Dont' doubt but believe: Sermon for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost

• • 1 Kings 19:9-18
  • Psalm 85:8-13
• Second reading
  • Romans 10:5-15
• Gospel
  • Matthew 14:22-33

*Before you read this a note of warning: If you imagine these stories as White stories, if you picture Elijah, Peter, the Disciples, the Psalmist, Saint Paul the Apostle or Jesus Christ as white folk you will not hear the word of God in this sermon nor in the Scriptures upon which this message is drawn. I wish this note of warning was unnecessary. I wish that my Christian European forbearers hadn’t worshiped at the altar of White Supremacy, but it is clear (and has been clear for a long while) that we have yet to escape this distortion and misappropriation.

 For Elijah, and the disciples and Peter, the manifestations of the divine come to them unexpectedly and in times of distress.  They are low moments of faith. We may find ourselves in a similar moment of fear and despair, as we’ve watched white supremacists march with torches shouting, “You will not replace us” and the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil.” surrounding a black church and unleash violence against counter protestors and a car ramming into counter protestors killing one. What is happening in Charlottesville, Virginia isn’t isolated from the police killing of black folk and the electoral victory of Trump and the various policies of the Trump administration and the chaos we’ve seen. Gathered here today we may feel a bit like Elijah We may be angry like Elijah that all this is even possible and happening, and we have our own litany of complaint before God. We may be wondering with Elijah and the disciples on the boat where God is in all this and if God is out there in the storm and the overwhelming waves. Yet, our Scriptures point out that Elijah and the disciples and Peter are examples of asking the wrong question. The question isn’t where is God when evil threatens to overwhelm, because no storm, no chaos the enemy can throw at the world chases God away. Nothing a Nation state is will bring the reign of God, nor truly accomplish God’s shalom in the world, and nothing White supremacy does can negate what God did in Jesus Christ upon the cross. The people of God have seen this before and before the Shalom of God comes and is manifest we the people of God will see it again. Yet we who may be surprised and angered and fearful must confess that this form of Empire and Babylon that we call White Supremacy was embraced and nurtured both by the nation state called the United States of America and by its European Christian Citizens, calling themselves White. For centuries members of Christ have themselves chased after these other gods of patriotism, nation state and white supremacy. This is not new and the Nation State and government of the U.S.A., can’t eradicate this power because the U.S.A has worshiped at the altar of White supremacy from its founding. So yes, there is reason to feel the despair of Elijah.  Things are dire. But our scriptures aren’t only stories of despair., They begin there and end in hope. So, amid the chaos, white supremacy, and the failure of human attempts to suppress and eradicate this evil we once embraced, we seek God. Hope isn’t found out there in the world, nor in some isolated fearful retreat. Hope is found in an unexpected but obvious place.

The faith that produces righteousness, doesn’t ask the very human question, why is this happening and where is God in this Chaos, or the evil? Paul says that true faith doesn’t ask Who can go to heaven, …or who can go to hades.” Faith that leads to justice, affirms with the psalmists that the word of God is near us in our hearts and upon our lips. This doesn’t mean that we people of faith won’t find ourselves sitting with Elijah despairing in the cave or with the disciples buffeted by waves threatening to overwhelm our boat. But, No matter, God always comes near. Whether our experience is like Elijah Or we may have moments like the disciples when we have a profound sense the divinity of Jesus Christ, we should not cling to those experiences. Whatever our experience, Paul’s word tells us these experiences of God at our low points, aren’t central to the life of faith.

These are moments of grace but not moments of faith. Theophany’s and epiphanies aren’t what the life of faith is about. The life of faith is trusting something we perhaps don’t quite have the capacity to perceive. The word of God the second person of the trinity become human and dying and descending to the dead isn’t what brought God to us.  God was always there, in the world amid our chaos, on our lips and in our hearts. The problem has never been with God not showing up. What Jesus fixes is our faith, our ability to see and recognize God. The problem is in us as human beings not in God! God in Jesus Christ fills out our faith when it is weak, but what we need is always and has always been accessible. Through, Christ we are awakened to what is truly at the depth of our being.

