11/16/25 - Power and Mercy - Luke 23:33-43

Power and Mercy

Luke 23:33-43

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

November 16, 2025

 

Image:  Rev. Michael Woolf, under arrest at Broadview Detention Facility in Chicago

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDvrBw7F4JQ

We are approaching the end of the church year. In traditions that follow the liturgical calendar, the last Sunday of the year is designated as Reign of Christ Sunday. That has only been true for the last century, by the way.  This designation came about in 1925 as a response to the rise of totalitarian ideologies in Europe.  The intent was to affirm the authority of Christ as the truest, highest ruler of the world.  So, we are invited to consider this vignette of Jesus on the cross within the context of his life and ministry. 

Delores Williams was an African American womanist theologian. Womanism is a perspective that centers the experience of women of color.  Williams remembers Sunday mornings in the churches of her childhood, where preaching was a very interactive experience, because the people in the pews talked back to the pastor.  She describes the minister in the pulpit shouting out, “Who is Jesus?”  The choir would respond from behind, “King of kings and Lord Almighty!”  And then, she says, an elderly woman from the back of the church is a voice so fragile and frail you could hardly hear her, would sing her own answer, “Poor little Mary’s boy.”  Back and forth they sang “King of Kings and Lord Almighty . . . poor little Mary’s boy.”  Williams says this was the black church doing theology.[1]  Who is Jesus? King of Kings cannot be the only answer.  Poor little Mary’s boy is there too.  These images clash.

Poor little Mary’s boy is easiest to see here.  He is being executed by crucifixion, a form of death by torture meant to humiliate the condemned and intimidate the masses and project imperial power.  Jesus has been forsaken by most of his friends and mocked by his enemies.  He has been beaten. He is in pain and afraid.  A sign over his cross sarcastically proclaims him King of the Jews.  It’s a warning about what happens to people who pose a threat to petty tyrants who abuse their power. Poor little Mary’s boy is subject to the rule of domination, terror and contempt.

The cruelty is the point.  We understand this in a tangible way as we bear witness to what immigration enforcement is doing on our streets and outside our schools and in our courthouses.  Abandoning due process and the rule of law, they attack and arrest people without evidence of a crime, they intimidate onlookers and protestors, they refuse to identify themselves.  Once people are taken by the authorities, they are held in places which were intended to be temporary.  Holding cells without showers or adequate food service.  Transported with shackles.  Remember the images of those who were deported to CECOT in El Salvador?  There and also here in this country, those abducted are physically cramped, crammed together forced into contact and intimacy with strangers. It is dehumanizing.  The cruelty is the point.

This is a new facet of crucifixion for me. Jesus, on the cross, is physically close to other supposed insurrectionists. He is associated with them because the authorities have lumped them together, without any care for guilt or innocence.  He is forced into a kind of intimacy with these strangers because of their shared suffering and dehumanization.  Who is Jesus? – poor little Mary’s boy.

In the midst of his pain, Jesus says “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.” He offers mercy even while none is being offered to him.  He continues to see his oppressors as humans as they seek to strip him of every shred of dignity and humanity.  He gives them the biggest benefit of the doubt – surely if they understood what they were doing, they would stop, and for that failure to understand, they need to be forgiven. 

These words from Jesus are often held up as an example for us to follow.  But for victims of violence and trauma, that may increase a sense of guilt and pain.  It might be helpful to see this nuance – Jesus does not instantaneously pronounce forgiveness on his executioners, but he pleads with God to forgive them.[2]  Sometimes that is all that we can do.  But to continue to recognize our enemies as humans, as people who could make better choices and might yet do so —that seems to me to be an exercise of love. 

One of the strangers dying near Jesus uses up some of his precious air to say, “Remember me when you come into your basileia.”  Basileia is a Greek word which can refer to the area ruled by a king, (a kingdom) or to the power or authority to rule as king.  So, the criminal next to Jesus says, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.  Remember me when you come into your power.”  

This is surely an absurd conversation.   Jesus has a sign above his cross that proclaims, “King of the Jews.”  It is a sign of derision, of mockery.  He is nailed to a cross.  The whole point of crucifixion is to demonstrate ruthlessly, without question, that Rome has all the power and those crucified are powerless.  

But the man says, “When you come into your power . . . Remember me.”  Somehow, in his last moments, this man comprehends that Jesus is something more than he appears.  He understands that Rome, for all its power and violence, is not completely in control of this situation.  “Remember me when you come into your power.” 

We know this and simultaneously we resist knowing it.  God chose to reveal God’s self most completely in the vulnerable helplessness of an infant and in the brokenness of an executed man. [3]  So here, somehow, we see not just poor little Mary’s baby, but also the King of Kings and Lord Almighty.

Here’s why that matters:  we affirm that we are made in the image of God.    Whenever we make that affirmation, we need to be mindful of who that God is, of what that God is, and of how it is that we bear the image of that God.  And so, if we say that God is a king and by that we mean an earthly dictator, then we may be tempted to see ourselves as co-rulers, equal with God and to lord it over others.  But if we mean the God is the king who shares power, the one who enters into human suffering, the one who confronts evil with strength but not violence, with mercy and power, if that is what we mean by God as king, then it implies a whole different thing for us.  A whole different understanding of how we act in bearing God’s image. 

We have a lot of bad models today.  A lot of Christians casually or intentionally adopting violence as a way of life.  A public theology that holds up a punitive, violent God which leads to a lot of Christians who casually adopt violence as a way of life or who defend horrific treatment of others in God’s name.  But there are others who do not, and I think we need to allow ourselves to be inspired by them. 

A few examples – David Black, pastor of First Presbyterian in Chicago was praying outside the Broadview Detention Center in Chicago.  He said, “I extended my arms, palms outstretched towards the ICE officers, in a traditional Christian posture of prayer and blessing.  Without any warning or order to disperse, I was suddenly fired upon by ICE officers. In rapid fire, I was hit seven times on my arms, face and torso with exploding pellets that contained some kind of chemical agent.  It was clear to me that the officers were aiming for my head, which they struck twice.  and then hit full in the face with tear gas.  One person writing about it said, “Rev. Black stood where Jesus would stand, alongside the detained, the displaced, the despised. Rev. Black stood where Christ would stand with the vulnerable, at the margins, and was met with the empire’s answer. He was met with violence from those who fear the gospel’s demand for justice.

Or Michael Woolf.  He is an American Baptist and an Alliance of Baptist pastor and serves on the as one of the associate regional ministers for the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago.  This is a picture of his most recent arrest, just two days ago.  That may have been his third one. On Halloween, ICE agents carried out several raids in and around Chicagoland — including in Evanston, home of Lake Street Church, where Michael is pastor. He joined protests at the Broadview detention facility the next day. He said “For me, it’s really important to take some risks. While I’m in my clerical collar, it’s important because it’s not just about the public witness part. It’s actually healing for people to see the people who represent the church and represent God in public really care about this and that they’re not going to shrink from the violence. That they’re not afraid of what’s going to happen. And it’s so important for us to gather there. We have to challenge dehumanization at every single point we find it as people of faith. It’s so vital that we do that.”

This is Luke Harris-Ferree, another Chicago area pastor arrested for non-violent prayerful protest.  The message on his shirt is so appropriate “Bad theology kills.”

Friends, this is the way our God chooses to use power – with forgiveness and mercy and the strength of vulnerability and love, a love that holds nothing back and even blesses enemies.  May we be imitators of Christ and not the ways of power in this world. 

 Who is Jesus?  Poor little Mary’s boy and King of Kings and Lord Almighty.  Thanks be to God.

 

[1] https://www.patheos.com/blogs/onscripture/2012/11/a-different-kind-of-king-john-18-33-37/

[2] Barbara E. Reid, OP and Shelly Matthews, Wisdom Commentary: Luke 10-24, (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2021), p. 612

[3] Michael Jinkins, Called to be Human: Letters to My Children on Living a Christian Life, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), p 32

 

11/2/25 - Saintly Vulnerability - Luke 6:20-26

Saintly Vulnerability

Luke 6:20-26

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

November 2, 2025

Image:  All Saints, by Kelly Latimore, 2024.  Used with explicit permission.  

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67h0GiKwf1o 

Many years ago now, there was a period of time when I was one who wept.   It was during a time of significant loss.  I had resigned from the church I was serving.  Leaving my job meant I didn’t have a sense of purpose or vocation.  It also meant the loss of most of my social network and spiritual companions. I was lonely and afraid.  It was a struggle to make it from Tuesday to Wednesday.  I found another church, a place where I sat in the midst of the congregation and worshipped from the pews.  The pastors were my colleagues and they were kind.  The church members were friendly, but we were not yet really friends.  I went there every Sunday because I needed to be there and I had no other place to go.  But often, everything would become too much and during a hymn or a prayer, the tears would stream down my face and I would weep.  And part of me would wonder if anyone noticed and what they thought about this frmer pastor sitting in their church and falling apart.

Jesus said Blessed are you who are poor.  Blessed are you who are hungry.  Blessed are you who weep. Blessed are you when people hate and exclude you. 

Blessed is not the word we would use in that context. I have learned to be a bit suspicious when I hear that word.  The angel said something like that to Mary when he told her she was pregnant with the Son of God.  That was going to mean both joy and heartbreak. Jesus said it to Peter who would later be killed for his faith.  When I see that word in scripture, I may say to myself “I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

That is part of Jesus’ point.  He uses a word that no one expects in order to challenge assumptions.  The accepted wisdom in his world and ours is that the wealthy are happy, that those whose hunger is satisfied are fortunate, that those who laugh are blessed.  So Jesus speaks directly to people who think they have been overlooked, forgotten or even cursed, to say that is from far from the case.

As Luke tells it, Jesus went up a mountain to pray, and the next day, he came down to a level place where a great crowd of people had gathered.   They came to listen and to be healed from illness and the presence of demons.  They have many deep needs.  In contrast to Matthew’s version, here Jesus does not invite them on a spiritual pilgrimage up the mountain.  He does not take his disciples up the mountain to talk about the people, but Jesus comes down in their midst to talk to them and to meet them in their vulnerability.[1]

I wonder if we might say that to be blessed means to have God’s attention, to be seen by God even when no one else does. 

We feel most in need of God’s attention when we are vulnerable. When we are exposed or uncertain, when we do not have the resources to meet the need at hand. When we have to ask for help.  When our circumstances overwhelm us and we weep in front of strangers. 

Blessed are we when we are vulnerable.

Most of us rarely seek the vulnerable place.  In fact, we avoid it at all costs. Our culture teaches us that to be vulnerable is to be weak.  But maybe we should listen to Jesus instead. 

Brene Brown is a sociologist who has done extensive work in the area of vulnerability.  Her definition of vulnerability is uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure. Vulnerability is not winning or losing.  It is having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome. She says, “Vulnerability is not weakness. It is our most accurate measure of courage.”

