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  • But Early Sunday Morning!

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    But Early Sunday Morning!

    Marvin A. McMickle

    Cleveland, Ohio

    It begins with two words spoken by almost any African American preacher inside almost any African American church–but early. At fi rst the words are spoken in a normal tone–but early. However, those two words are all that is needed to begin an antiphonal chorus between pulpit and pew–but early. The phrase is pronounced again, only this time with an increased passion and an escalating volume–but early. The congregation joins in and answers back, already knowing where this path is heading–But Early –B – . Again, the phrase is spoken, and the thunder seems to roll as the words fall on the congregation, and this time two words become a major affi rmation of faith echoed in African American churches of every denomination across the country–but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. Make no mistake about it, this is the central theme, the organizing principle, the theological touchstone of the African American religious experience–but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. Neither “We Shall Overcome” nor “Let my people go” hold the same sacred space in the African American church as this phrase which does not have to wait until Easter to be pronounced–but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. Before Martin Luther King, Jr. and those who worked with him could organize a Civil Rights Movement, African American Christians were drawing strength from this phrase. Before James Cone gave shape and texture to a Black Theology of Liberation , and before Katie Cannon, Jacqueline Grant, and Delores Williams gave birth to Womanist Theology, African American Christians were drawing strength and comfort and hope for the future every time they heard these words–but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. I am in no way minimizing the freedom struggle to end social injustices. That has been a central task of the African American church since its birth in the 18th century . Ending oppression and injustice is a crucial undertaking. However, while that work goes on, there remains a need to sustain and encourage people while they are going through those struggles. In ways that only those who fully know how harsh and uncertain life has been for African Americans since our arrival on these shores in 1619, there is something in these words that connects us to the power of God in a visceral and existential way. Only the fi rst two words are needed to unlock the hope that lies within us in the face of the almost constant horror that has surrounded us for four hundred years:“but early.” The preacher will often play with this phrase to give it even more meaning.

    Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate thought they had put an end to this troublesome son of Nazareth, but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. The old spiritual says, they nailed him to the tree–the blood came streaming down–they pierced him in the side–he hung his head anddied , but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. Roman soldiers sealed him inside the tomb to be sure that no one would

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    try to steal his dead body. But early Sunday morning Jesus got up with all power in His hands.

    The women came to the tomb with spices to cover the smell of decaying fl esh. All they were expecting was a corpse. The disciples, having run away from the Garden of Gethsemane and retreated to the Upper Room, were overcome with grief in the death of their leader and shame in their cowardice when he was taken into custody. For them, the three-year journey was over. But early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. The grave could not hold him down. Death could not sustain its grip on his body. When they crucifi ed my Lord, the forces of evil were saying no to the message of Jesus as well as to the messenger himself. But early Sunday morning God said yes both to message and to the messenger. Jesus was raised from the dead with all power in His hand. This was the transformational moment in the life of the early church, not his crucifi xion, but his resurrection. Now is Christ risen from the dead, the fi rst fruits of them that sleep….O death, where is thy victory? O grave, where is thy sting? The crucifi xion was brutal, and Jesus did cry out “It is fi nished.” He did die, just as people condemned to the cross are meant to die, from asphyxiation, loss of blood, overcome by the baking heat of a midday sun as they hung for hours, sometimes for days. Everything went as the execution squad had planned. However, something happened that those battle-hardened Roman soldiers were not expecting. Hear the preacher shout out to the congregation, “Somebody say early!” That is the refrain that has brought many a sermon to a tumultuous conclusion in an African American church, but early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands. The preacher might continue, and with the preacher so also the congregation:

    He died. Didn’t he die? He died until the sun refused to shine. He died until hell’s foundations were shaken. He died until the angels in heaven had to turn away from the sight of the Son of God hanging on that cross. I tell you, he died. But early Sunday morning, He got up with all power in His hands. The devil thought he had won and the hounds of Hades rejoiced over what they thought was their conquest of God’s purposes on the earth. But early on Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands.

    Why is African American preaching so fixed on the resurrection of Jesus? Some say that every sermon in an African American church is heading for the cross by one road or another. But that is only partially true. It is better to say that African American preaching goes by the way of the cross to its real destination which is the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Left to itself, the cross is not “mission accomplished.” If the only things that happened to Jesus were that he was crucified, dead, and buried, then his experience is no different than any other human being. All of us will die. One could make the case that the death of Jesus is unique if viewed through the lens of the Old Testament practice of substitutionary atonement where the sins of all are forgiven through the death of another. You could invoke the language and imagery of Isaiah 53:5 and the Suffering Servant and say about the death of Jesus that “He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our inequities. The chastisement

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    of our peace was upon him. And by his stripes we are healed.” We could say with John the Baptist in John 1:29, “Behold the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” The cross taken by itself is sufficient if what you seek is forgiveness of sin. However, there was much more at stake when Jesus was nailed to a cross. The events that occurred at Calvary were an opening act of a longer and more consequential drama. Yes, he died on the cross, “but early.” Yes, as the songwriter puts it, “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, and the burdens of my heart rolled away.”1 However, that is not the entirety of the Passion Narrative. The power and the purpose of the death of Jesus is not fully grasped and not fully declared until two words are spoken, “but early.” That is what Paul insists upon in I Corinthians 15:14-15 when he says,

    But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testifi ed about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

    Paul continues and suggests that Christ as Suffering Servant and Lamb of God, but not as risen Lord, is an insuffi cient outcome for God’s plans and purposes and for our faith as Christians as well. He says in verses 17-20,

    And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the fi rst fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

    Paul considered anything else we may say or believe about Jesus to be insuffi cient, even insignifi cant, if we cannot say “But early Sunday morning He got up with all power in His hands.” That is especially true for the African American church and for African American preaching as a form that can be studied and analyzed as an intentional theological practice. When they speak about early Sunday morning, they are talking about the promise, the power, and the presence of God that has sustained African Americans amid the hell and horror of 246-years of chattel slavery and the subsequent 156-years of sharecropping, segregation, second-class citizenship, and state-sanctioned terror that stalks and torments their lives to this very day. The promise of God is that death does not get the last word. The grave is not triumphant. There is a deep-seated faith in the African American church that “death is swallowed up in victory” (I Corinthians 15:54). It is an unswerving declaration of faith when an African American preacher stands before a family at a funeral and says, “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands” (II Corinthians

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    5:1). We receive that as a promise from God. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this focus on life after death was defined by Benjamin Mays as “compensatory religion.”2 That meant that conditions for African Americans in this country were so harsh and hopeless that their only alternative was to remind themselves that death did not have the last word. Referring especially to the 19th century Spirituals, Mays notes, “No idea of God is so dominant in the Spirituals as the belief that God will make things right in heaven.”3 They sang:

    There is plenty good room in my father’s kingdom, So, choose your seat and sit down.”

    They sang:

    I got shoes, you got shoes, all God’s children got shoes. When I get to heaven gonna put on my shoes, Gonna shout all over God’s heaven.

    Then thinking about their so-called Christian owners and overseers, they would add this line:

    “Everybody talking about heaven ain’t going there.”

    They also sang:

    Before I’ll be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave, And go home to my Lord and be free.

    Tragically, the hatred and hostility experienced by African Americans that resulted in compensatory religion continues into the twentieth-fi rst century. As such, it is still important when an African American precher stands to invoke the promise of God concerning resurrection on the Sunday after the brutal deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Walter Scott, Martin Luther King, Jr., Emmett Till, or four girls in the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Something of great comfort and hope is being offered when the congregation is reminded:

    Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. (John 14:1-3)

    I make this claim about the importance of the bodily resurrection of Jesus within the life of the African American church, mindful that not all Christians agree on this fact, and some even mock the notion of a bodily resurrection. One progressive faith leader said, “Christians for whom the physical resurrection becomes a sort of obsession, that seems to me to be a pretty wobbly faith.”4 This dismissive approach to a tenet of the

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    Christian faith held to so strongly in our churches has caused many African American students at “progressive” or “liberal” seminaries and divinity schools not to question their faith, but to question that school’s approach to theological education in relation to the faith tradition from which they came to seminary and to the communities of faith to which they return after graduation. Many is the day when African American students leave some seminary classes and say in the words of Mary in the garden in John 20:13, “They have taken my Lord away, and I don’t know where they have put him.” Seminaries want their students to know about the Sitz im Leben of the biblical texts. However, those who teach at seminaries would do well to better understand the Sitz im Leben of their African American students seeking to do ministry in a white supremacist country and culture. They should be aware of the recurring instances of police violence against unarmed African Americans. They should be aware of the relentless attempts to limit and even take away voting rights. They should understand the triple burden of race, class, and gender bias carried by African American women.5 They should understand what it means to be disproportionate victims of COVID19 due to a multitude of pre-existing conditions and social determinants such as food deserts, inaccessible and unaffordable health care, jobs that could not be done from a home office and that forced many African Americans to work as bus drivers, store clerks and cashiers, non-medical professional jobs in hospitals, and first responders while the pandemic was raging and before vaccines were available. When the risk of death from so many different directions lurks as closely at your door as it does for so many African Americans, it is good to be reminded about but early. We need the power, the promise, and the presence of God in those moments. A wobbly faith? African Americans have needed a faith suited to their dilemma in American society in every century since their forced arrival on these shores in 1619. They needed a faith they could hold onto when African American women were exploited as much for their womb as for their work during slavery and beyond.6 They needed a faith they could take with them into jail cells in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and even Chicago. They needed a faith they could carry with them when they sought to desegregate schools, lunch counters, workplaces, and all-white neighborhoods in New York and New Orleans, in Cleveland, Ohio, and Cleveland, Tennessee, and in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Philadelphia, Mississippi! They would have been left physically and emotionally wobbly if they had not carried this faith with them into those places where racist taunts, physical violence, and even death lurked around every corner. They believed then and now that God was with them even unto death and beyond. The list of grievances extends back to the Tuskegee Experiment between 1932 and 1972, when effective medicines were withheld from 399 African American men diagnosed with syphilis to see what its effects would be on their bodies. Dozens of men died, and dozens more wives and children were infected and received no treatment .7 It goes back to the Scottsboro Boys trial in 1931, when eight young men were accused of raping a white woman and spent years in prison for a crime it was known they did not commit.8 It goes back to the Tulsa, Oklahoma massacre of 1921, when an entire African American community was burned to the ground and between 150-200 African Americans were killed over jealousy at the idea of black people prospering

