Why Change?

 Scripture   Romans 12:1-6a NRSV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.   

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Good morning. First - A public service announcement. Because of all the fires around the state, the Air Quality  is really bad.  The air quality on  Monday is forecast to be even worse.  Please, if you love your lungs, and especially if you have asthma or other lung conditions, stay inside.  Don’t go for a walk.  Close your windows.  Hydrate.  Stay well.  Please. Thank you.

Paul said to the churches in Rome, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

It has always been hard for the Church, for Christians, to live in a way that is substantially different from the way society expects folks to live.  It’s hard to resist peer pressure.  We know this because every mother in the history of motherhood has at one time or another responded to her child’s argument that, “Ma, everyone is doing that!” with “If everyone was jumping off a cliff would you do that, too?”  (A different example must be used if the child is asking permission to go cliff diving or BASE jumping.)   As we get older, the peer pressure changes, but it’s still there.  

(Warning:  I am about to enter into the realm of Generalizations.  Please know I realize that “not all whatevers” are the same.  Here we go.)   Baby Boomers, people born during the post-World War II baby boom, currently range in age from 56 - 74. (*raising hand*) This age group is pretty in charge of the world right now.   In addition to being called Baby Boomers, they (we) are known as the “Me Generation” because of the quality of being self-absorbed that they (we) are known for.   Hence the rise in the popularity of American Individualism as a way of life in the 1960s, where “my rights” or wellbeing are more important than the rights or wellbeing of the whole.  We  invented the term “My way or the highway.” We also invented Team Building Exercises in the 1990s because it’s hard to work as a team when it’s all about me.    And yet, although we are all about ourselves, we seem to want to be ourselves in  the same way everyone else is being about themselves.  We love to join stuff.  We love to organize in big groups with a common goal. Like AARP.   And church.  Heaven forbid anyone should try to change that thing we belong to, even if the change will “improve” it.  We are suspicious of “improvements.”   It’s ok if everyone else is doing it, but we aren’t going to do it first. 

Society has always found it a bit strange when a group of people put the well being of the community ahead of their own desires.  That’s why Christians stood out so much from the rest of the population.  It’s not that they dressed differently or anything that obvious.  But they behaved differently. They responded to situations differently.  They were learning to think differently.  And Paul encouraged that.  Paul told the Church in Rome, “You need to take on a whole new way of thinking and doing.  You need to be transformed from the way you were so that you aren’t focused on what you want, or what your friends and neighbors want or what internet influencers say you should want, but rather on what God wants.”. (Ok, that is from the Maria translation of the Bible.) 

On October 2nd, 2006 a man walked into an Amish one room schoolhouse in Lancaster County, PA, and shot 10 young girls, killing 5, then shot and killed himself.  Within a few hours the Amish community reached out to the shooter’s family to comfort them and offer forgiveness, and then, they set up a charitable fund to help support his widow  and three children.  The world went nuts! What?  They are forgiving that man?  They should hate him!  He was evil!  But . . . A grandfather of one of the murdered girls warned some young relatives “We must not think evil of this man.” One of the fathers said, “He had a mother and a wife and a soul and now he is standing before a just God.”.   They did not conform to the ways of the world, which was screaming for revenge, but rather sought to do God’s will, follow God’s commandments.   Love your neighbor as you love yourself.  Forgive even as you are forgiven.  Take care of the widows and orphans among you.   

Renewing our minds, being transformed, so that we may discern the will of God . . .  This is hard!   We do “my way or the highway”.  We do “but we’ve always done it this way.”  We do “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”.  

Thing is, the way we’ve always done it doesn’t really work for everyone.  Racism is the way of the world. But it isn’t right and it really only benefits white people.  Skin color has nothing to do with ability, or intelligence, or potential for criminality, but judging people on their skin color is the way of the world.  When a teacher told me that my step-son would probably end up in jail - not because the kid had ever been in trouble, but because he was not white - that was not right!   But the school to prison pipeline for young men and women of color is the way of the world right now.  The Black Lives Matter movement and other movements intended to bring greater awareness to the injustices that people of color experience daily stand against the way of the world.  Their purpose is to seek justice for the oppressed.  The oppression they speak of is hard for white people to grasp, because trying to understand a reality we have never experienced requires opening and renewing our minds to a huge degree, but justice for the oppressed is one of the things God requires of us.  