I know, for some of us, this sounds too touchy-feely.  But there are real-life, measurable benefits to practicing vulnerability.  One example comes from deep water oil rigs.  It’s mostly men who work those rigs, men who can be extremely reluctant to ask for help or admit it if they’re feeling sick on a certain day, but men who depend on each other for safety. 

When the oil industry moved out to drill in very deep waters, someone realized they needed to make a change.  So, while the deeper rigs were being constructed, a consultant came in to work with the teams.  In one exercise, they were asked to draw their families and personal timelines and talk about them to the group.  They were resistant at first, but eventually the men told stories of failed relationships and alcoholic parents. They talked about how they were hungry as children. It felt vulnerable. They put their personal life out there for everybody to hear and everybody to see.

As the men became more open with their feelings, other communication was starting to flow more freely. Part of safety in an environment like that is being able to admit mistakes and being open to learning — to say, “I need help, I can't lift this thing by myself, I'm not sure how to read this meter.”

This training helped contribute to an 84% decline in the company’s accident rate and in the same period, the company’s productivity exceeded the industry’s previous benchmark.[2]

In Luke’s version of this sermon, Jesus pronounces woes on the rich, the full, and those who are laughing.  We could spend time there, scold ourselves and resolve to share more.  But I think the more fruitful resolve might be to take on the practice of vulnerability.  Some of you are practicing it just now, not by choice, but circumstance.  Blessed are you. 

But for the rest of us – let us consider what it means to practice something.  I read recently about a boy who loved basketball.  He played all the time, but one day, he realized he was a one-sided player.  He did everything with his dominant right hand.  And so, he began to practice shooting with his left.  He spent several hours making hundreds of shots, one after the other.  He said, “unsurprisingly the initial results were dismal and disappointing.  My skinny left arm was barely strong enough to heave the ball up to the hoop.  And it was far too wobbly to aim with any accuracy.”  But he kept at it and after a long time, he realized that he was getting stronger and was actually able to control the ball.[3]

When we begin a new practice, we may be distressed.  It may feel like a waste of time.  And so, we retreat to more comfortable habits that soothe our distress.  But when we don’t give up, when we keep at it, that is when we come to understand the blessing.

On this All Saints Sunday, when we think of those who blessed us, who taught us, nurtured us, passed on something important.  I would bet that our sense of connection happened because at some time, they practiced vulnerability, they were authentic and real.  They let us see their struggles.  I think this is what it means to be a saint, not to rise above it all, or to be perfectly pious, but to keep showing up even when things are out of our control.

There was a newcomer at Dinner Church some weeks back.  They showed up with courage.  If you were at that table, then you heard their voice break, saw the tears which they couldn’t hold back, listened to their story of rejection and pain, but also of acceptance and love.  It was a profoundly holy moment in which some of us were privileged to share because of that person’s willingness to be vulnerable.

Blessed are you who weep. You who have God’s attention. You are valued and important simply because God has made you priceless. 

Blessed are all of us, because we are all broken in some way.  We yearn for a world turned right-side-up. We all deserve to weep. And we all are blessed.

 

 

[1] https://www.davidlose.net/2016/11/all-saints-c-saintly-vulnerability/

[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/17/482203447/invisibilia-how-learning-to-be-vulnerable-can-make-life-safer

[3] Andrew DeCoort, Flourishing on the Edge of Faith:  Seven Practices For a New We (Washington, DC:  Bittersweet Collective, 2022), pp.  xxvii-xxviii

10/19/25 - Living in Exile - Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

Living in Exile

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 19, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROZEcHVlhpc

Roger Williams was the founder of what is now the state of Rhode Island and the first pastor of the First Baptist Church in America.  Williams was one of many migrants in the 1600’s who fled his home country of England because of religious persecution.  He served churches in the Plymouth colony but his strong opinions on the separation of church and state made him unpopular with the authorities. Four years after his arrival, church leaders warned the civil authorities that he was a threat to the unity to the colony.  Williams was ordered to self-deport back to England within six weeks.

However, it was November and Williams was ill, so he was permitted to stay until the spring, on the condition that he would not share his opinions publicly. He agreed to that, but he did continue to meet with a small group in his home.  For those private meetings, agents were sent to arrest him, but he fled into the wilderness and escaped.  He found sanctuary with Native Americans he had befriended and whose language he had learned. 

To sum this up,  “Roger Williams was a migrant who left the oppression of his native land only to be rejected by his new land. He was banished and told to self-deport; then almost arrested and sent to a country where he faced almost certain death. To avoid this fate, he fled his adopted home, finding sanctuary among those who cared for him and who kept him alive.”[1]

Roger Williams has long been a hero for many members of this church, but I have only recently begun to see how his life experience overlaps with immigrants and those subject to or threatened with deportion. 

The letter that Kathy read for us was written to people who had been deported out of their native land.  Babylon had besieged Jerusalem, killing many people and when it was over, Babylon took many prisoners and carted them off to Babylon. So, from our point of view, it is a kind of backwards deportation or exile.  In Babylon, they live as immigrants, probably facing many of the same challenges that immigrants living in this country do.  There are language barriers and cultural differences.  Probably Babylonians are reluctant to hire Judeans and if they do, they want to pay them less than Babylonian citizens.  They have no rights, no expectation of due process.  They are enemies. 

There were 51.9 million immigrants living in the United States in June.  That’s down from 53.3 million in January.  They constitute 15% of the population and 19% of the workforce.  We know that they are not being treated right.  Even those who are here legally working their cases in our immigration courts are being grabbed off the streets, subjected to violence and abuse and separation from families and sometimes being sent to countries where they have never lived.  You know all that. 

But imagine if the letter from Jeremiah came to today’s immigrants.  Imagine if those folks being actively rounded up and abused received this message – seek the welfare of America.  Pray for your American neighbors, pray for ICE, pray for the well-being of this country whose government seems utterly unconcerned with your well-being. 

Can we begin to see how hard this word from Jeremiah is?  The people in exile want to know if they should try to run from Babylon or raze it to the ground. [2] Fight or flight.  But Jeremiah’s unexpected answer is neither one.  Instead, he says “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens.  Settle down and raise a family.  Seek good for Babylon. Help to make Babylon great.  You won’t get any credit for it because immigrants rarely do, but do it anyway.  Embrace the life you have now; live your best life in exile.” 

It is a hard word, but Jeremiah is offering intentional pastoral care to the exiles. He tells the truth about what to expect.  This is a long-haul situation.  They’re not coming home for a couple of generations, and the sooner they accept that, the sooner they can adapt.  There’s another prophet on the scene, a guy named Hananiah.  Hananiah says that all those in Exile are coming home soon, within two years. He’s wrong, but people like what he has to say.  It’s an easier word.  But we see that Jeremiah’s hard word is kinder. It is not what the people want to hear, but it is what they need to know.

There are two Jewish communities now. One is in exile in Babylon; the other back home in Jerusalem.  Since they believed that the exile was God’s will, it seems obvious that the people carried off to Babylon are being singled out for punishment.  This is so obvious that the folks in Jerusalem felt proud of themselves and the ones in exile were in despair.   So, it came as a surprise, back in chapter 24, when Jeremiah revealed that the exiles are the ones especially favored by God.  They are the carriers of God’s future.[3]

Jeremiah’s first act of care is to inform them of the new reality. The world has shifted in radical, permanent ways and they have to live in the world they have, not the one they lost.  But his second act of care is to bestow on this small vulnerable community a missional responsibility.  He gives them a meaningful purpose,  work to do.

Their job is to wage peace in Babylon.  In verse 7, peace is a task for the exiles.Verse 7:  “But seek the shalom of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its shalom you will find your shalom.”  Shalom is the word which we’ve heard translated today as welfare or peace and prosperity, but it really refers to a deep pervasive well-being.

Shalom is the task that God sets for the exiles.  But also note in verse 11, shalom will be God’s gift to the exiles.[4] Their well-being is bound up with that of their enemies.

We have come to this verse which is a favorite for many Emmanuelites.  “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans for your shalom and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”

If we are going to claim this verse for ourselves, then we have to keep it in context.  It comes after God tells them that they will be in exile for generations.  No one who reads this letter will be alive in the future it describes.  The plans for good are not for Jeremiah or any other individual. 

We often read this as if it says that God has a plan, a blueprint for my individual life and yours and yours. The Bible comes to us from cultures where the individual was never the focus that we are in America.  The Bible rarely speaks as if God has a script for each of our lives.   It speaks as though God has one plan for all us, summed up by Jesus when he said “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” 

This verse is not written to any individuals but to a people, a crowd, a community, a nation.  I know the plans I have for you all, God is saying.  I know the plans for the long-term.

This plan is about being entrusted with God’s future.  I wonder if we might hear it as being addressed to us, not as individuals, but as a community, as the church, the Body of Christ.  I wonder if we are being called to the same kind of sacrifice as the exiles, to seek the shalom of the place where we are in exile?

As Americans, some of us may feel like we’re in exile in our own homeland. We do not recognize the nation that we have become and we are tempted to despair and numbness. What if this message is to us? 

Andre Trocme was the pastor of a village church in Le Chambon, France in the lead-up to WWII and the occupation by the Nazis.  The people of Le Chambon, under his leadership, hid and sheltered thousands of Jewish people, providing a future for them.  He taught them to practice non-violent nonconformity saying “Nonconformity for reasons of conscience is the first duty of Christ’s followers.” 

In his memoir, he wrote “From crisis to crisis, the political pendulum swings, from right to left, from left to right.The extremists always lead the way. They tear up the streets and smash the shop windows. The ‘politically neutral’ always close their eyes and ‘wait for it to pass.’ They get out while the getting is good. Meanwhile, the nonviolent, never neutral, never violent, maintain contact with their friends and enemies, correct falsehoods and join forces with all those fighting for justice, truth and peace.” 

I wonder if God is calling us to actively seek the peace of America, not along partisan lines, but by loving God and our neighbors and enemies as ourselves. 

As Christians, some of us may feel like we’re in exile.  The world has shifted in radical, permanent ways.  The church we have known and loved is crumbling, perhaps like Jeremiah watched the Temple crumble under assault from Babylon.  But what if we are being given a new missional responsibility.  What if we are the you all God wants to use for good?  What if this time of exile, where Christianity suffers from the cancer of Christian nationalism,  where the new forms of worship feels unsatisfying and alien, what if that is our sacrifice, our contribution to the deep well-being of a future generation?

Not everything in the Bible is about us.  So I offer this tentatively, but I wonder . . . what if we could heard God saying “I know the plans I have for you all.” A future generation will arise, a generation shaped by you who are living through exile right now – that generation will sustain God’s dream.   So stop waiting for exile to end and find ways to thrive.  Embrace the life we have now.  We’re in this together for the long haul.  Don’t despair, don’t be passive, but follow God’s Spirit and keep adapting with wisdom and courage. And through it all, hope and pray relentlessly for a different future where everyone will participate in the abundance of life God intends.

