Jews or Muslims--for their different relationships to the God we know.

We cannot, like many preachers have done and will do, use this Micah text or texts like it to disparage our Jewish sisters and brothers.

We cannot read texts like this and claim superiority over their covenant, over their sacrificial history.

Jesus the Christ told us that he came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it. We have a tendency to erase the entirety of the Mosaic tradition by lumping it all under animal sacrifice and considering ourselves far too sophisticated for such a thing. We have a new covenant, after all, that does not demand such activity.

In our modern expression of Christianity, even if we are going to ignore most of Jewish Law, we are not free to ignore the History and the Prophets. Here, Micah tells us exactly what activity God still demands.

Do justice. Love kindness. Walk humbly.

It is our right as Americans to speak freely in public. It is our responsibility as Christians to speak freely and boldly in public against bigotry and hatemongering, wherever we hear it. As we do justice, as we love kindness, as we walk humbly, we must act when our words are unjust, unkind, unhumble. We must.

In this season of Lent, Christians have been reflecting, thinking, reading, praying, fasting. We have tried to look at ourselves through different eyes, considering our shortcomings and working to reorient ourselves toward God.

I’ve endeavored, these 40 days, to consider the spiritual discipline of joy. I’ve been working hard at enjoying myself. You heard that right. Like I told the LEVNeers this Monday, anything can be a spiritual practice if you put your spirit into it. The reason I made this choice this year is because I spent the first several weeks of 2016 in a near constant state of lament. The world is a mess. It is so easy to look at the morning’s headlines and crawl right back into bed.

Consider these, which I read just this morning:

• “White House announces new North Korea sanctions”
• “Mitch McConnell says he'll continue to refuse to support any SCOTUS nominee President Obama puts forward”
• “Zika mosquitos may spread to New York and LA this summer”
• “FIFA admits to accepting bribes for World Cup hosting”
• “Over one million refugees have entered Greece since 2015”
• “Two suicide bombers kill 22 near Boko Haram stronghold in Nigeria”

Let’s take a deep breath.

In the interest of not ignoring and, in fact, diving deeper into the traditions of our Jewish roots, I present to you my favorite commentary on Micah 6:8. The Talmud says: “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

That’s the key, my friends. It is not that we need to pretend that the world is perfect. The rabbis who wrote the Talmud acknowledge that the world’s grief is enormous. And they wrote it more than 1500 years ago, during which time the world’s grief has only grown. The acknowledgment of the grief, the lament, is not the end, either. We are called to act.

Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now.