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    because of their own initiative and hard work.9 It involves the thousands of African American men, women, and children that were lynched, shot, or burned alive between 1895 and 1935,10 a time the historian Rayford Logan referred to as the “great nadir,”11 the darkest and deadliest time to be alive for African Americans. When you have lived under these conditions for hundreds of years, you need to know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the God who had the power to raise Jesus from the dead also has the power not to let death have the last word in your life. That is why for most African Americans, the resurrection of Jesus is not something to be analyzed, debated, and disputed. It is the promise, the power, and the presence of God on full display in the resurrection of Jesus. As a result, they have been able to say to themselves down through the years,

    Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me….Surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

    Before someone speaks about a wobbly faith, let them pray every day when they send their child off to school through streets patrolled by rival drug gangs, that the d child is not killed by a random act of gun violence. Let them pray every time they get pulled over by the police–if they are ever pulled over by the police—that it will not end up with the police shooting them because something they said or did made police officers “fear for their own safety.” Let them pray that they return alive when they go for a jog in Brunswick, Georgia, like Ahmaud Arbery, or go to buy a bag of candy and a soft drink in Sanford, Florida, like Trayvon Martin, both of whom were shot by white vigilantes using “stand your ground” and “citizen’s arrest” statutes first established to capture and return runaway slaves. Tragedy is not the only circumstance when African Americans have relied on the promise of but early. There is the simple trust that however it occurs, death does not have the last word. I observed this trust in the resurrection at my home church in Chicago, Illinois, when we gathered every year on New Year’s Eve for a Watchnight service. The idea of the Watchnight service can be traced to December 31, 1862, when African American people waited in hopeful expectation for the release of the Emancipation Proclamation from President Abraham Lincoln that would go into effect the next day. That tradition has continued in many churches to this day.12 At 11:45 PM, the pastor would begin calling the names of members of the congregation who had died during that year. What happened next puzzled me in my youth. With the calling of each name, a voice could be heard crying out “Thank you, Jesus.” Name after name extending month after month, and the response was the same. Some one has died, and the surviving friends and family would say, “Thank you, Jesus” or “Bless the Lord,” or “It’s all right now.” Honestly, I thought there had been some bad relationships in that church, and people were glad that someone was finally dead. I could not have been more mistaken. Something far more significant was going on that I had not yet fully grasped. However, when I returned many years later to preach at that Watchnight service, I finally found out why people were offering up their words of faith and praise in the face of death. After the names had been called,

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    and after the responses from the family had been spoken, there was a song that united that congregation in a faith that took us back two-hundred years to the faith forged by our ancestors in slavery.

    I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, But a band of angels coming after me. I looked all around me, it looked so fi ne, I asked the Lord if it all was mine. If you get there before I do, Tell all my friends I’m coming too. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home, Swing low, sweet chariot, coming for to carry me home.

    There was only one reason we could sing that song on New Year’s Eve: but early! And there is only one reason African Americans are able to keep the faith today in this MAGA environment. It is the power, the presence, and the promise of God captured in the words but early!

    Notes 1 Isaac Watts, “At the Cross,” The New National Baptist Hymnal (Nashville, TN: National Baptist l l Publishing Board,1977), 79. 2 Benjamin E. Mays, The Negro’s God As Refl ected In His Literature (New York: Atheneum, 1968). 3 Ibid, 24. 4 Nicholas Kristof, “Reverend, You Say the Virgin Birth Is a Bizarre Claim?” TheNewYorkTimes.com, April 20, 2019. 5 Jacqueline Grant, “Womanist Theology: Black Women’s Experience as a Source for Doing Theology,” in Black Theology: A Documentary History volume 2: 1980-1992, edited by James Cone and Gayraud Wilmore (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 278. 6 M. Shawn Copeland, Enfl eshing Freedom: Body, Race, and Being (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010), 34. 7 www.tuskegee.edu, The U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, www.cdc.gov. 8 “Scottsboro Boys,” History.com, January 16, 2020. 9 www.tulsahistory.org: 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre 10 Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America (New York: Random House, 2002), x-xii. 11 Rayford Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro(New York: Collier Books, 1956), 107. 12 Joan R. Harrell, “Watch Night Service in the Black Church in America: 150 Years After the Emancipation Proclamation,” Huffi ngtonPost.com, December 31, 2012.

  • Jubilee on the Way: Readings from Luke in the Season after Pentecost

    This text was converted from the original print edition for full-text searchability. Formatting may differ from the original. Consult the PDF for citation and presentation details.

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    Jubilee on the Way:

    Readings from Luke in the Season after Pentecost

    Mary Hinkle Shore Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir-Rhyne University, Columbia, South Carolina

    During the twenty-two weeks of ordinary time after Trinity Sunday and before observance of the Reign of Christ, all the lectionary gospel readings are from Luke. All but two of the Pentecost gospel readings take place after Jesus has set his face toward Jerusalem and before he has arrived there. Half of the readings include at least one parable, and several either set the action at mealtime or picture Jesus offering advice related to table fellowship and hospitality. In the texts after Pentecost, then, Jesus is found walking, talking, and eating. All of these actions are occasions for Jesus to announce and enact what he had spoken of at the synagogue in Nazareth. There Jesus had read a text from Isaiah pro­ claiming the Spirit upon the prophet to bring good news, freedom, healing, and “the acceptable year of the Lord.” After reading, Jesus commented, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21)? The rest of the gospel offers one instance after another of that fulfillment. Jesus proclaims Jubilee and enacts it in the lives of the people he encounters.

    On the Way to Jerusalem A third of Luke’s Gospel is the story of a road trip. In the reading for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 9:51-63), Jesus sets his face to Jerusalem, and then he takes nearly ten chapters to get there. Jerusalem is many things. It is the location of the temple, also known to Jesus as “my Father’s house” (cf. Luke 2:41-50). It is where his coming exodus, discussed with Moses and Elijah, will take place (cf. Luke 9:31). Outside Jerusalem, he will be hailed as “the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Luke 19:38). Days later, within the city, he will be the object of the mob’s shouts, “Crucify him!” (Luke 23:21). “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” Jesus laments (Luke 13:34). Events on the way to Jerusalem unfold in the shadow of the rejection that awaits him there. Still, all along the way, Jesus lives and gives life to others. He enacts good news, freedom, healing, and Jubilee among those he meets.

    Luke 9:51-62 We hear first of Jesus’ resolve to go to Jerusalem in the reading for the Third Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 9:51-62). The reading should perhaps begin at verse 49, which would add Luke’s account of the unknown exorcist and Jesus’ directive to the disciples, “Do not stop him; for whoever is not against you is for you” (v. 50). The news that those who are not with the disciples may nonetheless be for them is helpful context for the two themes of the day’s gospel reading. The first half of this reading is the scene in which Samaritans, who do not regard the Jerusalem temple as a worthy destination for worship, reject Jesus’ advance team because his face is set toward Jerusalem. Confronted with the Samaritans’ decision

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    to withhold hospitality, James and John propose a scorched-earth response. Jesus rebukes them. Had John remembered the unknown exorcist and the news that their circle of friends was wider than it sometimes appeared, the brothers may have been less offended by the a refusal of welcome. The second half of the reading goes in a different direction. Just when we thought openness was the word for the day, Jesus goes on to dismiss would-be followers because their interest in discipleship is not sufficiently single-minded. One wishes first to bury his father; another wants to say farewell to his family. Both receive harsh sayings in response. Jesus is intense, apparently impatient for what is ahead on the road and in the city. The two parts of the text force readers to hold two ideas together: (1) discipleship is a matter of urgency and resolute focus, and (2) the condemnation of those who do not sense that urgency or have that focus is not a disciple’s work to do. Can followers of Jesus be fervent in our discipleship without an accompanying fervor to condemn those who reject the way of life we know? Last year, one of the students at the seminary where I work went through a crisis related to her sense of call. The crisis began when she realized that if she were called to pastoral ministry, she would become pastor to at least some people whose worldview and politics she finds repugnant. What could prepare her for such sacrificial love? In the gospel reading from Luke 9, a closer walk with Jesus empowers a more (not less) generous spirit toward those with whom we share few convictions and experiences. The One we follow is not interested in rejecting those who offer offense. He will not be focused even on saving his own life. When his followers’ most deeply cherished loves are rejected by others, vengeance is not a fitting response. In the reading for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, Jesus will tell the disciples that the appropriate level of rebuke for those unreceptive to the good news is not fire from heaven but rather the shaking of dust from one’s sandals. On the way with him, we are intense in our following and restrained in our rebuking.