Thanks be to God.  

 

 


[1] https://baptistnews.com/article/the-attempted-deportation-of-baptist-hero-roger-williams/

[2] Jared E. Alcantara, in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year C, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Editors, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2019), p. 375.

[3] Walter Brueggemann, A Commentary on Jeremiah: Exile and Homecoming, (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmanns, 1998). p 255

[4] Walter Brueggemann p. 255

 

10/5/25 - Transient Custodians of Power - 2 Timothy 1:1-14

Transient Custodians of Power

2 Timothy 1:1-14

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

October 5, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHQxVCh9b1s 

A friend sent me a video of a speech given by a president at the United Nations General Assembly.  It was not the president’s speech that I had already seen several times.  This one was offered by Natašha Pirc Musar, President of Slovenia. It was a passionate, challenging speech. 

Just to give you an idea:  She began by talking about the history of the United Nations. She said that permanent five members of the UN Security Council were supposed to be role models for the rest of the world working for peace, but now some work in their own interests instead.  In case you don’t already know, the permanent five members of the UN Security Council are China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and the United States.  She ended the speech with these words “We did not stop the Holocaust.  We did not stop the genocide in Rwanda.  We did not stop the genocide in Sbranitza.  We must stop the genocide in Gaza. There are no excuses anymore.  None.” [1]

It was a compelling, 15-minute speech that offered both lament and hope.  I commend it to you.  I watched two more speeches, by the leaders of Finland and Ireland.  Each speaker implored the UN to live up to its charter of engaging large and small nations to work together for the common good and the peace of the whole planet.   There was an undertone and sometimes an explicit overtone of calling Russia, the USA and Israel to account.  These world leaders are exercising the power they have, even if they may feel like its not enough.  I found it inspiring.  In fact, President Musar of Slovenia provided the title for this sermon.  she said “We, the leaders of today, are only transient custodians of power.  Some of us may not be here after the next election, but that is precisely why we must act now.”

Transient custodians of power

It reminds me of Paul’s phrase in the letter to the Corinthians – “we have this treasure in earthen vessels.”

And today, in the letter to Timothy, it says “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” The Greek word for power there is dynamus, from which we get dynamite.

The spirit that I hear being exalted most often by world leaders now is not the spirit of love and self-discipline.  It is not a spirit of cooperation, but a fear-mongering will to power that dominates and bends others to its will.  And so I am hooked by the notion that there is a real power, a kind of dynamite where love and self-discipline could have an impact. 

I keep reading this letter, only to discover that immediately after saying that stuff about power, Paul invites Timothy to join him in suffering for the gospel.  Now hold up a minute. Paul’s experience with suffering is deep.  It includes all kinds of physical hardship – being beaten or stoned, shipwrecked and imprisoned, not to mention the significant wounding that happens during good old church fights.  What kind of friend invites you to volunteer for that?

And also, aren’t we, as Jesus’ disciples supposed to be about alleviating suffering?  Jesus’ platform – good news for the poor, healing the sick, releasing captives – that’s all about everyone suffering less, isn’t it?  So what do we do with Paul’s invitation to embrace suffering?

We have all been exposed to a lot of bad theology about suffering.  Bad theology says its for your own good, to teach you something.  Bad theology says it’s not as bad as you think it is, quit your whining, and deal with it.  Bad theology may make you think you deserve to suffer or that God requires it.  I’m not going to take the time to unpack each of those, but for me, they all fall into that category of bad theology.  If you think I’m being too dismissive, please talk with me about that.  I would love to hear your ideas.

There is also some good theology about suffering and that is worth holding onto. Good theology recognizes that our pain is real and that shame, loss of dignity and injustice are also forms of suffering.  Paul described his own distress, agony and loneliness on many occasions. 

Yes, Jesus did seek to alleviate human suffering, but we also remember that in order to do that, he gave up equality with God and put on human form, making himself vulnerable to the entire human experience, feeling all that we feel.  Jesus embraced suffering for our sake. 

Paul invites Timothy to join him in suffering for the gospel, because there is a relationship between the suffering and the power, the spirit that is not afraid, but is powerful and loving and self-disciplined. 

“It is courageous, to embrace the kind of power that Jesus embodied which is a self-sacrificing one and one that requires self-control lest our egos get the best of us. And it’s courageous to feel love, to let our heart break in compassion for the world God loves.”[2]

In August 1966, Dr. King told his congregation, “I choose to identify with the underprivileged.  I choose to identify with the poor.  I choose to give my life for the hungry.  I choose to give my life for those who have been left out.  This is the way I’m going.  If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.  If it means dying for them, I’m going that way.” [3]  Less than two years later, he was assassinated. 

What kind of friend invites someone into a community of suffering?  Someone who wants to imitate Jesus. 

Friends, this is God’s call on us now -- to share in the suffering of the world for the sake of the gospel.  To let our hearts break in compassion until we are compelled to act.

We have this treasure in earthen vessels.  We are transient custodians of dynamite. We are a small but beloved part of a long story.  It is not up to us to fix all the things or even really to fix anything, but to keep on showing up and to recognize that God is in this for the long haul.  Paul reminds Timothy of the faith of his grandmother and his mother which now resides in him. It is a multi-generational perspective.   We are connected to all those who have come before us, to the radical revolutionaries and the unknown saints who lived quiet, peaceful lives.

We have power we have not tapped. It is the power of Christ, the power we access by imitating Jesus, by being the Body of Christ as consistently and as boldly as we can.

The Orthodox church across the world is struggling now, because the leader of that communion is in Russia and has aligned with the Russian government.  So, many Orthodox bishops and priests have chosen to take a stand and separate their congregations from the Russian church. That is a courageous, compassionate exercise of their power.   But long ago, there was a different story told about the Orthodox Church in Russia.  For centuries, Russia was governed by dictators called czars and the Orthodox church supported their right to rule, saying it was given by God.  The Church did not critique politics or eonomics, so when the communists came to power in the early 20th century, it seemed unlikely that the church was going to challenge the new status quo.

Except for one habit they had.  Before the celebration of Communion, the priest was expected to go to the porch of the church and ring a hand-bell. That bell was to tell the people in the village that Communion was beginning. The early Communist regime outlawed the ringing of the hand-bell as part of its anti-religious campaign.

Now Orthodox priests are the ultimate traditionalists, so they just continued to stand on the porch, ringing their little bells, finding church impossible without it. The state reacted by jailing and slaughtering priests by the thousands. By refusing to give up the ringing of the bell, Orthodoxy found their power and confronted the nation's rulers with a determination that they had not know they had.[4]

Beloved ones, find a bell to ring, or a way to speak truth to power, to stand with the marginalized, to love your neighbor or your enemy.   This is God’s call on us now -- to share in the suffering of the world for the sake of the gospel.  Because God has not given us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.  Thanks be to God.

 

 

[1] https://youtu.be/YUpK4kVj2UU?si=zik8MutDaDdezNE8

[2] https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/ordinary-27c-dana

[3] cited in Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero by Vincent Harding, Orbis Books, 2008.

[4] Stanley Hauerwas, Pulpit Resource, January- March, 2003, p. 8

9/21/25 - Indictments - Amos 8:4-7; I Timothy 2:1-7

Indictments

Amos 8:4-7; I Timothy 2:1-7

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

September 21, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi5-rrjgGN0 

The verses we heard from Amos 8 are the fourth indictment the prophet brings against Israel’s rich and powerful for their oppression of the poor.   The fourth indictment. At least two scholars I read this week used that word “indictment” so it made an impression on me.  By the time of Jesus, people often referred to the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible as The Law and the Prophets.  By the time of Jesus, the tradition of prophecy was well-established.  Prophecy is speaking unpopular truth to power and warning of the consquences of continuing down the current path.  Amos is believed to be the earliest of the prophetic books,[1] making Amos the first to write down his prophecies.   Warnings against oppressing the poor are repeatedly raised by other prophets like Micah, Zechariah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  The consistency of this theme by those who speak for God tells us about the character of God.  It tells us that the God of Abraham and Sarah, the God of Moses and Miriam, and the God of Jesus has a deep, enduring concern for justice.

Amos prophesies to the northern kingdom of Israel during the reign of King Jeroboam, 800 years before Jesus. Jeroboam’s reign of 41 years was marked by territorial expansion, aggressive militarism and unprecedented national prosperity.   Amos is concerned about the concentration of wealth among urban elites, because the prosperity being enjoyed by those at the top comes through exploitation and cheating the poor. Amos charges them with corruption and fraud.

Worship has become a sham, a pretext.  Amos says that they can’t wait for church to be over, so that they can get back to gouging the poor.  They take pride in their religiosity and their history as God’s favored people, but Amos says they are deluding themselves. In reality, they have completely abandoned God’s ways.  He indicts them for their hypocrisy.  

There was no legal way for Amos to hold his government accountable.  No mechanism by which ordinary people could legislate systemic provisions for the poor or set standards of decent human behavior.  Thousands of years have passed between us and Amos and yet, our contexts have much in common. Indictments in our time can be set aside or overturned so easily that it may seem like they don’t even really matter.

But they do matter.  Even when the person indicted pays no penalty for wrong-doing, the fact of the charge matters because it reveals the truth.  Amos charged the businesses of his time of cheating with dishonest scales. Archeological excavations from his time and region, have uncovered shops with two sets of weights, one for buying and a different one for selling.[2]

Amos spoke the truth loudly and often, not because he had authority or influence, but because it needed to be said.  Perhaps Amos would have agreed with that future prophet, Martin King who said, “A [person] dies when [they] refuse to stand up for that which is right.  A [person] dies when [they] refuse to stand up for justice.  A [person] dies when [they] refuse to take a stand for that which is true.”[3]

Last Sunday afternoon, Jim and I attended an event at RISSE celebrating new citizens in Albany.  There was a panel of 4 people who were originally from Afghanistan, Congo, Myanmar, South Sudan.  They were asked about culture shock, about what they remembered from their first days and weeks in the USA.  The man from Afghanistan had worked on the Bagram Airforce Base and lived nearby.  He described his journey as a series of long flights after which he finally reached Albany at 7:00 p.m. Succumbing to the stress of travel and jet lag and finally reaching his goal of being in the USA, he fell into bed and slept.  He slept for a long time, finally waking at 7 p.m. the next night.  He was very surprised at how well he had slept, saying that no one ever really slept at home, because it was a war zone and you were always wary.  The Congolese woman said that her culture shock was discovering that she could walk freely outdoors at night. 

It immediately struck me that they were naming particular elements of the peaceful and quiet life described in the reading from I Timothy.  A life with freedom to move when and where one wants without fear and to sleep soundly.