The exercise of faith is to trust this fundamental reality, even when we are overwhelmed by our fears. The exercise of faith is to trust even when we are threatened by other people’s sins, when we wonder how will we overcome white supremacy once and for all. To continue trustin in the nearness of God even in the face of evil and chaos. In trusting in Christ, we can affirm that the Word of God is in our hearts and upon our lips. We need go nowhere, nor do something to find God. God is here, wherever you are, God is in your heart and upon your lips, you can see it if you trust and have the faith of Christ.

Our exercise of this faith, awakens this same faith and awareness in others. Faith and salvation aren’t individual affairs. The individual American protestant evangelical interpretation of this passage focusing on the individual fails to recognize the communal and interdependent nature of Paul’s message. Faith turned in upon itself either obsessed with experiences of God’s presence or with some sense of assurance that because one has confessed with one’s mouth and believed in one’s heart one can be sure of one’s own individual salvation, is a dead end, and completely misunderstand the Apostle Paul. Rather f the faith that trusts that God’s word is near, in our hearts and upon our lips, confesses this faith so that others may be awakened to that same faith that leads to justice.

Even so sometimes we think we are responding to the chaos in faith, but really, we are seeking proof of God’s presence. Peter in an attempt to show Jesus his great faith, falters in that faith. Thankfully Jesus Christ, doesn’t let Peter be overcome, but gently points out, Peter’s lack of faith. But really the lack of faith began with Peter’s compulsion to prove his faith and step out from the boat. Jesus never asks this of Peter. Jesus doesn’t say Peter show me you aren’t afraid and how great your faith is by coming and walking on water with me. No, Peter asks for proof that it’s Jesus and tells Jesus to tell him to come out on the water. Jesus being kind and loving acquiesces (knowing he has Peter no matter what) and invites him out on the water.

God, in both the story of Elijah in the cave and Peter walking on water, comes in gentleness, grace and in the full otherness and awe inspiring frightening presence. Jesus attempts to calm the disciples and lovingly does as Peter asks, telling Peter to come on the water.  Jesus gently encourages Peter to not doubt but believe. God meets a frightened and discouraged Elijah and asks Elijah a simple question. A question that is to call Elijah back to himself.  God announces God’s presence with the familiar manifestations of Mount Sinai, but doesn’t attach the presence with any of those. Elijah only encounters God in Holy Silence. When in Silence God’s presence is known, Elijah can truly hear the word of God in his heart and upon his lips. God meets us where we are at and will even do what we ask, but doesn’t allow us to stay in the place of little faith. God is patient with us, but also pushes us along, to that place of faith.

What is this place of justifying faith? What is this faith that is accounted to us as righteousness? The place is our being illumined by Christ, God with us, where we remember who we are. To have faith is to no longer see ourselves as distanced from God, but trust that we are close to God and that God is close to us, no matter that our human institutions and attempts to bring about goodness and righteousness and justice continually fail. No matter that we have misplaced our hope and trust in the very things that bring about the chaos. No matter our collective or individual failures, God is always near in our heart and upon our lips, if we can step back and not doubt but believe.

Paul says that they very Word of God is on our lips and in our hearts, when in Christ we trust and believe in the nearness of God in our hearts and trust that our words can confess this truth. We then become those blessed as bearer of good news, and we can awaken this faith and justice in those who hear our confession. It is by this faith, not through the Powers and Nations that the world is transformed and righteousness and justice flourish.

I hope we can find that place of the Holy Silence where we can like Elijah hear God’s voice and call. But maybe your still with Peter on the boat buffeted by the waves of the chaos of our moment, and you want God to call to you.  God will acquiesce to your request, and will tell you come. But your desire to do something, if motivated from a need to prove that God is in the chaos, isn’t God asking you to step into the chaos. Even so, God will invite you into it if you ask God to do so. But if you falter, know God has you and God didn’t ask you to come, you asked God to invite you. However, Jesus’ word to Peter to come is very different form Elijah’s word from God after the Silence. I encourage us to wait before we act. I encourage us to look for the deep silence out of which God can speak. It is form that silence that we can hear God’s word for us not what we think we want to hear from God, as proof of God’s presence but a solid word for us is that God is near and unassailable.