    Luke 10:38-42 At the beginning of Luke 10, Jesus sends out seventy people in pairs to offer peace, cure the sick, and announce that the reign of God has come near. At the end of Luke 10, in the gospel reading for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Martha receives (dekomai) Jesus into her home. Warren Carter points out that all six uses of the verb dekomai in preceding chapters of Luke have to do with people’s “openness to the word and work of God.”2 Martha’s sister Mary is also present and listening (akoud) to Jesus. The verb akoud appears earlier in Luke 10 as the opposite of rejecting the word proclaimed by the 70 (cf. 10:16). These two women are followers of Jesus, receiving him and listening to his word. Even as Martha welcomes Jesus, she is preoccupied by much diakonia? The story of Mary and Martha has often been preached as a rebuke from Jesus to busy women, especially women who are busy with the work of getting a meal on the table.4 A friend remembers her mother saying to her pastor father about this text, “Don’t preach that story if you want Sunday dinner!” Holly E. Hearon notes, however, that the text nowhere mentions kitchens or meals, and she advises preachers, “Consider whether you would preach this text differently if the two characters were named Jake and Jeremy.”5 If they had male names, the tradition might imagine Mary and Martha

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    were two of the seventy sent out ahead of Jesus. Could the diakonia in which Martha feels abandoned be the work for which the two women were commissioned in Luke 10:2?6 Warren Carter suggests that the text is instructing its readers in the central impor­ tance of partnership for Luke’s understanding of discipleship and mission. Earlier in the chapter, the Samaritan of the parable exercised his devotion to God and neighbor in partnership with the innkeeper. Now Mary and Martha are in diakonia together, even when the road is bumpy, as it seems to be in this story. “As much as ministry or brokerage is commissioned for the service of another, it is carried out with others, as an act of partnership.”7 The story is not a contrast between being a disciple (Mary) and being distracted (Martha). Rather, the story anticipates the word of Jesus in Luke 11:28 that discipleship includes both hearing (Mary) and doing (Martha) the word of God. Martha, “distracted from ministry’s source” by ministry itself, is called back to that source by Jesus himself.8

    Parables in Pentecost Half of the gospel texts in Pentecost include at least one parable. Parables sneak up on their hearers, revealing insights that hearers could better resist if a speaker named them directly. Parables disorient in order to reorient. They lift hearers out of business as usual and set us down in a place that looks like Jubilee. Perhaps because disorientation is so uncomfortable, it is easy to turn parables into stories with a moral. The preacher sums up the sermon with a “we should” or a “let us,” and everyone is immediately back on familiar ground. We have heard a sermon and now we know what to do. Yet a parable means not to tutor us so much as change us. Its aim is to orient us to the work of God in our midst.

    Luke 16:1-13 A text helps to illustrate the point. One of the reasons the gospel for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost (Luke 16:1-13) is difficult to preach is that it so thoroughly resists moralizing. In this parable, a thoroughly corrupt manager cheats his employer out of even more money after the manager learns he is being sacked, and in response, the employer commends the manager. How is this behavior commendable? Both Luke and the lectionary situate the parable in such a way to lead hearers to a moral something like “The rich should not make an idol of their riches.” Luke piles up several verses of Jesus’ sayings related to faithfulness, money, and service, and closes the section with “You cannot serve God and wealth.” The lectionary pairs this gospel reading with Amos 8:4-7, which addresses itself to those who trample on the needy and in which the Lord declares, “Surely I will never forget any of their deeds.” Certainly this “moral of the story” is true: indeed the rich should not make an idol of their wealth. God expects righteousness from God’s people. God is angry when­ ever and wherever the rich are “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes” (Amos 4:6). Still, what does this moral have to do with the commendation of the manager in the parable? He is not generous, except with another’s assets, and his generosity is motivated entirely by self-interest. He is no Robinhood, unconvention­ ally redistributing wealth toward a more just society. He is a fellow who is too weak to dig and too ashamed to beg. Surely he is a negative example of morality, yet he is

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    commended by the one for whom he works. Why? If the goal of a parable is to disorient us, this one is doing its job well. Daniel M. Bell, Jr. proposes a way forward. “As Jesus suggests in Luke 16, that lovely parable of the dishonest manager, wealth—mammon—is for making friends, for welcoming and being welcomed into the eternal homes. That is, it is for… renewing commu­ nion.”9 The dishonest manager recognizes that material goods are for drawing people together. Thus he is commendable in a way that most middle class Americans are not. To those who live in a culture where self-sufficiency is the highest value, the parable offers reorientation to the values of Jubilee. Communion, rather than self-sufficiency, is God’s aim for all that God has made. The goal of giving is not to offer others the minimum needed to mollify Amos’s God. (Would that be 2%? 10%? Is that off of gross or net?) The goal of giving is not to maintain our isolation from the needy and theirs from us. Jesus comes to give us back to God and to each other. The goal of giving—and the rest of life—is for travelers on the Way to connect, to be friends, to be together the body of Christ in the world.

    Luke 16:19-31 As a storyteller, Jesus stands outside the parables he tells. At the same time, his life and ministry themselves exegete those parables. Helmut Thielicke, in his famous sermon on the first half of the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-24), concludes that the one who tells the story shows us the Father (cf. John 14:8-9), not only by speaking the parable but also by entering it. For Thielicke, Jesus is the Son who travels to the far country—the Word made flesh—not to squander all he has been given but to raise up a languishing humanity and welcome us again to our true home. Theilicke describes the speaker of the parable, saying, “He is not merely imagining a picture of an alleged heaven that is open to sinners; in him the kingdom is actually in the midst of us. Does he not eat with sinners? Does he not seek out the lost? Is he not with us when we die and leave all others behind? Is he not the light that shines in the darkness? Is he not the very voice of the Father’s heart that overtakes us in the far country and tells us that incredibly joyful news, ‘You can come home. Come home!”’10 The story of the Rich Man and Lazarus, assigned for the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, offers another example of a parable that Jesus tells and then exegetes with his life, death, and resurrection. In Luke 16:19-31, Jesus tells a story in which things work out for a poor man and do not work out for someone who went through life rich. Telling a story about the reversal of fortune, Jesus is in the company of Han­ nah, Amos, Jeremiah, and his own mother, Mary. The world we know is unjust but is eventually set right as God vindicates those who suffered from the neglect or the exploitation of their neighbors. At the end of the parable, the rich man attempts to strike a deal with Father Abra­ ham. Couldn’t Lazarus be sent back to earthly life to warn the rich man’s brothers? It might be too late for him, the man reasons, but shouldn’t his brothers get the chance to repent? Abraham refuses. “They have Moses and the prophets,” he says. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if some­ one rises from the dead” (Luke 16:29-31). As far as Abraham is concerned, both the chasm between the rich man and Lazarus and the chasm between rich man’s insight in death and the thoughtlessness of his brothers in life are fixed and unbridged.

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    But Abraham is wrong about that. The gospel message is not “Just hold on until you die; then things will be better.” The gospel message is not “Dig a little deeper for the guy with the cardboard sign, or be prepared to suffer for eternity.” The gospel is that Jesus bridges chasms thought to be fixed and uncrossable, like the chasm between rich and poor, the chasm between sin and righteousness, and the chasm between death and life. The crucifixion is every bit as much a story of reversal as the story of the rich man and Lazarus, but in the story of the crucifixion, the dying one asks pardon for the executioners. Neither in life nor in death is Jesus ever as hopeless as Father Abraham about who can be changed. That is our hope.

    At Table with the Lord Luke offers more table scenes than any other gospel. Eating appears more often in the parables Luke includes than in those of Mark and Matthew, and Luke narrates Jesus sitting down to meals with a greater variety of people.11 In the texts read during Pentecost, Jesus counsels the seventy twice to “eat what is set before you” when they are received by strangers (Luke 10:1 -11; 16-20); the friend at midnight needs food for a guest (Luke 11:1-13); the rich fool speaks to his soul in splendid isolation, “relax, eat, drink, and be merry” (Luke 12:13-21); those servants who are awake when the master returns are treated to breakfast (Luke 12:49-56); and a group at table with Jesus receive lessons concerning where to sit as guests and whom to invite as hosts (Luke 14:1; 7-14). Throughout the gospel and Acts, food and table fellowship provide occasions for the work of Jesus and the Spirit to heal, teach, and expand the circle that encompasses God’s people.

    Luke 19:1-10 Just a few miles outside Jerusalem, Jesus meets Zacchaeus, a tax collector who is short enough and possibly also unpopular enough that he cannot get to the front of the crowd. He climbs a tree to see Jesus. Jesus, who seemed at first to have been just passing through Jericho (cf. Luke 19:1), sees Zacchaeus and announces to the man, “I must stay at your house today” (Luke 19:5). The necessity of this visit, like other necessities in Luke, is communicated by the verb dei. In Luke 2, the boy Jesus had explained to his parents that he must be in his Father’s house. In Luke 9:22, Jesus confides to the disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering… and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” In Luke 13:16, divine necessity dictates that the woman who could not stand up straight must not suffer one more day but must be set free from her ailment on the sabbath. The father of the prodigal says to his elder son, “We had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found” (Luke 15:32). This is the sort of requirement laid upon Jesus with respect to Zacchaeus: Jesus must be with him. That is all Zacchaeus needs to hear. He welcomes Jesus to his home, as Martha had welcomed Jesus to her home in Luke 10. Witnesses grumble that Jesus should keep better company, but neither Jesus nor Zacchaeus sees a problem. In the company of Jesus, the tax collector is moved to announce a change to his household budget. As a parable can reorient us to the work of God in our midst, so can a visit from Jesus. Salvation, in the person of Jesus, comes to the house, and—look! — a camel makes his way through the eye of the needle (cf. Luke 18:25). Jubilee! Zac­ chaeus sees that he is connected to the poor, and he is ready to bring something to

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    the table in that relationship. Zacchaeus sees fraud where he had only seen his own “getting by” before, and he offers restitution. In response Jesus announces the point of his entire ministry, whether in Galilee, on the way to Jerusalem, or in the holy city: “The Son of Man came to seek out and save the lost” (Luke 19:10). We give up on so many people, including sometimes ourselves. Jesus breaks bread with them, with us. As the Pentecost season draws to a close, the church celebrates the Reign of Christ with a reading from the passion narrative, Luke 23:33-43. Jesus is no longer walking, speaking in parables, or breaking bread along the way. Here Christ reigns from a cross, and still he is enacting Jubilee. The scene includes two “last words” from Jesus that are unique to Luke. He asks for forgiveness for those killing him, and he befriends a thief crucified beside him. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” To be with Jesus along the way, even in the bleakest hour, is to know the Lord’s favor.