Many scholars believe that the letter to Timothy comes from the time when Nero was Emperor.  Nero’s reign was characterized by political turmoil, economic instability and widespread social unrest. Nero targeted Christians with his cruelty, executing them in torturous and humiliating ways. One historian of that time said that Nero was not motivated by a sense of justice, but by a penchant for personal cruelty.[4]  Hmm.  

That is the context in which Christians were urged to pray for everyone, including kings and others in high positions.    At the same time, the author asserts that there is only one God, and that Jesus Christ is a mediator and saved humans through his death. Remember that in the Roman world, the emperor was believed to be divine.  To pray for him, implies that the emperor like everyone else, depends on the guidance and mercy of God. This is the subversive part. By praying for the emperor, instead of to him, you inherently recognize that he is a human like everyone else.[5]  

Pray for kings and others in high places – pray for them, just as Jesus taught us to pray for our enemies – so that so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. Pray for rulers so that Christians can go about God’s work in peace. Pray for those in authority because they have the greatest sphere of influence. Pray because they might yet change.  The writer is suggesting not rebellion, but transformation.

Human behavior is slow to change.  We seem as driven by consumption and profit as those in ancient Israel of Amos’ time.  Despite the progress of human rights and participatory government since Jesus’ time, we are still subject to those whose rule is characterized by corruption and hyprocrisy and cruelty. Our context is not the same.  We have tools which were not available to our faithful ancestors -- the ballot box, court hearings, peaceful protest, and non-violent resistance.  And we should use those with godliness and dignity.  But today’s texts remind us of the spiritual power offered in prophecy and prayer which we dare not neglect. 

The Rev. Paul Raushenbush is an American Baptist pastor and activist. In a sermon on courage last Sunday, he said,  “Throughout our history, there have been terrible times of violence and threat, especially against marginalized communities, and too often it has come with the legitimizing support of powerful people who bear the name of Christ, and yet our country has other examples of followers of Jesus who chose to love God and to love their neighbor and in that decision they accessed the courage to meet their moment just as we will meet ours.”[6] 

Pray for kings and those in high places. In November we’ll mark the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  A deadly divide which many people believed was permanent, but which has now been down for longer than it stood.  Its collapse began with prayer. In the 1980s, St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig held meetings to pray for peace. These prayer meetings led to pro-democracy actions in the church square, sparking the larger, nonviolent Monday Demonstrations. These in turn spread to other cities, and on November 9, 1989 the wall came down.

Pray for everyone. In June, you might remember there was a Saturday with a military parade in Washington DC.  It was the 250th anniversary of the US Army and also happened to coincide with Donald Trump’s birthday.  That same weekend, all across the country, there were No Kings events, organized non-violent protests against violations of the US Constitution that have become commonplace. One pastor wondered how to minister to people in DC who had to go back to their jobs in the government after that weekend.  So he organized teams of pastors and lay leaders who showed up at Metro stations and bus stops across the the region. 

When the people came up the escalators at Metro stops, they encountered folks wearing stoles or clergy collars and holding signs.  The signs said  “Here with prayers for you.”  “Praying for Federal Workers”  “Grateful for your service.”  “We see you.”  Many of them had signs, but some intentionally did not have signs, so that their hands were open. They anticipated that some people might come forward and ask for specific prayers, which they did.  One person said that even when people on the escalators did not speak, they would do a double take and make solid eye contact.  They said, “You could see the grief and gratitude in their eyes, and I realized that, now God was in their day.  The Spirit was in their day now.” [7]

Remember to pray. And also to prophecy – to speak inconvenient and unpopular truth -- when it seems that those with power prefer to traffic in distortions and lies.  If due process and a free press are up for grabs, then bring the indictments into the public square.  Two weeks ago, tens of thousands of people marched in Washington DC against the occupation of that city by the National Guard. In the middle of the route was Foundry United Methodist Church which rang its bells over and over again in solidarity as people walked by.  Afterwards, people from every kind of background pointed to the impact of those bells as the most important moment of the day for them.

We are a people of peace who desire only to live in peace and quietness, but we live in a time of violence and threat. May we remember our ancestors in faith, the first Christians who followed Jesus in a revolutionary nonviolent movement promoting a new kind of aliveness on the margins of society. A movement for peace, for love, for joy, for justice, for integrity.[8] May we be found among those who choose to love God and to love our neighbors and may God grant us the courage to meet this moment just as they met theirs.  Amen.


[1] Donald Gowan, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume V, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1996), p, 339

[2] James Luther Mays, Amos, Old Testament Library Series (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1969), p. 144

[3] From Dr. King’s sermon on courage delivered on March 8, 1965 at Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama

[4] Tacitus, Annals. XV.44

[5] Christian Eberhardt, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-1-timothy-21-7-3

[6]Paul Raushenbush, Cathedral of Hope, Dallas, Texas 9-14-2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fEZtBvUcwY

[7] https://pres-outlook.org/2025/08/d-c-churches-respond-to-federal-show-of-force/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ap_wz8zvofpie

[8] Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking (New York:  Jericho Books, 2014), p. xv.

 

9/7/25 - Open Table - Luke 14:7-14

Open Table

Luke 14:1, 7-14

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

September 7, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjhwvkfi-q0 

There was a quid pro quo to Roman banquets.  You were invited because your presence benefitted the host in some way.  And your value to the host was demonstrated in the hospitality you were offered.   Pliny the Younger was a Roman official whose letters are a source of information about first century history and customs. This is what he wrote about one particular host:

Some very elegant dishes were served up to himself and a few more of the company; while those which were placed before the rest were cheap and paltry.  He had apportioned in small flagons three different sorts of wine, but you are not to suppose it was that the guests might take their choice:  on the contrary, that they might not choose at all.  One was for himself and me; the next for his friends of lower order ( for you must know that he measures out his friendship according to the degrees of quality); and the third was for his own freedmen and mine. [1]

Jesus is at a meal where attention is being paid to those kinds of social layers and rules, although Jesus’ host is not likely to move at the level of Pliny the Younger.  Jesus is nothing if not an interesting dinner guest, so he pokes the bear.  He calls out the guests for taking the best seats, for assuming that the best seats or the best wine is intended for them. He tells them that a better strategy is never to assume, but to take a lower station, so that when the host invites them to a better seat, it will be a public honor.  But if they take the better seat without being told to, they may get demoted.

It's a simple message and nothing new. Humility is better than arrogance because it keeps you from embarassing yourself.  It wasn’t even new in Jesus’ time.  He was quoting from Proverbs 25.

Dr Robert Coles is now  95-years-old.  In his working years, he was a child psychiatrist and Harvard professor.  He became known for his support of Ruby Bridges who was the first black student to attend a formerly white-only school in New Orleans, accompanied by federal marshalls. 

But before that, when Dr. Coles was a medical student, he volunteered to work at a Catholic Worker House, a ministry with the poor founded by Dorothy Day.  Coles He was a

Harvard graduate. He was in medical school. In our society, that’s pretty high status.  He knew that. He was proud of it. He was also proud that as this person with all these credentials, he was volunteering to help the poor. It was the kind of thing that people would take notice of.

Well, Coles arrived at the building to volunteer and asked to see Dorothy Day. He went right to the top. He was told that she was in the kitchen. He went into the kitchen and saw her

sitting at a table talking to someone. The man looked like a drug addict. He was disheveled. He appeared to be someone who lived on the street. Dorothy Day was sitting at a table with him, listening intently to what he had to say, giving him her full attention. So she didn’t notice Coles come into the room. He stood beside the door, waiting for her to finish. When she finished the conversation, she stood up and then noticed Coles. Then she said, "Do you want to speak to one of us?"

Coles was astounded. Dorothy Day was famous. She was like the Mother Theresa of her time. This man with her seemed like a nobody, a derelict. And Dorothy Day said, "You wanted to speak to one of us." She never assumed that anyone there would only be waiting to speak to her.

Coles had never seen anything like that before. What he was seeing was humility. Humility that identified so completely with another person that it removed all the distinctions between them, all the categories that our society sets up to separate use from one another. There were just two people at that table, brother and sister, and the sister was concerned about the brother. Robert Coles said that it changed his life.  He said he learned more in that one moment than he did in four years at Harvard.

So Jesus gives advice to the guests at this party – be humble, don’t try to seem so important and then people may end up honoring you more. He says “ For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

That sounds like a variation on another one of his sayings “The last will be first and the first will be last.”

We can make a big deal about being humble, can’t we?  One time I heard about a big denominational meeting where all the clergy were to process into the gathered assembly.  The lay moderator was trying to get things started, but there was a delay because the most splendidly dressed representatives were maneuvering and bickering about who would go last --because the last one in was considered the most humble and therefore the most important. So the moderator stuck an usher at the end of the line and got the procession started.

False humility is not humility at all. True humility is quiet confidence.  It is trusting, like the child in our book, that we are enough, that it is enough to just be ourselves.  To be humble is to know our worth because we are made in God’s image, and so is everyone else.  I was told that Alcoholics Anonymous has a relevant phrase.  They say “Humility is not thinking less of yourself.  It is thinking of yourself less.”  Let me repeat that “Humility is not thinking less of yourself.  It is thinking of yourself less.” 

Jesus says those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.  There is a reversal of who is honored and who is shamed, but the system doesn’t change.  With a simple reversal, unequal power structures remain in place, only the characters change.

But Jesus goes further. He proposes a guest list that breaks the cycle.  He tells the host to invite people who don’t get invited to anything because they can’t pay it back.  One scholar says “For people of higher rank to invite people who are poor and who have disabilities, the problem is not only a loss of personal honor; they also risk losing their social standing and being cut off from their social networks if they are seen at table with such people.”[2]

Jesus’ guest list extends the table. It enables people to set aside their social capital or in today’s language, to surrender our privilege.  Because the culture of privilege, the culture of power robs us of our impulse to be neighborly, destroys our humanity and may literally kill us.

I said that our children are brave to start a new grade every year.  That bravery is probably tested most often in the cafeteria.  Where will I sit?  Who will I eat lunch with?  These are scary questions.

We Dine Together was started in 2017 by a high school senior  named Dennis Estimon in Boca Raton, Florida The whole purpose was to make sure that none of his classmates ate lunch by themselves. So he started by recruiting three of his peers from different social groups in the school. They met up before lunch and in the cafeteria,  they just made an effort to approach people who were sitting by themselves and sit and talk with them, introduce themselves regardless of what social strata they belong to in the hierarchy. And that group of students quickly ballooned into about 80 who were all trying to welcome each other.  Dennis immigrated from Haiti when he was in first grade. “There was a language barrier. . . I felt isolated.  I felt lonely. And so I still remember how I felt not being able to speak to fellow students.” he said. [3] As Dennis got older, he adjusted and made friends, but he was not content to exalt himself as a popular student, instead he made space for others to find their own welcome.