We like Elijah, we of little faith, shaky on our feet, depressed and uncertain in our ways, wondering how this all can be real, we, if we trust and believe in our hearts and confess with our lips the nearness of God, Jesus Christ the Word, we are restored to that relationship with God that humanity had in the Garden of Eden. Through faith, we bring others back into this restored state in Jesus Christ, the Word. It is in this moment of both knowing for ourselves and that we are for others that we can hear God’s word to us that is for others, and then know how we will be sent into the world.

However, the grace of God accepts us where we are, even if we have more doubt than faith, even if we want God to tell us to step out into this chaos. But the way of surer footing is to wait, to be still, to wait to hear from God in your deepest being out of the holy silence. Out of that silence God’s word is near to us. From this silence, we will know how we each are called to be for others. The word of God is near in our hearts and it will be upon our lips. First, we must be silent, then in faith we will be able to proclaim and bring God’s justice and truth. From this faith that God is near in our hearts and upon our lips, the world is renewed. . Amen.

Sermon Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Third Sunday after the Epiphany

Jeremiah 1:4-10 * Psalm 71:1-6 * 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 * Luke 4:21-30

This week of prayer for Christian unity has been unsettling time of prayer for me. I do not know what has been stirred in you by God this week or if you . For me I was unsettled by having this years theme of this years Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, "You are witnesses of these things" came into conversation with Paul on the Spirit and the nature of the body of Christ. What follows is my own attempt to articulate how I have been unsettled, and hope to invite your own reflections and offerings of your own experiences of prayer for Christian unity to come in conversation with my own experience, the theme, and these text before us today.

The beginning of my discomfort is in the very fact of praying for Christian unity, for in so doing we admit that we remain in a state of disunion. Then In speaking of being witnesses, we speak of our desire and our sense that although we are divided as Christians we have something in common at our core, and that our witness to these things we hold together is compromised by this disunity. Paul uses the metaphor of the Body, to give us an understanding of the nature of the church, the nature of Christ. Through Baptism and the life of the Spirit we are one body, Christ’s body. Yet, this whole passage as an exhortation means that we can live in contradiction to the unity we are given through baptism and the Spirit. In the unity of baptism and the Spirit we are empowered to witness to the things of Christ: his life death and resurrection. And yet this week of prayer for Christian unity should give us pause, in terms of our own spiritual health, and our being formed by the nature of the Church Paul explicates for us in Corinthians. If we are willing to remain content with our own particular witness, whether of our own individual journeys of faith, or as journey tied to a particular denomination, are we not in a sense giving priority to our own “giftedness”? And doesn’t even the various schemes for seeking unity and understanding between Christians keep us divided, if it stops at merely seeking to understand each other and work together? In our attempt to find ways to work together across institutional barriers and barriers of belief, or to work towards convergence in the area of doctrine and belief, and even to work towards ecumenical congregation are we assuming the need to get along rather than assuming we need to be conformed to the Spirit and our Baptism. Yet this week isn’t the week of focus on the work of ecumenism but of prayer. In this we admit that the unity of being witnesses of the life death and Resurrection of Christ, of truly being the church is Spirit directed and Spirit gifted reality into which we must be formed by God. I want to suggest that this sort of prayer should open ourselves up to God showing us the ways in which we all uphold the state of disunity, and the ways we abandon the Church. For our disunity is a sign that we have walked away from the truth of our Baptism and our Spirit filled lives in the Church. This is the urgency of Paul’s address to the Corinthians. We must not remain in the sense of sufficiency of our separate witness and distinctive ways of proclaiming Christ, for to do so is to walk the path of schism. But the hope of this week and of our texts is that we don’t have to work harder Rather we must be opened up to the reality of the church as Spiritual institution and organism.