    Notes 1 All Bible quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version. 2 Warren Carter, “Getting Martha out of the Kitchen: Luke 10:38-42 Again,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 58:2 (1996), 268. 3 Cf. Holly E.Hearon, “Luke 10:38-42,” Interpretation 58/4 (Oct 2004): 393-395, “In Luke-Acts, [words in the cognate group of diakonia] are associated explicitly with table-service (4:39; 12:37; 17:8; 22:27a; Acts 6:1), financial or material support (Luke 8:3; 11:29), but also proclamation of the word (Acts 6:4) and ministry (Acts 1:17,25; 12:25; 20:24; 21:19). The absence of any reference to a kitchen or a meal in Luke 10:38-42 leaves open the question of the source of Martha’s distraction. Some form of ministry, even proclamation of the word, is, at the very least, a possibility” (Hearon, 394-95). 4 Cf. Brendan Byrne, S J., The Hospitality of God: A Reading of Luke ’s Gospe/, second ed. (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2000), “Martha has gone overboard in the duties of hospitality; she is busy about preparing many dishes when really only one is needed” (Kindle location 2103). 5 Holly E. Hearon, “Luke 10:38-42,” 393. 6 Mary Rose D’Angelo, “Women Partners in the New Testament,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Re­ ligion 6:1 (Spring 1990), 65-86, posits that “the Martha and Mary behind the stories in Luke and John were a missionary couple, a pair like Paul and Sosthenes. As Paul designated himself as ‘apostle’ and Sosthenes ‘brother’ (adelphos’, 1 Cor. 1:1), so Martha was designated as diakonos and Mary as ‘sister’ (adelpheC (78). 7 Carter, “Getting Martha out of the Kitchen,” 276. 8 Ibid., 279. 9 Daniel M. Bell, Jr., “The Story of Stuff (including the Stuff We are Made of) or Why We Have What We Have,” lecture at the 2022 Stewardship Symposium, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary of Lenoir-Rhyne University, January 28, 2022. Video recording available at https://youtu.be/YBpSGOdtZQ ?t=3243. See also, “In Praise of Dishonest Managers: The Economic Crisis in Light of Luke 16:19,” The Other Journal 17 (Feb 3,2010), URL https://theotherjoumal.eom/2010/02/03/in-praise-of-dishonest -managers-the-economic-crisis-in-light-of-luke-161-9/, accessed February 4,2022. 10 Helmut Thielicke, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus, trans. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper, 1959), 29. 11 Luke is the only gospel, for instance, where Jesus is explicitly pictured accepting invitations to dine at the home of a Pharisee (cf. Luke 7:36-50; 11:37; 14:1-24).

  • Introduction to Preaching: Scripture, Theology, and Sermon Preparation

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    One New Book for the Preacher

    Thomas G. Long

    Cambridge, Maryland

    Leah D. Schade, Jerry Sumney, and Emily Askew, A Preaching Primer: Theology, Scripture and Sermon Preparation (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, forthcoming 2022)

    Fred Craddock, who in his socks stood barely above five feet, used to quip that he was well over six feet tall before he started teaching preaching. Teaching budding pastors how to preach cogent sermons, difficult enough in Craddock’s day, has be­ come even more vexed recently. When I began teaching homiletics in the 1970s, I at least had the advantage of operating with what seemed at least like a common pur­ pose and a unified student audience: a homogeneous group of mostly Presbyterians, all of whom were headed toward parish ministry and who were eager to learn how to be effective preachers. Not so today. Many seminarians have little interest in congregational ministry, are indifferent at best to the whole enterprise of preaching sermons, and possess a Twitter-age touchiness, often ready to go to the mat over fine distinctions of identity and diversity. Small wonder that many homiletics classrooms, in an attempt to meet the many needs of a multiple constituency, have fragmented into a Golden Corral buffet of bewildering pedagogical choices. One piece of collateral damage of this Balkanization has been the basic preaching textbook. Who would assume that a single text could serve the needs of all students? Who would dare write such a monolithic thing? Who would assume the authority to speak for this multiplicity of identities? What could an African American Baptist homiletician possibly have to say to an Episcopal student, a Methodist female author to a male Church of God in Christ seminarian? Many teachers of preaching have long ago scratched textbooks from their syllabi in favor of a cacophony of diversi­ ty-driven readings, blogs, and video sermons. The current partitioning, and perhaps even confusion, has a history. Years ago, the Academy of Homiletics, the oldest American guild for teachers of preaching, assembled a task force to study how preaching should be taught in the contemporary classroom. After analyzing the current context, the task force eventually advocated for a radical student-centered approach. Don’t try to teach a classroom, they ad­ vised. Instead, teach each student one-by-one. Within every student, they argued, was a little preacher ready to be summoned, eager to come out. Instead of teaching monolithic classes, homileticians were encouraged to realize that they were teaching discrete and unique individuals and should tailor instruction around each student’s gifts and proclivities.

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    This was all well-intentioned, of course, and it did soften and take some of the terror out of preaching classes, but it also led to pedagogical madness. Would any self-respecting law school assume that inside each student is a little litigator eager to emerge? Would any medical school professor look out at a class and see the room filled with little neurosurgeons in embryonic form? No, in preaching as well as in law or medicine, there are time-honored traditions and disciplines to be learned. There are accepted ways to do kidney surgery, to cross examine hostile witnesses, or to engage scripture in sermons. The goal is to stretch students, to introduce them to best practices, not to whittle complex practices down to the crevices of an isolated student’s unchallenged capacities. Now, three professors from Lexington Theological Seminary—Leah D. Shade, who teaches preaching; Jerry Sumney, a biblical scholar; and Emily Askew, an emer­ itus theologian— have accomplished an amazing feat. With full attention to the new pluralism in the preaching classroom, they have nevertheless been bold enough to produce for a new generation a basic textbook for preachers, A Preaching Primer: Theology, Scripture, and Sermon Preparation. And a wise and thoughtful text it is, useful not only for beginners but also for experienced preachers. The secret in their sauce is that they focus on sermon infrastructure. All sermons, regardless of whether they are Lutheran Advent homilies or extemporaneous mes­ sages whooped in a Chicago storefront, must have design, structure, and purpose if they are to be heard by listeners. And it is to these essentials that the three Lexington scholars attend. After a lucid section on biblical exegesis and a refreshing discussion of the theological heart of biblical texts and sermons (one that, characteristic of the current climate in biblical interpretation, is alert to the ideologies and social biases found in both texts and traditional interpretations), they turn to the structural essen­ tials of sermons, which they name “the central question,’ “the central purpose. The central question is “the compelling inquiry that is driving the congrega­ tion to want to listen and the reason they should want to respond to the sermon.” When this central question is brought close enough to the sermon’s chosen bib­ lical text for sparks to fly, the result is “the central claim,” namely, “the main point you are making that should mean something for our listener’s lives, for our neighbors near and far, and for all in God’s Creation.” Preachers preach to effect change, of course, and “the central purpose” of the sermon is “what this sermon intends to do and what it will accomplish,” that is, the “so what” of the sermon. The beauty in these three categories is that the authors never lose sight of the fact that preaching is, after all, a form of human communication. Theologically, it may be more than that, but certainly not less. Paul Ricoeur once reminded us with elegant simplicity that in human communication, “someone says some­ thing to someone else about something.” The authors of A Preaching Primer guide preachers to attend to the various components of the something said to someone else 99 ii.’the central claim,” and

    99

    Advent 2022

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    about something. The clearer preachers are about these factors, the better chance the sermon has of hitting home. There is a lot of acquired wisdom in these pages, but the writers convey it in conversational language, presenting themselves not as professors from on high but as companions of the reader in a journey of learning. The volume is punctuated by carefully curated sermons, annotated by the authors, that helpfully embody the key insights of the book. A series of classroom exercises and a glossary of major terms is included at the end of the volume. A Preaching Primer will no doubt be embraced by the current generation of teachers of preaching and also by pastors looking to strengthen their pulpit ministry.

  • Finding Our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching

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    Easter 2022

    One New Book for the Preacher

    Katie Nakamura Rengers Offi ce of Church Planting for the Episcopal Church, Birmingham, Alabama

    Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong, Finding our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching (Bellingham, Washington: Lexham Press, 2020)

    In Finding our Voice: A Vision for Asian North American Preaching, authors Matthew D. Kim and Daniel L. Wong pose a simple question: “Do ANA preachers have a preaching voice?” By this they mean, could one read or hear a sermon and intuitively sense that its hermeneutics, theology, and style fl ow out from a church leader of Asian descent? It was this question that drew me into the book, inspiring the sobering realization that despite being Sansei (third generation Japanese American), and despite having been an ordained Episcopal priest for a decade, I had never before heard it asked aloud and had never personally considered my own answer. Kim and Wong begin with the premise that it is spiritually necessary for ANA (Asian North American) preachers to develop our “unique homiletical voice akin to other minority groups such as African American and Hispanic American preaching traditions.” A common stereotype of Asian Americans is that of the “perpetual foreigner.” The uniqueness of this book is that it focuses instead on post-immigrant generations of ANA preachers, with whom Kim and Wong themselves identify. If the authors’ fi rst question drew me in, it was this focus that kept me reading—fi nally a book that acknowledges the second, third, and fourth generations’ stories, and insists on the value of bringing those experiences into the pulpit! For Kim and Wong, a preacher’s “homiletical voice” means far more than just its tone and delivery. In this book, they ask how ANA church leaders interpret scripture, how we exegete ourselves and our own experience of identity, and how we then turn those things into a proclamation of how God acts in our lives and in the world. The ANA preaching voice is critical because there are certain human experiences that Americans of Asian ancestry are especially prepared to speak to. Kim and Wong point out that because of our sense of living “in-between” traditional Black, White, and Latino American defi nitions, we are particularly tuned to address deep questions of identity and belonging. For reasons of physical appearance and/or feelings of internal aberration from the cultural norm, the authors say that ANAs often struggle “to love themselves as people made in the imago Dei.” Preachers who have experienced this struggle for themselves can offer a counter-message of hope and belonging. I also heard a personal challenge from Kim and Wong. Like most of the ANA leaders they describe, I learned a White style of preaching. I learned to preach primarily from observing the preachers who were most infl uential on me, and from pastoring majority-White churches for almost the entirety of my 10 years as an Episcopal priest. As I refl ect on my preaching, I can recall many moments when I’ve diminished my own experience as an ANA person in favor of stories and spiritual explanations that felt more “relevant” to my White audience. As I read this book, I was compelled to ask “What voice, what perspective on God’s love, do I have as a Japanese-American that I’ve thus far been withholding?”