Jesus’ alternative vision of welcome and inclusion, of sharing the table is so simple.   We already know this.  It seems ridiculous to still be preaching about it 2,000 years later.  But it was threatening to those who seemed powerful in Jesus time and it is still threatening to them now.   When diversity, equity and inclusion are being dismantled, we hold to Jesus’ alternative vision of a beloved expansive community.   When the Department of War is being elevated, we hold to Jesus’ alternative vision of peace for all. 

I couldn’t sleep last night and I did the thing you’re not supposed to do.  I looked at my phone.  I woke up several times and every time, I saw a clip from a different city – Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Austin. There was conflict.  People yelling, being threatened, shoved, pepper sprayed and arrested.  Those with power are pushing away black and brown bodies from the tables of opportunity.  People who speak a foreign language or those who speak English with an accent are rudely dis-invited from the common good. Not a good thing to see in the midst of a sleepless night. 

But I also saw masses of people, all across the land humbly and forcefully asserting themselves to say that it is the arrogant and abusive, those who curry favor with the rich to the destruction of our communities, they are who are not welcome here.  Whether they know it or not, these protestors are holding up Jesus’ alternative vision.  I am frightened; I am heartsick; I am angry.  I know that you are also these things and more, rightfully so.  But I also  see the powerful welcome of God in the actions of neighbors standing with neighbors and I am encouraged.  I hope you are too. May God grant us wisdom and courage for the living of these days. 

 

 

[1] Pliny the Younger, cited by R. Alan Culpepper,  The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p. 286.

[2] Barbara E. Reid, OP and Shelly Matthews, Wisdom Commentary: Luke 10-24, (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2021), p. 425

[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Lifestyle/high-school-senior-creates-group-dine-student-eat/story?id=46172969

8/17/25 - Things Hoped For - Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16

Things Hoped For

Hebrews 11:1-3. 8-16

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

August 17, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3ye0ZDODk0 

“Is this a Bonhoeffer moment?”  That question gets tossed around often in some circles lately.  You probably know that Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German theologian and pastor who resisted his government when he recognized, very early the dangers of Hitler’s regime.  And so people wonder if this moment is another time in history that calls for people to speak up and resist in similar way.

Bonhoeffer wrestled earnestly with the question of how to live faithfully in his time. In his Christmas letter of 1942, he wrote “Have there ever been people in history who in their time, like us, had so little ground under their feet, people to whom every possible alternative open to them at the time appeared equally unbearable, senseless, and contrary to life?”

Twelve years after he became one of the first to publicly oppose the Nazis, they executed him.  He is a martyr, someone who was killed for his faith and his example is inspiring.

But, as most people are, he is complicated.  Victoria Barnett is a scholar who interviewed more than 60 people who were part of the German Confessing Church.  She learned that many of those folks never heard of Bonhoeffer  until after the war, even though they were involved in the same movement.  Others were critical of him because he was very traditional and did not support the ordination of women.  That struggle was going on at the same time. Also “The resistance group in which he was involved consisted of an inner circle of conspirators that had access to Hitler precisely because of their high-ranking positions in the Nazi system. Most had served as loyal civil servants and career military officers who gradually despaired of the evil surrounding them and turned against the regime.”[1]

I share these facts not to diminish him at all, but as a reminder that he was an ordinary human being.

Nowadays, people appeal to Bonhoeffer as an example of faith.  The writer of Hebrews offers a list of faithful people including Abraham.  We might remember that God told Abraham to move to a land he did not know where he would become the father of multitudes.  So Abraham and Sarah packed up and moved to Canaan as directed, but soon after they arrived, there was a drought, so they moved on to Egypt where Abe got in trouble with the king for lying about Sarah being his wife and they had to return to Canaan.  Sarah was getting old without getting pregnant, so Abraham had a son with another woman whose name was Hagar.  That led to family drama and conflict worthy of a soap opera.  Finally, when they were old enough to be grandparents and had given up all hope, Sarah did get pregnant and gave bith to their son Isaac. Isaac grew up and had two sons, one of whom was Jacob.  Jacob then had 12 sons and 1 daughter.  We know the 12 sons as the leaders of 12 tribes of ancient Israel and more descendants that can be counted. 

“By faith,” Hebrews says, “Abraham and Sarah and many many others endured and prevailed.” The long list of heroes might be intimidating. We might aspire to be as courageous, as faithful, as Abraham or Sarah or Bonhoeffer, but not consider ourselves worthy or capable, not in their league.  So it is helpful to me to recognize that they were people just like us.  They didn’t have super powers or even super faith.  They found themselves in tough times, with hard decisions to make and had to try to figure it out just like we do.  They made mistakes and took wrong turns and back tracked, just like we do.  Some of them suffered for their faith; they died for doing the right thing; they were killed for their obedience to God and it is possible that such may also be required of us.  Because we are living in that kind of moment. 

Austin Channing Brown is an author and speaker who leads the struggle for racial justice.  This week, she wrote this:

“Every now and then, throughout history, the fight for justice is bright and shiny and hopeful.  Every now and then, the fight feels like it’s within our reach.  Every now and then progress feels inevitable and celebrations are planned ahead of certain victory.  But more often, our fight for justice looks like this.  Hard.  Unforgiving.  Filled with sadness.  Wondering if we’ll make it at all.”

“The shadow of hope.  Working in the dark.  Trusting that something new can be formed in the womb of chaos.  Hope against hope.  Hope when hope’s back is against the wall.  When hope is backed into a corner.” 

She goes on “We are in the shadow of hope.  But this is where creativity thrives.  This is where we find our people.  This is where we clarify what we believe.  This is where our ethics meet our actions.  This is where we prepare, plan, meet, engage.  This is where we imagine what could be and fight for that reality.”[2]

Channing Brown calls it the shadow of hope.  The author of Hebrews connects hope with faith, saying that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.  Clarence Jordan, Baptist farmer and Greek scholar of the last century translated that verse as “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.” 

I love the poetry of each of those thoughts, but I’m not sure exactly what they mean, in practical terms.  ?  How do we endure times like these? What do we actually do?

Admiral Jim Stockdale was a naval avaiator held captive for eight long years during the Vietnam War.  Tortured more than twenty times, he never had much reason to believe that he would survive the prison camp and return home. Afterwards, he was asked how he lived through such a horrible experience, while others who seemed younger and more fit had died.  Stockdale said that the prisoners who were either the most complete optimists or the most complete pessimists had the most trouble.  He said that he never lost faith that he would get out someday, but simultaneously he accepted the reality of his situation. Every morning, he woke up to three thoughts:

·       I’m still in this horrible place.

·       Someday, though, I’m going to get out.

·       If that’s so, what should I do and how should I act today?

 

His mindset has been labeled the Stockdale paradox and applied across other experiences. It says

You must retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.

AND at the same time…

You must confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.[3]

 

This resonates with me.  Hold tightly to faith for the long haul.  Do what you can in today’s circumstances. 

In 1942, when Bonhoeffer was speaking out in Germany, President Roosevelt ordered the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese-American people.  Unlike today, they were not grabbed off the streets by masked members of law enforcement.  They were given a little bit of time to prepare.  But like today, there was money to be made in the cruelty. While being forced off their land and out of their homes, they were told that they would still have to pay taxes and mortgages.   Three families near Sacramento went to Bob Fletcher, whom they knew because he was their state agricultural inspector.  Appalled by the injustice, he quit his job and farmed their lands for three years.  worked 90 acres of grapes for them.  He worked 18-hour days, slept in a bunkhouse for migrant workers and faced deep anti-Japanese sentiment from neighbors which incuded a bullet being fired into the barn on the property where he lived.  He used the earnings to pay  their taxes and mortgages. They had told him to keep the profits, but he saved half for them.  After the war, he returned their land to them with crops well tended and bank balances from the grapes he harvested while they were away.[4] Fletcher did what he could every day they lived through that unjust reality.

Abraham and Sarah were faithful but they did not live to see God’s promise which was fulfilled generations later.  Bonhoeffer was courageous.  He did more than many others in his time, but still he was executed by the Nazis just a month before the war ended.  Bob Fletcher saved three families land and livelihoods, but many Japanese-Americans lost everything.  What do we do with that? How does the Stockdale paradox apply?

The Stockdale paradox holds that the individual will prevail, survive and overcome,  but our faith and experience teaches otherwise. Our faith says it doesn’t always work that way.  Consider Bonhoeffer.  Consider Dr. King.  Consider Jesus on the cross.  All those people of faith and countless others believed not that they were going to prevail, but that God will prevail, that God is working out God’s own purposes.  Someday, God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  It is that conviction that guides our actions today.

Fifteen years ago, on the third Sunday in August 2010, I preached here for the very first time.  On that Sunday, I preached on one of the lectionary texts for the day.  Turns out that we’re in the same spot in the lectionary cycle and so today’s passage from Hebrews is the same as that day.   

The passage takes a long look back at the history of God’s people.  My view is not that long, but it still feels appropriate to do a little bit of remembering.  When I came, the pews had been removed, but just a few years before.  When I came, children had returned after a long absence and there was Sunday School as well as a separate children’s worship.  Across the last 15 years, we converted an old nursery into new restrooms and made a new nursery out of unfinished space under the former balcony and then we saw that new nursery converted into more food pantry space.  We evolved as a congregation from people who deliberately refused to consider ever leaving this building to voting to put it on the market. We have dedicated babies and baptized a few new disciples and said good-bye to a host of some of the most faithful people I’ve ever known.  We have faced hard decisions and made mistakes and back-tracked.  But most importantly, we have sought to respond to God’s call on us in this time.  Like the long list of people in Hebrews, we have not spent much time looking back, but facing forward we have asked what is next in the mission of God.

The last fifteen years represents one-fourth of my whole life. I am amazed and grateful to have shared it with you.  The last and only time I preached on Hebrews 11 here, I quoted Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch translation in which verse 1reads  “Now faith is the turning of dreams into deeds; it is betting your life on the unseen realities.”

At the beginning of our journey together, I said

 “We don’t know yet what our time together will bring, what adventures and unimagined possibilities for joy will be ours.  Getting to this day has not been without cost for either of us, but I have a persistent belief that it will be worth it.  In fact, I’m betting my life on that unseen reality.   I hope you are too.”

Today, I say “There has never been a time past when God wasn't with us . . .To remember the past is to see that we are here today by grace, that we have survived as a gift.”[5]  And we still don’t know yet what the future will bring, what adventures and joy will be ours.  I’m still betting my life on the conviction that God is working God’s purposes within and among us. I hope you are too.  Amen. 