Our Corinthians passage challenges any notion that Christian unity is coexistence, or acceptance that we all truly believe in Jesus even though we differ and at times contradict one another in our beliefs and actions. What is imaged for us of Christ, the Church, is a great symmetry and an organism made up of parts that cannot survive or even exist apart from the whole. Thus our unity as Christians as based upon the preceding reality: the unity of the Body of Christ, the Church. Granted we could miss this mystical reading of the Body imagery and read Paul’s words as exhortation to just get along for one must not overlook that Paul’s teaching is also about diversity. However I think in following the diversity path we miss that the difference Paul speaks of is not of human origin but of divine origin, of the Spirit. Paul’s use of the metaphor of the Body challenges our current language of diversity that is for the most part a tolerance of separate coexistence. A body isn't a confederation of interrelated differentiated sovereignty's, but an organism that is dependent on the right functioning of every part and member of the organism that has no possible existence outside that organism. For a body to functioning fully and properly each and every member not only needs the others but an integration in the whole.. We aren't to view our giftedness as a reason to separate from others, rather we are to see that we all equally need the other.

I feel that the force of Paul’s indictment against us in his language of the body of Christ, is reinforced if we think along side this metaphor the reality of what is needed to truly be witness of Christ. When we receive gifts from the Spirit, whatever they may be, we are so gifted for a purpose of bearing witness to Christ. Thus in speaking of the Spiritual reality of the church as organism and institution we must not for get that we exist for and as Christ. Thus the unity of our witness is that we witness to the singular work of God through Christ in the world. My own denomination will often speak of our contribution to the building of the Kingdom of God which also goes on beyond our borders. Yet, this in practice means that we celebrate and witness to the ways we believe according to our denominational distinctive we are accomplishing the work of God in Jesus Christ. This way of speaking and thinking fails to question how our identity may stand in the way of the work of Christ and the Spirit and may impair the witness to the life Death and Resurrection of Christ as that which establishes the Kingdom of God in the world; bringing release to the captives, bringing sight, and hearing and healing to all in need. Are we in our separation whether based in denomination or personal identity, or race or class truly joined to the work of Christ and the coming Kingdom of God? It is one thing to claim this, it is another for it to actually be. The challenge of our being called to be witnesses when Christians are divided and content to remain in separation, is that it is very possible we aren't witnessing to the work of God in Christ in the world. In our current states of separation we are perhaps at best witnessing to our own pet projects within the larger work of God, and at worst witnessing to our own agenda with little or no relation the God’s reign and work. Given the force of the metaphor of the body and the need to not witness to our opinions or positions, I am challenged that we need make our hearts ready to receive and be formed into the church, the Body of Christ. Hopefully that is what this week of prayer of Christian unity is doing and has done in we who have so prayed. This is a challenge because I am unsure this is what I want.

I will admit that I am challenged by my own words, and it is a challenge to my self as an ecumenist and those of us here who are members of this ecumenical congregation as much to anyone here who identifies strongly or in part with a particular denomination. We are Christians but more important than our being of the same religion is that we are part of the Body of Christ, the Church. If we cling to a certain distinctive, or find ourselves separated by our opinions how then are we the Body of Christ? True we all may be baptized into Christ and able to claim some form of faith in Jesus Christ, faith and the sacrament of Baptism cannot be belittled, but are we in our current life and way of being Christian truly living into the fullness of our baptism and faith? Am I? In what ways do I resist the unifying work of the Spirit, and mistake what I have been given as the defining fact of my spiritual life? Am I, are we, living into our baptism or contradicting our baptism? And are we perhaps doing both at once? These are hard questions that this time of prayer set aside to seek God for Christian unity has brought up for me. I wonder if I, and we really desire to be the people of God, members of Christ's body or if in the end other identities prove more important in our day to day lives of faith? Are we going to truly allow the Spirit to bind us together to form us as the Body of Christ, or do we in fact in subtle ways resist? Does the fear of needing to get it right or the fear that we may have missed it keep us from truly seeking God in this matter? Are we praying for Christian unity in truth? Are we asking God to reveal to us our separation from Christ? Finally I can’t but see that all our separations (not just denominational or doctrinal) separate us not only from each other but from our head, Jesus Christ, and thus from the Church. This is why we seek God in prayer, for we must confess our known and unknown participation in divisions from the Body of Christ. Such division inevitably means that we have hidden from ourselves the fullness of Christ and the Spirit in our lives and the world. Even so the Spirit gives to us; Christ binds himself to us, and beckons us to live into the unity of our faith and baptism. We are continually invited by our baptism to allow the Spirit to form us into the Church, into Christ. Amen