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    Journal for Preachers For example, perhaps ANA pastors are well positioned to help our established churches respond to the dissonance that many post-pandemic Americans feel between mainline church culture and their own identity as spiritual beings. Christians tend to forget that our way of gathering and worshiping is itself a cultural phenomenon and should be adapted to reach people who aren’t already part of the church. Kim and Wong approach this from the viewpoint of scriptural hermeneutics, offering a discussion of what they see as Evangelical Christians’ tendency to dismiss cultural contextualization of Scripture and to see ethnic and cultural identity as secondary to a person’s “identity in Christ.” Though progressive denominations usually have a more favorable view of contextual theology, liturgical traditions like mine can harbor an equally large blind spot when it comes to contextualizing practice. Episcopalians are taught to love the beauty, transcendence, predictability, and commonality of The Book of Common Prayer, a text rooted in the very specifi c language and culture of the Church of England. ANA leaders, most of whom have experienced some degree of dissonance in a church setting, can model new possibilities for how we invite people to bring their whole selves to a spiritual community. ANA preachers, Kim and Wong say, also bring a voice of hope to themes such as marginalization, pilgrimage, and “home.” As they describe the cultural “liminality” many ANAs fi nd ourselves in—“a feeling of being between two cultures while not fi tting in to either one”—I found myself thinking of Jeremiah 29, in which the prophet exhorts the people to “seek the good of the city in which you are in exile, for in its welfare you will fi nd your welfare.” What does it look like to understand that people may never completely fi nd belonging, yet are willing to commit anyway to seeking the good of the place and people around them? A sermon on this topic would speak not only to people of minority ancestry, but also to communities wrestling with socioeconomic diversity or struggling to communicate and love across generations. The sequel I’m longing for is a lengthier refl ection on how ANA preachers might use our unique voices to preach to majority White and multi-cultural churches. Kim and Wong give this a brief nod in Chapter 5 (“The Future of Asian North American Preaching”); the reality, however, for many Mainline ANA preachers is that we are often the only persons of Asian descent in our congregation, if not one of the only people of color at all. This is, of course, at the heart of why so many of us assimilate to a White style of preaching—we are attempting to be pastoral, to meet our White congregations where they are, and (like Jesus) to speak to them in imagery and theologies that are relevant to their lives. The danger is that we then deny ourselves and our congregations the gift of bringing our fullest selves into the pulpit; we speak about the things that we think matter greatly to the people in the pews, but we neglect the issues that are most critical to us. Such self-censorship is disempowering to the preacher, and more importantly, it may prevent us from connecting to some of the deep issues present in our congregations. After all, it isn’t only ANAs who struggle with identity, belonging, and seeing ourselves in the imago Dei! I once heard a Black preacher say “You can’t preach what you don’t know any more than you can come back from where you ain’t been.” Finding our Voice encourages ANA preachers to wonder “where have I been that I can return from, for the sake of uplifting others on their journey of faith?” I would only add that regardless of our ethnicity, this is the kind of vulnerable and courageous question all preachers should continually be asking.

  • Those Who Dream . . . Prepare the Way

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    Those Who Dream . . . Prepare the Way

    Mark 1:1-8 and Isaiah 40:1-11

    Betsy Swetenberg

    Northridge Presbyterian Church, Dallas, Texas

    Advent—the season of waiting for the church. Most years, clergy urge church­ goers to slow down, to lift their heads from the sugar-induced stupor of holiday parties, to take a day where you don’t run around frenzied, trying to complete the Christmas tasks, to be still and reflect. But this Advent, I find myself impatient. We’ve been waiting. We’ve slowed down to a near stop. We’ve had more quality time with our immediate family mem­ bers than we knew possible. We’ve stepped away from travels and traditions and gatherings in a big way. So, this year Advent feels more like salt in the sores we’ve developed from our sedentary waiting these last nine months instead of a welcome reminder of respite. Advent is about the good news that comes in the midst of disorientation, the gifts the darkness brings. It’s no accident we light candles during the season of Advent. As we journey toward Christmas, the nights get longer, the sun gets weaker, the days get colder—all leading toward the winter solstice, December 21st, the longest night of the year. We need all the warmth and light we can get. Things work the other way for Lent and Easter. In spring the days get brighter and warmer and longer as Easter draws near. But not so for Advent and Christmas. And so we light candles to remind ourselves that God is with us even in the deepest darkness. “New life starts in the dark,’’ Barbara Brown Taylor says. “Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.’’ But we know the darkness all too well this year. Do we really need to dwell on it for a month? This year, I find myself wanting to skip ahead without feeling beholden to waiting and preparation. It’s interesting that in Mark, the gospel for today, we don’t get a birth story—no waiting, no shepherds or wise men, no Mary or Joseph. The good news doesn’t be­ gin with anything resembling Christmas. Instead we get this wild prophet, John the Baptist, and his call to repent. It’s a call to action. Repentance is not really a wel­ come word for us, perhaps calling to mind old-time tent revivals or monks whipping themselves for every wayward thought, or that word most of us would prefer to steer clear of: sin. The word repentance comes from the Greek metanoia, which means to think again, to think anew, to have a change of mind, a change of consciousness. As Mary Oliver says.

    The path to heaven doesn’t lie down in flat miles.

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    It’s in the imagination with which you perceive this world, and the gestures with which you honor it.

    Repentance is about the imagination; it’s the ability to dream a new dream. It’s about seeing differently. You know that famous optical illusion where the same im­ age can be seen as either an old woman or young woman? Most of us see only one of the images when we first look at it, but with some effort, some imagination, some refocusing of our vision, we can get ourselves to see the other. Repentance invites us to shift our imagination, to see a new pattern, to see the light sometimes hidden in the dark—to open ourselves to the joyous, liberating surprises of God. Maybe that’s the invitation we need from Advent this year—not time set apart from the chock-full calendars of holiday cheer, not a retreat from hustle and bus­ tle, not even a time to simply be. Maybe there’s no better invitation for us right now than the invitation to shift our imaginations, to dream a new dream. After a long, dark year, we need that kind of repentance. Because it’s been one unprecedented event after another, all against the backdrop of a pandemic that completely shut down our world and upended our lives and a political season that nearly drove us all mad. It reached the point where there were so many improbable events on the heels of one another that the improbable began to feel like the most probable. A Hurricane. And another. And another. And anoth­ er. Murder hornets. Remember those? An RV sized asteroid giving the earth a close shave? Spotify summed it up by saying to subscribers ‘‘thanks for spending all 67 months of the year with us.” And it’s felt like that—endlessly waiting for this year to make it to our rearview mirrors. But what if we take this season of Advent, the rest of this year even, to repent, to see differently. What if we stretch our imaginations and dare to dream that a new thing is possible. We’ll be able to gather around tables again with those we love. Our kids will go back to school. We will gather in crowds and attend concerts. We’ll properly celebrate and say goodbye to those we’ve lost. We’ll gather to toast those who are getting married. We’ll be able to share this sanctuary together. We’ll be able to see each other’s faces and hold each other’s hands and make music together again. Yes, a new thing is possible. This year will end, and the isolation and the masks and sanitizing fountains will one day be stories we tell our children, only distant memories instead of our reality. Let’s dare to dream that’s true. But let’s not stop there. A new heaven and a new earth, no more weeping or cries of distress, no infant mortality or premature death, no war or invasion or brutality—people build houses and get to live in them, people plant crops and get to eat their fruit, children are not bom in poverty or calamity, the wolf and the lamb feed together, no one hurts or destroys anymore. Why not go a little crazy with our dreams this Advent season?

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    Isn’t that what this season is all about? The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Generation after generation waited for some light, some sign that God was still with them, that the world could become something new. And they found their long-suffering hopes and dreams fulfilled on that holy night in that little town of Bethlehem. Of course their dreams weren’t fulfilled in exactly the ways they expected. After crying out to God, after years of waiting for an answer, their answer finally came in the silence of a stable. God didn’t send a mighty king to defeat all the enemies of Israel, as so many had hoped. Instead God sent a tiny little baby, shivering in the cold, a baby who had to have his diapers changed just like every other baby on the planet. How could the people not have been surprised? So they too had to repent, had to learn how to see again, to imagine differently, to see the divine creativity at work remaking the world in a tiny manger surrounded by sheep and donkeys. Listen to the words of Frederick Buechner: “So in Christ’s name, I commend this madness and this fantastic hope that the future belongs to God no less than the past, that in some way we cannot imagine holiness will return to our world. I know of no time when the world has been riper for its return, when the dark has been hun­ grier. Maybe the very madness of our hoping will give him the crazy, golden wings he needs to come on.” The birth of Jesus was but one moment in Christ’s coming—a moment which is repeated again and again in each of our lives and in the life of the world to come. So we are called to wait, to watch, to dream—even in the darkest darkness, even in the most abysmal abyss, even in the most absent absence of God. In this holy season of Advent, I invite you not to wait passively, but to get to work. I invite you to repent, to dream differently, to see the light sometimes hidden in the dark—to open yourself to the joyous, liberating surprises of God. May it be so.