 

 


[1] Victoria Barnett https://www.christiancentury.org/features/there-s-no-such-thing-bonhoeffer-moment

[2] Austin Channing Brown in her Banned newsletter August 15, 2025

[3] https://niall.bio/stockdale-paradox/

[4] https://www.californiasun.co/a-california-agricultural-inspector-quit-his-job-during-wwii-to-tend-the-farms-of-interned-japanese-families/

[5] Frederick Buechner, “A Room Called Remember” in Secrets in the Dark (New York: HarperCollin, 2006) p. 63

8/3/25 - Above and Below - Colossians 3:1-11

Above and Below

Colossians 3:1-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church/FOCUS Worship; August 3, 2025

Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Image:  Dr. Ezzideen Shehab

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALPg9_TcwLY

“Since you have been raised with Christ,” Paul writes. Earlier, he referred to going under the waters of baptism as being buried with Christ, joining believers to Christ’s suffering and death.   You were buried, he says, but now “you have been raised”.  Buried with Christ, but also raised as Jesus was raised from death in resurrection.

In this letter to the Christians in Colossae, Paul is addressing some kind of crisis, but we don’t know exactly what.  And, as is true our churches, there are probably multiple concerns. Colossae was part of the Roman empire.  Being under the authority of Rome was complicated for early Christians because they believed that Jesus, not Cesear, was Lord. That Jesus is seated at the right hand of God, exalted, above all earthly rulers like Caesar. 

Paul claims that in Christ there is no Gentile or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, slave or free. The gospel erases ethnic, religious, cultural and economic divisions. It collapses all the ways that Empire seeks to sort and divide and control. The new way of life, the new aliveness offered by Jesus erases boundaries, like those between citizens and undocumented persons, distinctions based on national origin or employment status.

So, on the one hand, the Colossians struggle against Empire, trying to live out the love and power Jesus offers in the face of a culture directly aligned against them.  And, on the other, within the church, there are emerging philosophies with special rules about how to practice their faith.  Paul says that he writes so that no one will be deceived by plausible arguments. He emphasizes the fullness of God which resides in Christ; they already have all that they need in Jesus and what he taught. 

They lived under an earthly power which ruled by intimidation and fear and violence, in a culture bent on greed and insatiable consumption by those at the top.  To me that sounds a lot like our current social and political context. 

And when the Colossians turned to religious leaders for wisdom, they were sometimes met with hollow and deceptive arguments like we are. Do you know that it is popular among some Christians now to say that empathy is a sin?[1] The hollow argument there is that too much compassion clouds your judgment.  Empathy apparently leads you to advocate for the human rights of trans folks or to protest the government’s abduction and deportation of parents and children. But sure, the sin we should be repenting of is compassion. 

The fact that we are living through such a time has me keenly interested in this message. Since you have been raised, since you are people of resurrection, since you are baptized – remember who you are.  Set your mind on that reality.  Do not be disheartened by the horrors of empire. Do not be deceived by false narratives or twisted teachings masquerading as new Christianity. Remember who you are – buried and raised with Christ.  Remember what you know – a reality that is deep and true.

“Set your mind on things above,” Paul writes. Orient yourself to what is eternally true.  The sense of the verb is that we have to do this repeatedly. Don’t focus on the latest absurdity, don’t engage in political ping-pong to get your bearings for the day. Over and over again, make it a habit to set your mind on things above. We are to seek the things above, because our starting point, our source, is the risen Christ whose power is self-giving love.

This text has sometimes been twisted.  People have used it to claim that we only need to worry about being spiritual, and not to be concerned about what might be happening here on earth.  That is absolutely not what Paul intends.  Because if we orient ourselves around Jesus, if we remember that we are buried with him, we know that he was deeply involved in the earthly life, that he endured the worst human suffering while demonstrating the peace and justice of God’s reign.  We reject a false binary between above and below, between the earthly and heavenly, because Christ is in every little bit of it.  Through our baptism, we identify with Jesus, and this calls us to “participate in the suffering of God in the life of the world”[2]

Ezzideen Shehab is a 28-year-old Palestinian doctor. He worked in the Arab Baptist Hospital in Gaza until it was bombed and closed.  After that, Dr Ezzideen opened a clinic in northern Gaza that offers free medical services to a population repeatedly traumatized and wounded by relentless war and hunger.  In addition to immersing himself in caring for his people, he writes about what he sees, bearing witness to their immense suffering. 

About two weeks ago, he said that Fridays in Gaza used to be holy.  Fridays were the days when your father came home with some meat, fish or a piece of chicken and the family smiled across the table, gave thanks to God, and felt human.  Even the poorest families did this, enduring hunger all week for the hope of that meal and the illusion of normal life.  But then he wrote,

 “Today is Friday. And I walked through the streets of Gaza, not to celebrate, not even to feed, but to hunt for rice. Rotten rice. Gray grains that stick to your fingers and taste like nothing. Anything. Anything at all to fool the stomach into silence.

 My brother searched one market. I searched another. We returned with crumbs. We paid with the last coins we had. They ask for gold in exchange for ash. And we pay it, because the children must eat, and because we no longer dare to say what is fair. But I have not come to speak about rice. I have come to confess what I saw.

A truck passed by. It was empty. Its floor was covered in a thin layer of flour dust. Just dust. Not bags. Not bread. Only the trace of something that might once have saved a child.

And then I saw them. Not rebels. Not criminals. Children.  They ran, ran like hunted things, toward that truck. They climbed it with hands that have never held toys. They fell to their knees as if before an altar. And they began to scrape. One had a broken lid. Another, a piece of cardboard.

But the rest, the rest used their hands. Their tongues. They licked it. Do you hear me? They licked flour dust from rusted steel. From dirt. From the back of a truck that had already driven away.

One boy was laughing. Not because he was happy, but because the body goes mad when it is starving. Another was crying, quietly, like someone who no longer believes anyone is listening.

And I stood there. With all my shame. With my hands in my pockets, like a man waiting for a bus. Like I wasn't watching the end of the world. I wanted to scream. But what scream can reach Heaven, when Heaven itself is deaf? What words can I offer?

What words can explain the sound of a child's tongue scraping against rust for a taste of flour? There are no metaphors left.

There is no beauty in this.

Only sin.

Only crime.

And we are all guilty.

You. Me.

The ones who sent the truck.

The ones who sent the planes. . .

This is the twenty-first century. But history has not moved forward.

It has swallowed its own children and called it progress.

I don't want to write this. I want to unsee it. I want to forget the boy who licked the floor. But I can't. Because I saw him.

Because he is real. Because he is more real than all the words l've written. And because if I forget him, then I am no longer human.”[3]

 

Friends, this is the world in which we find ourselves.  A world where entire Palestinian families have been erased and thousands remain buried beneath the rubble, while those unaffected casually debate whether or not this meets the technical definition of genocide.  A time when compassion is called sin and many American Christians are publicly celebrating the unlawful imprisonment and torture of human beings made in the image of God.  Christ have mercy.

 Almost a hundred years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was distressed by German Christians’ lack of action to defend human life and their distortion of Paul’s instruction to “seek the things that are above.”  In a sermon on this text he said,

“Today, immensely important things will be decided by whether we Christians have strength enough to witness before the world that we are not dreamers with our heads in the clouds . . . that our faith really is not the opium that keeps us content within an unjust world but that we, especially because we set our minds on things that are above, only protest all the more tenaciously and resolutely on this earth.”[4]

From a world like ours to a people like us in a time like ours, the letter to the Colossians still speaks.  Since you have been raised, since you are people of resurrection, since you are baptized – remember who you are. Don’t you dare give up in the face of the horrors of empire. Do not be deceived by false narratives or twisted teachings masquerading as new Christianity. Keep setting your mind on things above and with that mindset, loudly and courageously protest the suffering below.    

Remember who you are – buried and raised with Christ.  Remember what you know – a reality that is deep and true. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

[1] https://albertmohler.com/2025/02/19/joe-rigney/

[2] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

[3] Dr. Ezzideen Shehab, July 11, 2025 https://x.com/ezzingaza/status/1943758629791768682

[4] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his sermon The Things that Are Above, delivered at Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, Berlin, June 19, 1932

6/22/25 - Earth, Wind & Fire

Earth, Wind & Fire

I Kings 19:1-15a

Emmanuel Baptist Church; June 22, 2025

Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Image:   Photo by paperwall on Unsplash.com

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiPj0AQ9lXQ 

The theme of last weekend’s cabaret was the weather.  One reason for that is that there are a lot of songs about the weather. Another reason is that people are talking about the weather a lot these days in situations where they want to avoid talking the controversies of politics. It probably ranks up there as one of the most preached stories in the book of Kings, but most of the sermons I’ve heard focus on the parts most like the weather – the wind, the earthquake and the fire.  That includes my own sermons if I’m being honest.

If we’re going to get the full impact of this story, we have to understand the context and you guessed it, that means talking some politics. Just so you know,  I did not choose this passage.  It was assigned to today by the lectionary. 

It's about 900 BCE.  The Biblical people of Israel are divided into two kingdoms, Israel in the north and Judah in the south.  Ahab is King of the north.  He married a foreign princess named Jezebel.  Jezebel came into the marriage with her own religion. Her father was a priest to Ba-al, the Canaanite god, so she takes her religion seriously. 

Here's one way to describe the situation: As King, Ahab abandons the values and identity of his people.  Maybe he does this because he never cared about his people or because he wants to please his wife or because of the power that his alliance with a foreign nation gives him.  But bottom line, Ahab is king and he violates the ancient covenant with God, causing tremendous damage to his country. 

Another way to describe it is to say that Queen Jezebel is immoral, shameless and manipulative and she persuades her husband to do the evil that he does.   The word Jezebel in English now refers to an immoral woman who deceives people.  I’m no fan of Queen Jezebel, but I want to point out that Ahab was described as evil before his marriage and he is supposedly the one in control and yet popular history only remembers and blames Jezebel.

Right before our story, Elijah had challenged 800 priests and prophets of Ba-al to a kind of pray-off, a competition to see whose God would respond to their prayers.  Elijah won the pray-off  at Mt. Carmel which ends with God sending rain after a 2-year drought. It would have been great if the story ended right there, but it includes the next detail which is that Elijah slaughters all of the priests of Ba-al.  In response, Jezebel orders his execution.  She brazenly promises to kill the prophet within twenty-four hours.

Elijah had gone toe-to-toe against 800 religious men, but Jezebel’s rage is too much.  He races for his life.  He far south to Beersheba, which is under Judah’s control and beyond Jezebel’s reach. He is profoundly discouraged and ready to die.

The acronym HALT is a self-assessment tool.  It stands for hungry, angry, lonely or tired.  Psychologists say that these states impair our decision-making abilities.  If we can recognize that we are hungry, angry, lonely or tired, it is best to address those needs before taking other action. This is not my tool, but I think that the A might also stand for Afraid.  Fear also impairs our decision-making abilities.   Elijah exhibits all four HALT states at once.[1]  It is all too much for him.