Hating on people because of their political affiliation or gender identity or sexual orientation or nation of origin - even just treating them differently than I would treat someone who is more like me - those things are not right, either, even though they are the way of the world.  Loving one another, regardless of the  differences between us - that is God’s will.

I want you to know - I really hate change.  I tend to default to the things I learned growing up.  I have to deal with the fact that I am now aware of a lot of things that I would have been perfectly happy never knowing - like my white privilege, and the way Native Americans have been and are still being treated, and the one-sidedness of our history books.  I will never forget my shock when my late mother-in-law told me she didn’t mind if her son married a white woman.  It never occurred to me that might be an issue. Him being Navajo might be an issue for my family, but me being white?  I have learned that I don’t know what I don’t know, so I have to be willing to listen, at least.

Lest anyone think I am saying it is God’s will for all of us to think alike and agree on everything, I am not.  I am saying we need to be willing to listen to diverse opinions, to accept that people have different experiences of the world, that there might be another legitimate viewpoint.  We need to try to understand where the other is coming from before we reject their position.  Don’t start shaking your head as soon as someone presents an opinion that is different from yours.  (And yes, I know I do that.)  We need to learn to communicate with one another - to listen in order to learn, not in order to formulate arguments.  It isn’t easy.  Because we know what we know.  And it takes real work to replace what we already know with new information.  

Paul told the church in Rome, “present yourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.” Being Christian requires sacrificing our desire to be like everyone else.  It requires doing things the hard way - forgiving the murderer, accepting the demonstrator, loving the hater. Being Christian requires that we give up being all about ourselves, and become all about the community - the Beloved Community, where God’s righteousness and justice prevail over the ways of the world.  Let us go out to face hatred with love, anger with a peaceful spirit, cruelty with compassion, so that Christ’s sacrifice is not in vain.

Forgive Them

John 20:19-23 Common English Bible (CEB) 

19 It was still the first day of the week. That evening, while the disciples were behind closed doors because they were afraid of the Jewish authorities, Jesus came and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.” 20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. When the disciples saw the Lord, they were filled with joy. 21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” 22 Then he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.”

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Today is Pentecost.  Traditionally here at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Selma, California, the sanctuary is draped in red and flame colors.  There is an amazing “Pentecost Band” - last year it was like a small orchestra!  It’s a big deal!  AND it is my very favorite church celebration, bar none.  Wind and flames, and speaking foreign languages.  Crowds of people listening and thousands being converted by Peter’s preaching!  Plus I get to wear my beautiful red stole, which usually only comes out of my closet once a year.    

Also traditionally, the reading for today comes from the second chapter of Acts.  And you know,   I am sorry, but I just could not do it.  I mean, that reading begins “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.”  and later in the reading, after the Spirit had come, “at this sound the crowd gathered . .”   Y’know?  I just couldn’t.  Because we can’t do those things.  

We can’t all gather in one place. 

We can’t be part of a large crowd of worshippers.

Not yet.

Today’s gospel reading takes place on Easter, in the evening.  It starts with a story we all know - The disciples were hiding behind closed doors, Jesus came and stood among them, showed them his wounds, and they celebrated.  Then, John tells us, Jesus breathed the Holy Spirit into them.

This is so very different from the way Luke reported that the disciples received the Holy Spirit.  Luke tells the story of a great spectacle!  A very visible, very memorable event with amazing preaching and special effects.  A story that has us commemorating the coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples in big way nearly 2,000 years later - with music and balloons and fiery colors and everybody wearing red and sometimes cake!  

But John tells us it was a much more subdued occurrence.  No crowds.  No wind.  No flames.  No preaching.  No baptism of thousands.  Jesus simply breathed upon them and said “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  

And then he gave them the power to forgive sins, the same power he had, the power he used to heal people.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story of Jesus saying to the paralytic, “Your sins are forgiven,” and that man was immediately healed!  Healing comes from forgiveness. 

Many of my colleagues are preaching on the Acts passage today.  The images they are using are not of 1st century Jerusalem, but of the fires in Minneapolis last night. And Atlanta.  And Oakland.  And Portland.  And New York City.  And LA.  They are speaking about a nation on fire with anger and pain over the murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a police officer who was white.  They may name a long list of African Americans  who have been killed by police officers for the crime of being black such as Breonna Taylor of Louisville and Eric Garner of New York.  They may quote a statement made by (someone whose name I cannot remember) who said in a radio interview, “When a city erupts in flame and destruction like Minneapolis has, the spark is always police brutality, but the tinder is hunger, and poverty, and hopelessness.  The tinder is racism.”  They will almost certainly quote Martin Luther King, Jr. who, 53 years ago said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.”  