  • Easter Sunday, 2021

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    Easter Sunday, 2021

    Mark 16:1-8

    Paul Palumbo

    Lake Chelan Lutheran Church, Chelan, Washington

    Where is the body of the risen Jesus? We do not get to see the body. Nobody does in Mark’s gospel. In the other accounts, Jesus arrives to grant peace to the disciples and give words of encouragement and even have a bite to eat. Not so in Mark. We must depend upon the words of the messenger at the tomb; we must trust the women who received the message. We could do far worse, by the way, than to trust these women. After all, they had gone to care for the body of Jesus with steadfast love, washing and tending to it, thereby showing themselves to be faithful. But neither they nor we get to see the body of the Risen Jesus. And then, there is the song that we don’t get to hear. It’s a psalm, actually. It is introduced by an often-overlooked line in Mark’s gospel, which appears also in Matthew and Luke, that goes like this, “When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.” You will recognize that from the Last Supper. The meal was over, and the hymn was sung. But they didn’t sing just any old hymn. They sang the same hymn that is sung at the end of every seder meal, Psalm 136. That psalm has 26 verses, and, in every verse, we hear this: “God’s steadfast love endures forever.” “Give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good. Gods steadfast love endures forever, who by wisdom made the heavens, God’s steadfast love endures forever, who divided the Red Sea in two, God’s steadfast love endures forever, who led the people through the wilderness….God’s steadfast love endures forever.” That’s the hymn that was sung before Jesus’ arrest. It is the song that we do not get to hear, but which nevertheless echoes throughout the passion and resurrection of Jesus, Gods steadfast love endures forever. So, no, we don’t see Jesus’ body, nor do we hear this hymn. All we are given is this: “He is risen, he is not here. But go and tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him….” Okay, but why not linger a while? Greet the disciples, have a meal? In the Gospel of Mark, that is not Jesus’ style. To get a glimpse of the risen Jesus, to get a measure of God’s steadfast love, we are invited to be on the way, beginning again. Maybe that’s because, raised from the grave, Jesus gets right to work, raising others from the dead. Like Ron, a young man struggling with alcoholism, who could not stay sober, and when he drank, could not resist getting behind the wheel of a car. He was arrested , arrested again, and continued to struggle with being possessed by alcohol. He was incarcerated for a good chunk of time, locked in jail and locked in his own shame. But then he met some people who fervently believe the word of the women at the tomb, for whom these words, “He is risen!” have actually raised them from the dead. And they took this young man under their wings and into their hearts until he experienced what they had experienced, a release from the vault of shame and from the bondage of addiction. Now he himself has joined this band of disciples, on the way to Galilee, starting over with his life and calling others who are in the same bondage that he knew so well, to join him and his fellow travelers on the way. If you

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    Journal for Preachers knew him before, you would not recognize him now. That is our resurrected Jesus at work. Sorry, no time to stop and chat; there are others who need to be raised from the dead. Steve, for instance, a Vietnam vet, came to Honorable Welcome Home, which, as many of you know, is our ministry to veterans of war. Veterans come to Lake Chelan for four days. We house and feed them and accompany them in whatever activities they choose in this lovely valley. We hear their stories and give them a non-judgmental environment in which to process the guilt and shame that has been eating them up for decades. Most importantly of all, they hear a word of forgiveness for what they were convinced was unforgivable. Steve came through Honorable Welcome Home a while back. I saw him again sometime later, and he told me how much his time in Chelan had meant to him. He told me, “After coming to Chelan, I have felt better than I have in forty years.” I said, “That is wonderful.” He said, “Ya know, we had some friends over for dinner the other night.” I said, “Yeah?” Now I’m waiting for the story, wondering what had happened at the dinner party, but nothing comes. Finally, Steve looked at me and said, “You don’t get it, do you?” “Apparently not!” I laughed. He smiled, but then with all seriousness, he said to me, “Paul, that’s the fi rst time in forty years that I have had anyone but my own family in my house. And next week, we are going to their house.” Raised from the dead, freed from a mountain of guilt and shame, a lifetime of not trusting others and feeling undeserving of even a simple shared meal with friends. Jesus at work raising the dead. But no time to stand around, Jesus is going back to the beginning, back to Galilee and even further back. I want you to look at the bulletin cover, the Icon of the Resurrection . This is Jesus in the middle, hands grasping two people, raising them up, one on his left and one on his right. We have heard that phrase recently, huh? The two criminals hung, one on his left and one on his right. The icon is not of that pair, however . It is Adam and Eve, being raised from the dead by the hands of Jesus. Because the promise, “God’s steadfast love endures forever,” is not just that God’s steadfast love endures from now on, which is great enough, but because, Lord have mercy, you know we have had a hard year, and we don’t know that next year is going to be any better, so sure, let us walk into the future hearing “God’s steadfast love endures forever!” But let us also be aware that “forever” goes not only forward into the future, but also into the past, including all that we have regretted, all that we have felt guilty about, all that we have locked away in a vault of shame over the years. Jesus breaks open the vault, grabs us by the arms, and raises us out of the grave of guilt and shame and regret. God’s steadfast love claims even this. “My steadfast love endures forever; it was here when you locked all these things up and it will remain forever.” For Steve and Ron, and maybe even for this congregation gathered on Easter morning. For as we are all painfully aware, over the past eighteen months the various opinions and practices around covid have taken their toll on our congregation. We have been locked in both resentment and deep regret over the division of the body. Several people have left to worship elsewhere, some for good and others until we decide to gather inside the church. Beth is in the latter camp. Since we are still worshiping outdoors, I was surprised to see her at the door of the church this morning, fl owers in her arms. As I came to greet her, she made it clear: “I am not coming to church this morning, because I decided I am not coming back until we worship inside, and I

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    am sticking to my guns on that.” Me being a stubborn Sicilian, I knew how she felt, and my own stubbornness started to rise up to meet hers. But Beth was still talking: “Someone asked me to bring fl owers, and so I am bringing fl owers.” Immediately, I was disarmed by this lovely gesture, and I got a glimpse. “Beth, let me tell you how I interpret this gift of fl owers. By this gift, I think you are saying that you still don’t agree with us worshiping outdoors, you haven’t changed your mind about that. But you want us to know that you still love us. Is that right?” And tears came to her eyes, and she said, “Yes, exactly.” And then I said, speaking for us all, “And we feel the very same way about you, Beth. We love you, too. And we are eager to be together again.” Right there at the door of the church, Jesus was busy raising us both from the dead, from mutual animosity and resentment to tearful and loving embrace. So maybe the things we do not get to see or hear in the story of Mark’s resurrection are here to be lived out. The body of Christ, reconciling, the promise of God’s steadfast love enduring through struggle, controversy, and hostility, until all are raised from the tomb of resentment and division and shame, like Ron and Steve, like Adam and Eve, like two stubborn people at the door of the church, raised up to new life and enduring love.

  • An Unpayable Debt: On Forgiveness

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    Page 28

    An Unpayable Debt: On Forgiveness

    Adam Mixon

    Zion Springs Baptist Church, Birmingham, Alabama,

    and The Ministry Collaborative, Decatur, Georgia

    GOD’s character is unchanging, unfailing, and impartial. Our current value systems are upset by GOD’s holy standards. While we have notions of fairness and justice that are reasonable to us, they often contradict those that are set forth by GOD. The parables of Jesus are more than just cute little illustrations for the sake of our good pleasure. The parables are more than just tales told to teach us lessons. The parables are in fact much more. These stories expose us to the very nature and the ways of GOD. To the unsanctifi ed ear and eye, they may be just stories, fables, or insightful tales, but for the believer, the parables allow us glimpses into the very essence and the will of GOD. What we fi nd in them is often disturbing and sometimes unsettling as they relate to our everyday experiences. We fi nd indeed that His ways are not our ways! We fi nd also that although we have traveled a great distance since we met Jesus, there is still a long way to go—as it does not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is! (1 John 3:2). GOD is merciful and longsuffering, gracious and generous. We are all (whether we acknowledge it or not) recipients and benefi ciaries of His amazing grace. This grace received is also required of us. In Matthew 18:21-35, Jesus tells a parable about forgiveness:

    21Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” 22Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy-seven times. 23“Therefore the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants [or bondservants]. 24When he began to settle, one was brought to him who owed him ten thousand talents [a monetary unit worth about twenty years’ wages for a laborer]. 25And since he could not pay, his master ordered him to be sold, with his wife and children and all that he had, and payment to be made. 26So the servant fell on his knees, imploring him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ 27And out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave him the debt. 28But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred denarii [a day’s wage for a laborer], and seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe.’ 29So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ 30He refused and went and put him in prison until he should pay the debt. 31When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their master all that had taken place. 32Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33And should not you have had mercy

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    Lent 2022 on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. 35So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”1

    A Closer Look Both men in our text owed an unpayable debt. The fi rst man begged mercy of his lord and was ultimately absolved of his debt and set free. This same man went out, free from his debts, and ruthlessly punished a man who owed him a sum much less than what he was forgiven from his lord. Both men owed debts they could not pay, although one was much greater than the other (any debt you don’t have money to pay is huge). The fi rst man received mercy but was not merciful. He was a hypocrite. The mercy he received, while it should have compelled him to be merciful, only made him sanctimonious. The fi rst man’s debts were forgiven, but his heart was still in bondage! Beware of judging your intentions while judging others for their actions–it is always lopsided! When we are unforgiving, we create prisons in our own lives. We hold people captive in our hearts and minds when we refuse to forgive. At the same time, by our own choosing, we determine to imprison ourselves in cells of bitterness, distrust, and vengefulness. We isolate ourselves from genuine loving relationships because we cannot look beyond another’s faults, we cannot absorb the results of another’s wrong, and we refuse to forget the weaknesses and indiscretion of others. While our goal may be to hold others accountable and attain some sense of justice, we undermine our own freedom and chances at happiness! Many of us are still grieving over wrongs committed against us in the past. We have tried to pull ourselves up and out of this pit, tried to move beyond the past, tried to move on with life, but it seems like we aren’t making any progress. Traumas, both individual and corporate, traverse generations and abort future hopes and healings. We simply cannot move on because we have circumvented the fi rst step–we must forgive. The fi rst step we must take in our own healing is to forgive “them”–whoever “they” may be! The wounds caused may leave scars that remain, but the pain does not have to. This becomes our choice. LORD, help us. So, as we receive GOD’s mercy, let us also receive GOD’s strength. Let them go, set them free from our hearts, forgive them with all our hearts, and allow GOD to remove every bitter pain! While our suffering indelibly shapes us, we mustn’t allow it to be what defi nes us. To live with unresolved pain tethers us to our trauma and binds us to brokenness and bitterness. This needn’t be the case. There is a way forward beyond our fractious former lives. We can be healed and become whole. Now, to be clear, this forgiveness is not simply some mental, emotional exercise. This is deep spiritual work that forces us to reckon with the unpayable debt that we all owe. We need more grace. We need the LORD’s help. This deep spiritual work forces us to fi nd common ground with our offenders and to see ourselves even within them. This is tough work, and it demands the utmost humility–a contrition wrought in us only as we fi nd ourselves alone in GOD’s presence. This type of humility occurs only as we realize our own unpayable debts and the grace that has been afforded us. We can be healed, whole, and forgiven. How awesome and troubling is it to stand alone before GOD! How overwhelm-