We might notice that God first addresses his physical and emotional needs.  Elijah sleeps and wakes up to food provided by an angel, then sleeps again and is reminded to eat again.  Friends, we are in hard times, days when we may feel hungry, angry, lonely or tired.  We should not feel shame in attending to those valid needs as they arise.

On occasion, we may need to claim the role of Elijah, even maybe acknowledging that we feel abandoned even though we are not.  Walter Brueggemann suggests that in those moments we would do well to recognize the gifts of God at those times.  He writes, “They are likely to be given to us through human mediation, through those who care for us and wish us well. Such food as “a baked cake” and “a jar of water” might be a gesture, a note, a casserole, an embrace, a kind word, anything that signifies solidarity in a way that may relieve our sense of abandonment . . . It is amazing how such a singular, inexplicable gesture can reframe our lives as we find ourselves on the glad receiving end of grace generous mediated to us.  In the narrative, the reception of food and care comes first.”[2]

The intent of the sleep and food is to strengthen Elijah for a journey.  He goes to Mt Horeb, which is also called Mt Sinai.  It is the place where Moses talked with God. In his despair, Elijah returns to one of the first places where God was known, where the identity of God’s people started to be formed.  This is what we do – we seek comfort in the familiar.  In terms of spirituality, most reform movements seek to return to the beginning.

There are clear parallels between Moses and Elijah here.  Both spend 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain.  It says that Elijah goes to “the” cave, which may refer to cleft of the rock where Moses stood as God passed by.  Elijah talks with God, as Moses once did.  Full of self-pity, Elijah says that he is the only faithful one left.  He has been so zealous for God and now they are trying to kill him.

And then the weather happens.  One poetic translation goes like this:

There was a mighty wind

Not in the wind was Yahweh

After the wind earthquake

Not in the earthquake was Yahweh

And after the earthquake, fire

Not in the fire was Yahweh

And after the fire ---

A sound of gentle silence.[3]

 

God showed up for others in the splitting of rocks or a mighty wind.  God showed up for Elijah at the pray-off in a consuming fire.  But this time, God comes another way.  It’s a word that does not translate easily.  Many of us know it from the King James – a still, small voice – but more recent language study suggests that it was not so much a voice as the absence of one.

After the great wind and earthquake and fire, there is the sound of sheer silence.  Listen . . did you hear something?  Maybe, just barely.  Was it a voice?  A whisper?  or maybe nothing at all.  God is always mysterious.  God is not locked into any one mode of appearing,[4] even on the holy mountain where Elijah expects God to act in certain ways. When Reformers seek to go back to the beginning, they or we need to realize that God may show up differently than before.

One scholar says, “The answer to the threat [for Elijah] will not come in the spectacular and immediate manner as at Mt. Carmel.  It does not come by way of a fire from on high.  It does not come by way of a rainstorm.  Rather, it is to come in a quiet fashion through the rather unspectacular fact of prophetic succession, . . . through the working out of divine will in the historical process.[5]

Even for a prophet as great as Elijah, change takes time.  God does not intervene with the speed we want.  God tells Elijah he is not alone.  There are actually others, seven thousand or more who are still faithful, still serving God and God’s people.  Soon after this, Elijah will begin to mentor Elisha his successor. 

When the mountain top retreat is over, God sends Elijah right back to where he began, where he set off running from.  God tells him to anoint a new king over Israel and a new king over Judah.  He sends him back into the political fray.  Essentially, God restores Elijah’s courage by giving him more work to do. 

Walter Brueggemann was one of the foremost Old Testament scholars and leading theologians of our time.  He died on June 5 at age 92.  Back in November of 2024, he chose this passage to talk about his own response to the election.  In a long essay, he said that he was tempted to Elijah’s despair, but ultimately, he wrote the words which I want to leave us with:

“So it is with us!  Like the ancient prophets, we are dispatched back to the good work entrusted to us.  It is the work of peace-making.  It is the work of truth-telling.  It is the work of justice-doing.  It is good work, but it requires our resolve to stay it, even in the face of the forces to the contrary that are sure to prevail for such a season.  We are in it for the long run, even as the Holy One is in it for the very long haul, from everlasting to everlasting.  We do not ease off because it is hard.  We are back at it.”[6]

 

May that be true for you and for me.  Amen.


[1] https://www.christiancentury.org/sunday-s-coming/elijah-s-needs-1-kings-19-1-15a

[2] Walter Brueggemann, https://churchanew.org/brueggemann/beyond-a-fetal-position

[3] Translation by David Napier, as quoted by Walter Brueggemann, I and 2 Kings, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary, (Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2000) pp. 235-36

[4] Choon-Leong Seow, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume III, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1999), p. 144

[5] Choon-Leong Seow, p 143.

[6] Walter Brueggemann, https://churchanew.org/brueggemann/beyond-a-fetal-position

6/1/25 - Galatians 3:23-29

Galatians 3:23-29

Emmanuel Baptist Church

June 1, 2025

Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Image: copyright by David Hayward, license purchased at https://nakedpastor.com/

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-z5UTlHHWA

One time, I came across some old church documents.  It was not here, not this church.  But as I read through these letters from a church in a denomination not my own, I came to understand that what I was reading was an argument, an old-fashioned church fight.  The documents I accessed were written by one faction.  I didn’t know what the other side said directly.  I had to figure it out from the allusions and brief quotations in the document written by their opponents.  The same thing is happening in ancient Galatia.  We’re tracing a doozy of a church fight through the letters written by Paul who is strongly advocating for his position. 

Paul had planted churches in the region called Galatia, which is in modern day Turkey.  Paul was Jewish as were all of Jesus’ original disciples. The congregations in Galatia were composed of Gentiles who had formerly worshipped the Greek gods, but because of Paul’s witness, they had been baptized and now identified as Christians.  Now when the church leaders at headquarters in Jerusalem heard about it, they sent some teachers up to Galatia to visit those little communities of new believers. They said something like, “Paul only gave you half of the message. He told you about Jesus and that’s wonderful. You’ve experienced this spiritual awakening, right? But actually, you need to become part of the true family, the family of Abraham, the ancient people of God. And for that, of course, you need to get circumcised.”[1]

To be circumcised is take on Jewish identity. Paul is so angry with his opponents that he tells the Galatians “I wish they would castrate themselves!”  (5:12)

 

For decades, the church in America has argued about human sexuality. Can you be gay and Christian? Some say empathically Yes.  Some say emphatically No.  Some try for a middle ground and say “Maybe, but only if you’re celibate.”  Similarly, there was a time in the early church when the raging argument was about whether Gentiles should be fully welcome or whether they would have to jump through hoops and then probably still be seen as second-class. It is an argument that just won’t die. 

In the first century culture at large in, Jews and Gentiles were distinct and opposite groups.  They worshipped different gods in different spaces. They did not go to the same restaurants or live in the same neighborhoods.  No one expected anything other than that.  They had different hobbies, different histories, different diets – too many differences for any kind of unity.  The culture supported that – stick with your own kind. Watch the news that supports what you already think.  Only read your favorite scriptures that buttress your theology.  That’s the safest thing to do.

Paul doesn’t care about what is safe.  And he is more concerned with what is happening inside the church than in the wider society.  When he writes, “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female: for all of you are one in Jesus Christ” he seems to be quoting an ancient baptismal formula.  He takes those Galatians back to their baptisms, to the words that had been pronounced over each of them, words that abolished the distinctions the missionaries were trying to re-establish.[2]

Paul speaks about their baptism as being clothed with Christ.  At that time, people took off their clothes and were baptized naked and then put on a new white garment signifying that they were clothed with Christ, wrapped up in him and incorporated into his body so that Christ became their primary identity marker.[3]

Baptism is our most essential ritual. The words we use at baptism are significant; they proclaim the heart of our faith.  It is extremely telling that one of the earliest baptismal confessions focuses on three areas of social conflict – racial/ethnic identity, social class, and gender. In Christ, those hostilities are overcome. 

“Paul sees the church as an alternative community that prefigures the new creation in the midst of a world that continues to resist God’s justice.  Paul is not calling for a revolution in which slaves rise up and demand freedom; rather in this verse, he is declaring that God has created a new community, the church, in which the baptized already share equality.”[4]

We live in a different world now; in a democracy which gives us the opportunity and obligation to demand freedom and dignity for all, but this text reminds us that when that is unsuccessful in the wider culture, it is still a foundation of our life together in Christ.

There is sometimes a misperception that Christian unity obliterates social distinctions.  Well-meaning Christians today may say “I don’t see color” in regards to racial differences.  But that is not the point at all. Paul wants to bring Gentiles into the community with their Gentile identity robustly intact, not as Gentiles who can pass as Jewish, not as “don’t ask don’t tell Gentiles.” 

African American theologian Brad Braxton writes, “When Paul says, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male and female," he is not asserting the obliteration of difference, but rather the obliteration of dominance.” Baptism does not erase human differences, but abolishes the dominance of one over the other.  In Christ, Jews are not to be dominant over Gentiles; free persons are not to be dominant over slaves; men are not to be dominant over women.[5]

To most of us, this seems self-evident, patently obvious. It seems like a church fight that should have been settled long ago.  Unfortunately, it is far from over.

If you google Galatians 3:28, as I did, you will find people vehemently arguing in favor of boundaries between male and female. One stranger on the internet asserted that Paul was discussing salvation, not church office qualifications. Another boldly proclaimed that “this does not abolish gender based roles established by God and redeemed by Christ.”

I would note that the format changes when Paul describes sexual or gender distinctions.  He writes there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, but then changes to say no longer male and female.  That construction echoes Genesis 1:27, which says that God created human beings, male and female in God’s own image.  The baptismal formula is emphasizing the power of the new creation in Christ; it parallels the creation of human beings from the beginning. [6]

In Christ there is no Jew or Greek. Reformed theologian Philip Yancey writes, “In this day when tribalism sparks massacres in Africa, when nations redraw boundaries based on ethnic background, when racism in the United States mocks our nation’s great ideals, when minorities and splinter groups lobby for their rights, I know of no more powerful message of the gospel than this, the message that got Jesus killed. The walls separating us from each other, and from God, have been demolished.[7]

At a time when the culture around us seeks to re-establish the dominance of all the typical categories that entrench power, and to do so in the name of God,  we must embody the gospel of Jesus with its full implications:  social, economic, political and personal.

In Christ, there is neither native born nor undocumented immigrant.  In Christ, there is neither white, brown or black.  There is neither gay or straight, trans or cisgender. There is neither Israeli or Palestinian, Russian or Ukrainian. In Christ, there is neither billionaire, nor middle class, nor poor.  For all are one in Christ.  For freedom, Christ has set us free.  Let us not submit again to any kind of human constructed dominance.  Thanks be to God. 