But I am preaching on today’s Gospel reading.  I am preaching on forgiveness.  Because Jesus to his disciples, “If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.”  

And it seems to me that we have been forgiving the sin of racism for far too long, while we have chosen not to forgive persons of color for being persons of color.  And while that might sound overly simplistic, it’s kind of meant to.  I know, not all white people are overtly racist. Not all police are brutal. Not all Christians, not all men, not all women.  We all know that.  It goes without saying.  The Not All arguments are pretty much beside the point whenever they are brought up.  They are a distraction and unhelpful.  Much like responding to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter.”  Yes.  But also no.  Because if Black Lives don’t matter, or matter less than other lives, then no lives matter.   If a Black child and a White child are both kidnapped, which one gets the news coverage?  Which parents are on the TV news tearfully begging the kidnapper to please bring their child home?   If I walk into a department store at the same time as a person of color, which one of us does the security guard watch?   

We have a long history of seeing the other as somehow less human, less deserving, less worthy of good stuff, and then, of blaming the other for all the ills of society.   And when they complain about how they are treated, we don’t believe them.   When they point to examples of racism, we don’t see it.   It is not our experience.  And the very fact I can talk about us and them, and y’all know who I mean kind of makes my point.  

Maybe you’re tired of hearing about it.  Maybe you’re wondering why they can’t just get over what happened in the past - slavery and Jim Crow and reservations and small pox blankets and the internment camps.   And I get it.  I do.  I spent 25 years in an interracial marriage, a marriage that was illegal not all that long ago.  Every day of those 25 years I listened to a litany of White People’s sins.  Every day I listened to that anger - that impotent rage - over his specific daily experiences with racism, and the historic rmistreatment of his people because of their race, and the systemic racism that pervades our society.   And I really got tired of it.  But I heard what he had to say.  I learned to watch to see the things that had been invisible to me.  I know that I will never completely understand, the daily, lived experience of a person of color.  And I know that it is my responsibility, as a white person and a Christian, to stand against racism in every form.  To point it out at every opportunity.  To root it out of myself.

I watched a news conference the other day with the civic leaders in Minneapolis.  I saw Mayor Jacob Fry in tears over the violence and rage in the city he loves.   I heard Police Chief Arradondo’s assurances that investigation into the actions of the other three police officers involved were ongoing.  I heard City Council member Andrea Jenkins open her remarks by singing the first lines of Amazing Grace.  I heard her call racism a public health issue. 

And it is.  We are all of us living in a strange place, sheltering in place, trying to figure out how to safely start everything back up again, fearful, some of us, about whether we will survive the virus when we catch it.  Some of us, though, have a better chance than others.  I have running water in my house.  I can wash my hands as often as I like.  I can easily self isolate.  I can have Amazon deliver masks to my house.  And food.  And whatever else I want. There’s a hospital a mile away.  On the Navajo Nation, 30% of the homes do NOT have running water.  Multiple generations living in one small house is the norm.  Available health care is extremely limited.  43% of the people live below the poverty rate.  And the rate of infection and death from Covid19 is the highest in the US.  Not just the Navajo and other Native people are suffering higher rates of infection, though .  African American, Asian, and Hispanic communities also have much higher rates of infection and death than the White population.  NOT because Covid19 somehow prefers non-white persons, but because the rates of poverty in those populations is so much higher.   Racism is a public heath issue.  

If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.” Forgiveness is healing, after all.  And Jesus came to heal the world.   But one component of forgiveness is repentance.  If there is no repentance, true forgiveness - healing - doesn’t happen.   We need to stop forgiving, excusing, ignoring racism.  We need to stop accepting it as just the way things are, or as something beyond our ability to do anything about.  We need to recognize it, reject it, work against it.  Point it out when we see it.  Know that each of us can make a difference, if each of us work toward repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation.  Understand that the anger you hear is not against you personally, probably, but rather against all who will stand by and allow evil to stand unchallenged. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing - like those three police officers who watched George Floyd struggling to breathe and did nothing.  Doing nothing makes us complicit - it makes us part of the problem instead of the solution.  Let us be part of the solution. Let us change the world, as the disciples of Christ did after receiving the Holy Spirit.