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    ing is it to stand in the presence of the One who knows everything about us–every thought, every word, every deed, every hidden desire – but somehow refuses to repent of His love. GOD loves us and will not change His mind about us. Regardless of our indebtedness , we are commended His love. While deserving judgment, we receive grace and forgiveness. We can be healed, whole, and forgiven, but we must realize that our receipt of these good gifts will also be required of us. Our unpayable debt is met with GOD’s unconditional love, the costs of which are unquantifi able–the impact undeniable and irresistible. We are healed, whole, and forgiven. As we have received freely, so must we give. We must grant others the same mercy we have received and desire from Our Lord–and the healing it brings! We once owed debts we could not pay, so Jesus paid a debt he did not owe! How do we live this out daily and practically? How do we model this when confronted with systemic injustice and institutional evil? I imagine there are many strategies we might employ, but regardless of inclinations–whether they tend toward personal piety or striving for public justice (the dichotomy here is shaky)–we must begin with forgiveness.

    35But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. 36Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful (Luke 6:35-36).

    LORD, as we receive your grace and forgiveness, we reckon with our unpayable debts. We also reckon with our scars and those who have wounded us. We are the same. LORD have mercy. We are the same. As you have dealt graciously with us–as you have forgiven us–help us to forgive. We need your help. Amen

    Note 1 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 18:21–35.

  • Without Hindrance!

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    Page 22

    Without Hindrance!

    t

    Walter Brueggemann

    Traverse City, Michigan

    On a recent windy day, Tia and I went to our beautiful West Bay in Traverse City in order to see the waves. The waves were four or fi ve feet high, splashing over piers and cars. There were, nonetheless, ducks fl oating serenely upon the waves, bobbing up and down with the waves, seemingly completely unbothered and without vexation. It occurred to me that the ducks were without hindrance, not hindered by waves or by wind or by readily fl oating debris. Seeing the ducks fl oat “without hindrance” caused me to remember a fi nal verdict on the apostle Paul in the last verse of the Book of Acts. The writer (Luke) reports that Paul was in Rome, “proclaiming the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). Given what we know about Paul and his many “toils and snares,” it is reassuring (and surprising!) that in his later days, he could continue his bold work “without hindrance ,” not hindered by imperial authorities in Rome where he proclaimed “another kingdom.” Nor was he hindered by Gentiles who baited him or by Jews who contested with him (see Acts 17:16-21). I could imagine Paul, not unlike those ducks, fl oating serenely about his work, unhindered, unbothered, and undisturbed. This is a remarkable verdict on Paul, given what we know of his vexed life and ministry. He himself summarizes the many hindrances that he faced:

    I am talking like a madman—I am a better one: with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless fl oggings, and often near death. Five times I have received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I received a stoning. Three times I was shipwrecked; for a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from bandits, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, hungry and thirsty, often without food, cold and naked. And, besides other things, I am under daily pressure because of my anxiety for all the churches. (II Cor. 11:23-28)

    All of that, however, seems to have been processed and digested (not forgotten!) in ways that permit Paul to fi nish “without hindrance.” This collection of “hindrances” that accumulated for Paul over time is likely more hazardous than most preachers face. But every preacher, in a moment of self-pity not unlike that of Paul, could as well offer a recital of something like that of Paul. It might go like this:

    I feel—when I think about it—like a madman (or mad woman). Countless insults, often near humiliation that has fi lled me with lingering hurt. I have received from believing folk forty hostile phone calls minus one. Three

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    Easter 2022 times I was harshly critiqued unfairly by my board. Once I had my monthly check withheld by a stubborn treasurer. Two times I have had folk cancel their pledges in anger. For a night and a day I knew myself to be abandoned and without support, in danger from my own congregation, danger from outsiders in the community, danger from neighbors, danger from fi ckle colleagues , danger from a remote unsupportive judicatory…many a sleepless night…under daily pressure because of anxiety for the church.

    None of this is as heroic as is Paul. It is, nonetheless, enough to cause sleepless nights and vexed days, with loss of appetite, temptation to drink…weak…made to stumble, and indignant (see II Cor. 11:29). Nobody said being a preacher would be easy. So how could Paul then be “without hindrance”? How could ducks fl oat in a storm without hindrance? How could contemporary preachers continue in boldness in ministry without hindrance? Luke, in the book of Acts, does not tell us, but he certainly knew of Paul’s inventory of vexations. We are free to imagine Paul as a child of the gospel who so fully trusted in God’s faithfulness that all his tribulations were kept in manageable perspective. He does not deny them or disregard them or minimize them. He names them and looks them full in the face. Indeed, perhaps he treasures them as markers of his boldness and fi delity . He nonetheless submits all of his troubles to the deeper, more elemental, more reliable claim of the gospel. He not only proclaims the goodness of God; he himself entrusts his own life to that goodness. This permits Paul, in his later years but surely all along the way, to turn his attention and energy away from his every trouble to the deep truth of the gospel that he has embraced. Indeed we may imagine that the ducks fl oat serenely through the storm because they know that the water will hold. The water is trustworthy and buoyant, and will not fail because of the wind. Thus I imagine a local pastor, much beset in the congregation: arguments about the color of the chancel carpet, disputes about the schedule of the youth program that collides with a basketball game, feuding families that preclude congregational harmony, irate parishioners who fl ail at a critiques of “45” or “being too political,” even if done obliquely. The local preacher can be done in by such daily challenges from those who are trapped in various alienations. The local preacher alternatively can, like the ducks, trust the buoyancy of the water, be like Paul to fall back into the goodness of God in a way that makes all the tribulations distinctly penultimate. To refocus attention on the basics is not easy in the midst of a troubled day. But no doubt those who embrace the freedom of the gospel are able to see past the daily storm to the abiding buoyancy. I am not sure the ducks are singing when they quack. But if they are singing, I hope they have in their repertoire this hymn that I sang in my growing up years:

    Jesus, Savior, pilot me Over life’s tempestuous sea; Unknown waves before me roll, Hiding rock and treach’rous shoal. Chart and compass came from thee; Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

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    As a mother stills her child, Thou canst hush the ocean wild; Boist’rous waves obey thy will When thou say’st to them, “Be still!” Wondrous Sov’reign of the sea, Jesus, Savior, pilot me.

    When at last I near the shore, And the fearful breakers roar ‘Twixt me and the peaceful rest, Then, while leaning on thy breast, May I hear thee say to me, “Fear not; I will pilot thee.”

    This was a hymn for Paul in his many days of trouble. It is a hymn for preachers every day. We do not need to be on automatic pilot, nor do we need to be at sea rudderless. Imagine differently the voice of the One who sees the waves and says in sovereign calmness, “Be still.” It is enough to live “without hindrance.”

  • One New Book for the Preacher

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    Page 55

    One New Book for the Preacher

    O. Benjamin Sparks

    Richmond, Virginia

    I know that inwardly I shall be really clear and honest only when I have begun to take seriously the Sermon on the Mount. Here is set the only source of power capable of exploding the whole enchantment and specter [Hitler and his rule] so that only a few burnt-out fragments are left remaining from the fi reworks.1 D. Bonhoeffer

    Issac J. Bailey, Why Didn’t We Riot, A Black Man in Trumpland (Other Press, New York, 2020), 173

    This is a book of essays; it is also a memoir, a confession of the severity of racism and its insidious infl uence, even upon the soul of a Black man. Issac Bailey is a graduate of Davidson College, a Neiman Fellow at Harvard, an accomplished journalist with an international reputation, and now the James K. Batten Professor of Communication Studies at his alma mater. I stumbled onto this book while I was searching for another in the “Black Studies” section at Barnes and Noble. I was immediately hooked by the Davidson connection, which—as depicted here—turns out to be a different school from the one I departed in 1961, when the college was still intentionally segregated. One question raised here is how Davidson, now conscientiously integrated and diverse, has changed. The overarching theme of these essays is how White people, even we who have the best intentions, seek to make ourselves comfortable rather than accept the soul piercing truth of White supremacy. We organize our lives and institutions with customs and interpretations that keep us from admitting the worst lessons about America and ourselves. Our excuses are endless, and our rationalizations seek to protect us from reality. In Richmond (and other towns and cities, but we were the Capitol of the Confederacy ), the treasonous myth of a noble Lost Cause was enshrined in monuments from 1890 until 2021. Lee’s gigantic bronze statue was six stories tall and was removed less than a month ago, which has upset White people from Florida to California. Yet the money to erect it was raised, prayed over, and blessed by Richmond’s most prominent Episcopal and Presbyterian ministers in the 19th Century. Bailey introduces the essays with the description of a scene from the Denzel Washington fi lm Antwone Fisher. The title character visits the foster home where he had grown up and where he was repeatedly abused before he escaped at age 14. Fisher is greeted warmly by his abuser, Mrs. Tate, who welcomes him with “Come here, Baby,” her arms outstretched for a welcoming hug. “Don’t touch me,” he snaps. He is no longer a little boy, but a man matured by the US Navy. He asks for Mrs. Tate (the Tates were a deeply religious couple), and she tries to relate to him personally, even tries to hug him, as though she were a longlost friend, not an evil that nearly destroyed Fisher.” He refuses her overtures and fi nally says to her, “You couldn’t destroy me. I am still standing. I’m still strong! And