Update

In the past few weeks we have been looking at call and discipleship and observed the Week of prayer for Christian Unity. We began an ended the week with additions to our usual liturgy and adapting the Lima liturgy to our regular Reconciler liturgy. I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the connection between our worship of the last few weeks, ecumenism and discipleship. Our liturgical worship and especially the liturgies we have been using the past few weeks, subordinate individual expression of faith and worship to something else. This subordination of individual response or expression can run counter to many images of discipleship and living faith as usually found in American contexts. In general in American Christianity tends to see discipleship as an individual endeavor. Discipleship is primarily about my relationship to Jesus, and only secondarily about the kingdom of God or being a member of the body of Christ. I see our lectionary texts for the Season after Epiphany as challenging this American conception of discipleship. Or at least the confluence of these texts asks us to make a major corrective in our understanding of the relationship between our life of faith and our individuality.

Implicit in the Gospel's sense of being a follower of Jesus, a disciple, is that while our individuality is respected it is not the primary focus of a life of discipleship. Discipleship forms our individuality into something better and it does it by emphasizing community, and by calling us to be conformed to the Mind of Christ. If we move our sense of being a Christian and following Christ away from a focus on our individual beliefs, feelings, doubts etc., and realize that the life of faith is seeing all of our individuality being formed by God in Christ into Christ and being built into the the temple of God the Church then ecumenism simply takes on the tinge of discipleship. Also, our worship on Sundays becomes less about whether or not I can come and feel certain feelings or express certain things about myself and my faith and more about being formed and molded and built into something as the person I am. All of this is meant to happen with others who also are also followers and disciples of Jesus.

This formation is not only supposed to happen to us individually but corporately and across space and time. In some sense we might say this is what Church is the site where this happens. If we are cut off from those who are disciples of Jesus either in space or time we then lack something in our discipleship and following of Jesus. This is the place of ecumenism in our lives of discipleship and following Jesus. So, our worship our actions, our vision as a congregation, our lives in the world with friends family and coworkers are also a piece, not because I can individually make it all fit together but because I with others am seeking after Christ and we together can be formed by our worship and fellowship together, which then allows us to go out into the world and witness to the presence and absence of the Kingdom of God in the world. But we are hindered in this ability to witness as long as we are separated from other disciples who can help us be formed together as the Body of Christ.

Announcements:
We are continuing to meet together as a congregation to share and reflect and plan as we take stock of various changes and seek to move into this coming year together. Our next gathering will be February 9 6:30 PM at Beth, Jorge and Hank's house 5419 North Glenwood Ave, Apt. 3. A light supper will be provided. If you would like to augment the soup and bread feel free to bring something to share. Please RSVP to Beth Wetmore by friday February 6th. E-mail her at emwetmore@yahoo.com or call her at 773-275-1918.

Sunday February 15th Bishop Jeffrey Lee of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago will be visiting us for worship. There will be a time to meet him after the service.

Wednesday Evenings on the Immanuel Campus:
Community meal 6 pm. Following the meal at 7 pm there is a prayer service. For January and February it will be a service of Lectio Devina (prayerful reading and discussion of Scripture for the coming Sunday) During Lent there will be a sung Vespers service.