On this Pentecost Day, may we receive the Holy Spirit, so that we may be changed as significantly as were the disciples when Jesus breathed on them.  

On this Pentecost Day, may the Holy Spirit fill our hearts with love for all others, so that we may call the sinner to repentance, and forgive.  

May our eyes be opened to see our own sin, our own need for healing, 

and may we come to desire more than anything reconciliation with God and with all of our siblings, of every nation and race.  

May we remember that Jesus blessed us, through the disciples, saying “Peace be with you. As the Father sent me, so I am sending you.” 

May we go forth, and carry the Good News of forgiveness and healing to all the earth.

Carers

James 2:1-10    Common English Bible (CEB)

2 My brothers and sisters, when you show favoritism you deny the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has been resurrected in glory. 2 Imagine two people coming into your meeting. One has a gold ring and fine clothes, while the other is poor, dressed in filthy rags. 3 Then suppose that you were to take special notice of the one wearing fine clothes, saying, “Here’s an excellent place. Sit here.” But to the poor person you say, “Stand over there”; or, “Here, sit at my feet.” 4 Wouldn’t you have shown favoritism among yourselves and become evil-minded judges?

5 My dear brothers and sisters, listen! Hasn’t God chosen those who are poor by worldly standards to be rich in terms of faith? Hasn’t God chosen the poor as heirs of the kingdom he has promised to those who love him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor. Don’t the wealthy make life difficult for you? Aren’t they the ones who drag you into court? 7 Aren’t they the ones who insult the good name spoken over you at your baptism?

8 You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 10 Anyone who tries to keep all of the Law but fails at one point is guilty of failing to keep all of it. 

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Have I mentioned that I really like James?   He spoke to individuals, rather than congregations.  He said, “this is how you should live, as a person and as a Christ follower,” whereas Paul spoke primarily to congregations, telling folks how to be church together.  In this passage James is asking the listener to pretend for a moment that they are the greeter.   If you make a big fuss over the person who drove up in a Mercedes and has all the stuff, and you put them in the very best seat, but you tell the homeless lady that she has to sit in the narthex where no one will be bothered by her odor, then according to James you have sinned.  You have shown favoritism based in socio-economic status, or class, which in his time was pretty much the main distinction between people.  There were nations, but you couldn’t necessarily tell someone’s nation by looking at them.  You could, however, determine class pretty easily - certain types and colors of clothing were restricted to the upper classes, for example.  Slaves wore particular items of clothing that free persons did not.   In the first century, and indeed for many centuries thereafter, race as a distinction between persons didn’t exist.  Your skin color really didn’t matter.  Class and gender, on the other hand, did.  So when James spoke of favoritism, he spoke in terms of wealthy versus poor.  However, as much fun as it always is to say bad things about rich people, I’m not going to do that today.  I’m not going to talk about the rich and the poor today.  

In the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) we have a strong Anti-racism/Pro-reconciliation imperative.  All ordained ministers are required to take anti-racism training periodically - in this region where we live it’s every year.  Today and next week we take a collection that benefits our Reconciliation Ministries, which helps pay for our anti-racism trainers to be trained, and for literature to help us all learn how to love one another better.   And it’s kind of funny in a “how did God manage this?” kind of way, that I accidentally skipped this reading at the beginning of the month, where it appears in the lectionary, and had to fit it in here - today - on the day when we look closely at our Anti-Racism/Pro-Reconciliation emphasis, because how much better could this passage fit the day?  Yay, God!  

James said, My brothers and sisters, when you show favoritism you deny the faithfulness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has been resurrected in glory.. . 8 You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 

A well dressed African American woman walked into a high end boutique and asked to see a purse that was in a locked case.  The salesclerk told her it was much too expensive for her and wouldn’t take it out of the case, but did suggest she look at other, cheaper purses.  Even though she asked to see the purse several times, the sales clerk was quite insistent on steering her to much less expensive items.   Oprah Winfrey finally left the shop, without the purse.    The owner of the boutique later said it had nothing to do with Oprah’s race . . . .   