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    Journal for Preachers I always will be.” Bailey then declares the theme of this book: “I’m Antwone Fisher to White America’s Mrs. Tate.” The strength of this book is that in essay after essay, Bailey does not let us forget the daily reality of America (and of church, college, and places of employment) as Mrs. Tate. Every essay indicts and laments, and reminds us that not only is the criminal justice system immersed in racism, but so is the church—evangelical, mainline, Protestant, and Catholic. In addition, even an educational institution like Davidson, which may be trying to atone for its past, still bends more toward comfort than justice, too often shying away from the harrowing discomfort of acknowledging the depth of racial injustice and the infection passed on from generation to generation. So why will this help preachers? It puts us in touch with Black rage. Why Didn’t We Riot? Invites us to walk several miles and several decades inside Bailey’s shoes, and to live in his often broken heart, and then to observe the hard changes that overcame him. As we listen to him, we begin to see in our own lives the long-lasting consequences of what White people (including this reader) have ignored or dismissed, no matter how much we try to change ourselves and our institutions. For too many years, I recall to my shame, I mocked the Confederate monuments on Richmond’s Monument Avenue rather than facing the harm they caused to many Black friends and the fear and despair they instilled. Reading this short book will expand our hermeneutic. It draws us inevitably to those texts where those whom the world counts as of no account—especially the foolish and the weak (cf. I Cor. 1:18-25)—become God’s agents for the gospel and for transformation. It invites us to refl ect upon Jesus, not as triumphal, not even in his resurrection, but in remembering his rejection, the mocking and scorn he endured —and the offi cial lies which led him to be crucifi ed. So much of our pesky scriptures (Hebrew as well as Christian) remind us that it is God who brings healing out of suffering, deliverance out of captivity against all odds, and life out of death. Bailey opens our eyes and hearts to a community of suffering in America which we helped to create and even unwittingly sustain, and into which we are invited for our own healing and redemption. The book urges us White Christians toward repentance and lament. There is a wonderful quote from Fred Craddock that rattles around in my head: “I draw my breath in pain to preach.” I count it as close to tragedy that I have heard no sermons on American injustice toward Black Americans that appear to have been crafted in pain. I believe we need preaching that invites us to “rend our hearts, and not our garments,” preaching that causes us not to insist that we as communities of faith lament the cruelty, the willful ignorance, and the fear that has bedeviled us White Christians into woeful silence or egged us on into self-righteous indignation toward the denizens of Trumpland, as if they were the problem and we are not. Or preaching that seems to imply that with a little love and social/political action, we can “make a difference.” As Bailey writes, “White supremacy can’t survive in this country without Christianity” (p. 55). In support he documents his experience of twenty years in a White Evangelical congregation that never saw the contradiction in their support of Trump, while professing to be racially inclusive. What is it, with regard to White supremacy and racial injustice, that we still refuse to see?

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    O Lord, open my eyes that I may see the needs of others; Open my ears that I may hear their cries; Open my heart so that they need not be without succor. Let me not be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong Nor be afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich. Show me where love and hope and faith are needed, And use me to bring them to those places. So open my eyes and my ears that I may this coming day be able To do some work of peace for them.2 Alan Paton

    Notes 1 From A Testament to Freedom, ed. By Kelly & Nelson, as quoted by Laura M. Frabrycky, “The Keys to Bonhoeffer’s House, Exploring the Word and Wisdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer” (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2020). 2 Alan Paton, “Spirituality and Practice,” in Life Prayers from Around the World by Elizabeth Robd d erts.

  • Birthing the Impossible

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    Page 19

    Birthing the Impossible

    Amina McIntyre

    Ph.D candidate, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

    Then Mary said, ”Here am

    Luke 1: 34-37 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, ^^to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’’^-^ yy^g niuch perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ^‘^The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. ^^He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his king­ dom there will be no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin? The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be borH^ will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ^^And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

    It’s Christmastide. We’ve sung all the songs. We’ve beheld the Lamb of God. We went and told it on the mountain. We’ve heard the Herald Angels sing. We’ve won­ dered What Child this was and sat still for the Silent Night. We’ve opened presents. We’ve celebrated the Christ candle being lit. We wrote and participated in Christmas pageants. We’ve watched all the movies. Maybe we were moved once again when Linus gave his speech at Charlie Brown’s Christmas or wondered how that poor Grinch’s heart could be so small. We’ve witnessed the reason for the season and miracles in our lives. Yet and still, many of us question the impossible. We hope for potential but doubt the tangible. We hope for the opportunity but doubt the reality. We hope for the ideal but doubt the manifestation. In the passage in Luke, we just learned about Elizabeth’s pregnancy. She wasn’t a young woman. She hadn’t been pregnant nor did she have a family. But she had been visited by an angel and told that her womb was opening. This was impossible, but it wasn’t, for you see, there has been history of these occurrences with the God of Abraham. Allow me to trace the genealogy a little. Sarai, Abraham’s wife, was barren to the point that they even brought in another woman to extend the lineage. Sarai laughed, but became a believer when she birthed the baby, Issac, changing her name to Sarah. She was the first of 6 women who had this occurrence. After Sarah

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    was Rebekah, Issac’s wife. Issac already believed it was possible based on lineage, and they had twins Jacob and Esau. After Rebekah was Rachel, Jacob’s second wife, the wife he worked 14 years to marry. She bore Joseph. Samson’s nameless mother in the book of Judges was also barren and encoun­ tered the messenger. The lineage doesn’t stop here: Hannah, second wife of Elkanah had trouble conceiving, and after pouring her heart out to God, she bore Samuel. So when we arrive at Elizabeth, it’s not actually out of place for a barren woman, perhaps up in her years or with a closed womb, to become pregnant. In the midst of this quite familiar story is an interruption with a story about a girl who has a similar experience. And midway through the conversation between the angel and Mary, the writers use a double negative (in the NRSV) to convey this phenomenon. Let’s talk about this sentence—For nothing yvill be impossible with God. When we worry about how we will engage youth and young adults,—For nothing will be impossible with God. When we worry about what might happen with ‘”45” over the next year—For nothing will be impossible with God. When we worry about our fi­ nances or illnesses or work and school issues—For nothing will be impossible with God. The writer takes the doubt, worry, and intangible to make it something that we can see and accept as a truth and a fact. This line alone can teach us of many bless­ ings, but it is what causes this statement to be said that we can learn from. “But Rev McIntyre, the impossible is the impossible. God wouldn’t use me, would God?” We have to understand the impossible isn’t just a situation but a move­ ment throughout your life. The impossible starts before the miracle. ^^“And he came to her and said, ‘Greet­ ings, favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. ^^The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ’ ” The angel enters and calls Mary “favored one,” the name as God sees her. Mary is confused because she is called by this name. Mary has yet to recognize the favor inside herself. God tells Mary to live in her calling before she recognized what her calling was. This makes sense later in her own parenting when Mary tells Jesus at the Wedding of Cana, “Go turn water to wine.” The scripture says God knew me before I knew myself. God knows what we’re capable of. God knows the healing that’s in your hands, how your next business venture will be funded, how you will make an impact in your church, com­ munity. There’s a child in here right now that has been dreaming of a way it wants to be involved in worship but doesn’t know it’s possible because it doesn’t realize that God has already named and ordained it. The impossible will combine old structure with new innovation. Verse 35-36 reads, ‘^^“The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be bom^-^ will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.

    Journal for Preachers

    Page 21

    As I mentioned, Elizabeth’s pregnancy isn’t what is out of place. See, for Mary, this kind of occurrence was very much, as Kendrick Lamar would say, ‘‘inside her DNA. What is odd is for a woman who is a virgin, unmarried, to receive the blessing of childbirth in the way that her ancestors did, but not in the way that her ancestors did. Mary’s birth was full of so many impossibilities. Much like this year going out and next year coming in, Elizabeth’s birth is the old way of how things happened, and Mary’s is the new way. Later, when they meet and their babies leap from the anoint­ ing placed in their wombs, we see that nothing is impossible with God. Mary knows that her situation is different. Mary knows Joseph won’t take it well, but knows God will soften his heart to whatever is to happen. The impossible mil invite you to submit to what is possible, even after Christmas has passed and as we are knee deep inside of Christmas. Mary had nothing but faith and commitment. ^^“Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’” Then the angel departed from her. The angel did not leave Mary until she confessed with her mouth that she was ready to receive this calling and step into her role. The angel did not physically leave until Mary spoke with her mouth her readiness to have her womb opened. So on the other side of Christmas, while we are yet in Christmastide, after the birth has occurred, after the shepherds have recognized the star, after we’ve spent time with family, after the presents have been opened, after Linus speaks in a “Char­ lie Brown Christmas,” after the Grinch’s heart has grown 3 sizes larger, there is still more to the story. The impossible is already set up in your life if you’re ready for your spiritual womb to open and birth the possibilities. The impossible only wants you to be willing to stretch your faith, stretch your gifts, stretch your dreams, stretch your talents, stretch your life, stretch your family, because you can handle God’s calling. You can handle that impossible within yourself. God crafted the heavens and the world out of nothing, for God births the impossible. God allows there to be fruitfulness over barren land, for God births the impossible. God can bring justice like an ever rolling stream, for God births the impossible. God. You oughta take out a sheet of paper or open the notepad on your phone right now and write down that thing God had been holding in your heart for you to do. You ought to declare 2022 right now to be the year you’ll no longer sit on your call­ ing. You ought to put away that doubt right now and invite God to call you by your Favored name. You ought to allow God to tell you how a traditional path will lead to new light. For nothing is impossible with God.