But this happens to Persons of Color all the time.  If Oprah had been with a well dressed White friend, I suspect the purse would have come out of the case with no hesitation.   Because somehow having a White person along makes that Person of Color “acceptable” for the moment.   I can tell you from my own experience, from 25 years of marriage to a Navajo, that there was a huge difference in how he was treated when he was alone and when I was with him.  We even sometimes would go into a place separately, so that I could watch and see what happened and learn what White privilege looks like.   In restaurants, small shops, big box stores, even government agencies like the DMV . . .  it didn’t matter what type of place we entered, there was always a difference in the way we were treated.   Store security would follow him around, but not me, and not us when we went into the place as a couple.  He was always asked for his ID when using a credit card.  I rarely was.  Clerks and such would often speak to me when he was the one with the issue, assuming he didn’t understand English.  And have I told you the church story?   When we visited a church in another city one Sunday everyone was happy to welcome us, asked us to stay for coffee, and invite us to come back.  When he went back by himself a few months later none of that happened.   They turned their backs on him.  It was like he was invisible.  

I get catalogs in the mail.  I imagine some of you do, too. This company sends them weekly, I think.  If you are a White person going through your catalog and you can find yourself, but you can’t find your friend from First Friendship Baptist Church or the Korean Church or the Haitian Church or the Truk Island, Samoan, Philipino, Native American or  Hispanic Church - that is privilege in action.  In this particular catalog there is one model who might maybe be Hispanic.

If you are White you may never have noticed, but it’s there. It’s insidious, because, if you are White you don’t notice it unless you are specifically looking for it.   I look for it.  But I only look for it because I spent 25 years married to a Person of Color.  And I still don’t always see it.  But I promise you, a Person of Color notices.   If you are White, you benefit from the fact that the color of your skin is considered the norm in this country.  If you go to buy flesh colored bandaids, no problem.  But until 2015, a person of color could not find bandaids to match her skin tone.   Even now, they’re not easy to find.  Bandaids are a small thing, but they are symptomatic of privilege.  Privilege does not mean your life is easy just because you are White.  But it does mean it could be a lot harder.  

Privilege isn’t something we can do much of anything about, besides simply recognizing it exists as a fact of life in this country.  Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real.   Racism, on the other hand, is something we can change.   

Racism is an evil that afflicts our nation and many others.   Racism is a choice we make to treat other people differently based on the color of their skin.  That clerk in the expensive purse store may have said she wasn’t judging Oprah on her race, but she was.  The store security officers who followed Ton’Ee around the store, but not me, were making a judgement about who was likely to be a thief based solely on skin color.  I benefited from White privilege.  Ton’Ee dealt with racism.  The people in that church - totally racist.  And that’s the one that hurts most of all.  Because - they’ll know we are Christians by our love??  

You do well when you really fulfill the royal law found in scripture, Love your neighbor as yourself.  9 But when you show favoritism, you are committing a sin, and by that same law you are exposed as a lawbreaker. 10 Anyone who tries to keep all of the Law but fails at one point is guilty of failing to keep all of it. 

When you show favoritism, you are committing a sin.  And what is racism but favoritism?   A particularly terrible, potentially deadly sort of favoritism.   Racism is a sin that strikes at the very heart of the love commandment - and the love commandment is what all the law depends on.  For remember, when Jesus was asked “which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”  (Mt. 22:36-40)    Breaking this one commandment then, is as if we are breaking all the commandments.  

It is important to understand that not all White people are racist - but that all White people do benefit from privilege.  It is also important to understand that racism can be insidious.  We may not even realize that what we are seeing, hearing, even thinking or saying, is racist.  We can open our eyes to see racism where we maybe didn’t notice it before.  We can use our privilege to point out racism when we do see it.   And by our example we can teach others what it really means to love our neighbors - all of our neighbors, regardless of skin color, ethnicity or national origin.   

Maybe we, as individuals, can’t do much to change the systemic racism that is deeply rooted in our society, but we can, as individuals, change our own behaviors and beliefs.  We can come to understand that maybe things we have believed are true about other people based on their race or country of origin, aren’t.  And we can work at changing the beliefs of others.  And as each person is changed, as each person comes to love their neighbor as they love themselves, racism and all the other isms, can be eradicated.

My brothers and sisters, if we would live in God’s beloved community, in God’s kingdom on earth, then we must indeed, love one another as God loves us, as we love ourselves.  When we leave this place today, let us go out filled with the knowledge of God’s greatness, so that God’s love can overflow from our hearts in the hearts and souls of all we encounter, today and all days.