 


[1] https://www.ntwrightonline.org/who-are-pauls-opponents-that-inspired-galatians/

[2] Richard B. Hays, New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, Volume XI, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 2000), p, 272

[3] Elizabeth Johnson, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-12-3/commentary-on-galatians-323-29 

[4] Richard B. Hays, p. 272

[5] Brad Ronnell Braxton, No Longer Slaves: Galatians and African American Experience, (Collegeville, MN:  Liturgical Press, 2002),  p. 108.

[6] Richard B. Hays, p 273

[7] Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated: The Key to Transforming a Broken World, (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2023) p. 155

5/18/2025 - Struggling to be Healed - Genesis 32:22-32

Struggling to be Healed

Genesis 32:22-32

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

May 18, 2025

 

Image:  Israel by Mike Moyers at mikemoyersfineart.com

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7DmMZtlem8&t=9s

This story of Jacob wrestling in the night is one of the iconic stories of Genesis.  It is very familiar to most of us.  Despite its ancient context and details that seem irrelevant (like the origins of certain dietary practices), this is a story that we can relate to – a story of alienation and fear, struggle and perseverance.

It has been a while since we’ve explored Jacob’s life together and this is far from the only interesting incident in his life.  So . . . a bit of background: 

You might remember that Jacob has a twin brother named Esau.  Esau was born just minutes ahead of Jacob, so Esau is the older brother.  The two brothers have never gotten along.  Twenty years before today’s story, Jacob tricked his dying father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau, the first-born.  When Esau found out, he swore he would kill Jacob after their father died.  So, Jacob ran far away to his Uncle Laban’s home. 

Over the last twenty years, he has married Laban’s two daughter, Leah and Rachel and fathered several children.  He left home poor, with little more than the clothes on his back.  Now he is wealthy with flocks and herds of cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats.  His success is due to his deception and fraud.  He has been systematically breeding and stealing Laban’s   sheep out from under him.  Laban has begun to figure that out.  One day, while Laban is away, Jacob gathers his family and everything he owns and flees. 

He is headed for home, but he remembers Esau’s angry vow to kill him.  Esau is likely still as mad and set on revenge as he ever was. Jacob’s scouts have brought back the news that Esau is coming to meet him with 400 men.  That only increases his fear.

Jacob sends his family across the river, presumably to safety, and remains alone.  He is worried about Esau.  Maybe this will be the last night of his life.  He is probably also feeling guilt and regret for what he did to his brother, for breaking his father’s heart, for abandoning his mother, for so many things.  And in the darkness, while he is alone and defenseless, someone jumps him. 

Sometimes his opponent is described or portrayed as an angel.  But the Hebrew clearly says “man”, not angel, not God.  So with whom is Jacob wrestling? Maybe, at first he thinks it is Esau. Maybe he is wrestling with himself. 

Perhaps you have known this kind of experience.  You have been up all night, struggling with your fears, worried about the future or your children or someone else you love.  This kind of wrestling often happens at crisis points, times of difficult decisions, of loss or anticipated loss.  Whoever it is, Jacob is never one to give up easily and they wrestle all night long.  Along the way, Jacob comes to believe that this is not Esau he is fighting.  It is God.

A friend of mine shared with me the story of her darkest hour.  After a 3-martini lunch, her husband caused a car accident in which a young woman was seriously injured.  The young woman was in the hospital for a long time, and it weighed very heavily on the man.  As the year progressed, he spiraled ever deeper into depression.  Then the young woman died, and my friend’s husband took his own life.  A tragic situation, filled with unbearable grief for two families.  The night after her husband died, my friend could not sleep. Alone, she stayed awake all night watching the sky.  In her despair, she was not even sure that the sun would rise again.  Only when the sunrise came, and she had survived the night, did she feel that she could go on.  She said to me, “I just had to get through that night.  I had to see the sun rise again.”  Those words were the closest she could come to describing her own wrestling match. 

We all face those times, those turning points brought on by grief, or tragedy or crisis, and sometimes even by new positive opportunities.    They seem to be an unavoidable part of life.  I would like to believe that in those crisis moments, God is present to hold us, to comfort us, but what if there’s more?  What if God is also present to redeem us, to encourage us to keep on wrestling, to push for better answers?  What if the path through the struggle is also the path to transformation?

Barbara Brown Taylor says, “No one in their right mind asks to be attacked, frightened, wounded.  And yet, that is how it comes sometimes, the presence and blessing of God. Sometimes if comes in the middle of the night, in the desperate wrestling that is – who would have thought it? – the answer to all our prayers.”[1]

Sometimes it happens like that. And sometimes, it doesn’t. This event in Jacob’s life has been decades in the making.  We don’t get to choose when it happens. 

At the beginning of the movie Shadowlands, C.S. Lewis lectures confidently on the problem of evil. "Suffering is the megaphone through which God gets our attention," he tells his students. Lewis speaks as one who has all the answers, because he’s never struggled with the questions. At the close of the movie, Lewis’ wife has died of cancer. Lewis knows that he needs to talk to her son, Douglas, to try to offer a comforting word. He decides to tell the boy about his own mother’s death. Lewis says, "When I was about your age my mother got sick and I prayed so hard for her to get well." Douglas interrupts, "It doesn’t work. Does it?" For what looks like the first time Lewis isn’t sure how to answer. Finally he begins to cry, "No. It doesn’t work." Out of a grief, a struggle, a wrestling match, beyond anything that he imagined, Lewis finds his way to a faith that has been through the fire.

Along towards dawn, God puts Jacob’s hip out of joint, but even then Jacob will not quit.  Jacob didn’t start this fight, but now he is in it to win it. Though his pain, he says, “I will not let go unless you bless me.”  And God the wrestler says, “What is your name?”

The last time Jacob asked for a blessing, twenty years ago, it was from his father Isaac.  And Isaac had said, “who are you?” “Tell me your name” How many times had Jacob replayed that scene in his mind?  How many times had he been unable to sleep, up in the middle of the night, rethinking that decision, remembering that he had said he was Esau. 

And now here it is again,

Bless me.

What is your name?

The same scene again, except this time, he says, “Jacob . . . I am Jacob. . . bless me.”

Roberta Hestenes  asks, “What is it that Jacob wanted more than anything else in life? What is it that we, in the deepest longings of our being, want more than anything else in life?” 

She answers, “Sometimes we don't even know how to put our longings into words. But the word for Jacob was the word "blessing". I want to know the smile of God. I want to know the favor of God. I want to know that what I am doing with my life is pleasing to the one who made me, that my life has purpose and significance that honors the God that has called me and made promises to me.”[2]

The blessing that God gives comes in the form of a new name. A name that recognizes who Jacob has always been and still is.  It represents Jacob’s capacity for struggling well.  If Jacob had not struggled and prevailed, there would have been no new name, at least not the name Israel.  Israel may mean actually something like God rules, God preserves, or God protects, but for the narrator of this story, it means “One who struggles with God”, “the God-wrestler.”

Jacob leaves this encounter with a new name which may reflect a new self-understanding.  He also leaves with a limp.  Blessing comes with a cost. Maybe this text suggests that “we cannot solve the contentious issues of our times until we wrestle with God and hold on to God for dear life.  For without God’s blessing, the problems of humanity will simply overwhelm us, leaving us angry and terrified.”[3]

Jacob/Israel limps away, knowing that he has found favor with God.   The first thing he does is to cross the river and join his family.  And then he sees that Esau is coming and he goes out to meet him. It is probably the gutsiest thing he has have done – going out to meet the powerful brother that he cheated and betrayed.

Unexpectedly, Esau runs to him, embraces him and they weep together.  It is the reunion that both of them need.  Esau forgives Jacob.  Jacob/Israel is able for the first time to see his brother without resentment, fear or guilt.  He says to him, “Seeing your face is like seeing the face of God.”  God’s blessing shows itself as brotherly love, as acceptance of a former enemy. 

Now I don’t want to tie things up too neatly here.  It is not the case that Israel’s life is smooth sailing after this one night of wrestling and receiving God’s blessing.  Esau forgives him, but the brothers soon part ways and settle in different regions again.  There will still be much pain in Jacob/Israel’s life, including his daughter’s rape and the loss of his favorite son.  Don’t hear me implying that finding favor with God puts you on Easy Street, because that is not the Biblical story. 

I suspect that many of us feel like we are currently engaged in the struggle.  This is a time of wrestling, not resolution. The way to fulfilling our deepest longings will involve pain, bruises and brokenness.  We may find ourselves utterly alone . . . like my grieving friend waiting for the sun to rise, . . .  like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying “let this cup pass from me”  and “thy will be done”, . . . caught between our human limitations and the good purposes God is working out in our lives.

But if we can invest ourselves in the struggle, if we make ourselves available for God’s blessing, we may find something within us healed or strengthened.  We may find a new name, something that blesses and values who we already are.  We may find a new courage and determination, a new honesty, or a willingness to be open to what we have long feared.  We may see a long-lost sibling and find the face of God.  I suggest that we keep offering our lives to God.  The life God offers back will have both blessing and injury.  We will struggle, but God will struggle alongside us, until we see the sunrise and know that we have survived the night.   Amen.


[1] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Striving with God” in Gospel Medicine, (Lanham, Maryland:  Cowley Publications, 1995), p. 108

[2] Roberta Hestenes, Wrestling with God, aired on Thirty Good Minutes, December 3, 1995  http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/hestenes_3910.htm

[3] Stan Mast, https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-07-27/genesis-3222-31-2/

5/4/25 - With Eager Longing - Romans 8:12-25

With Eager Longing

Romans 8:12-25

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

May 4, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GhSZkTG-dA

This passage is one of the most theologically dense sections in one of the most theologically books in the Bible. It is one of my very favorite texts, but I still shrink before its mystery.  I cannot say much about it before I run out of words because much of it is beyond my knowledge or experience, but I will try.

One problem jumps out right away.  In this letter to the Christians in Rome, Paul offers a binary that may have made sense in the philosophies of his time, but not so much two thousand years later. He uses Flesh and Spirit to describe to opposing ways of living this world, a way of death and a way of life.  For Paul, living according to the flesh evokes a destructive way of life, while living by the spirit is to pursue life in all its fullness. Now this is problematic because it has not served us well to despise bodily existence and to feel estranged from the earth.  This concept has been pushed to a toxic place.  But as Paul understood it, flesh is shorthand for our entanglement in systems of violence, deception and alienation which oppress and destroy.  “The [systems of ] flesh are not exterior to us; any more than our physical body is something external and alien. It is an [inherent] part of us; it shapes the way we perceive the world.”[1]

Paul invites and implores us to live differently, to be led by the Spirit of God which bears witness that we are heirs of Christ. At the beginning of this letter, Paul says that Jesus was in his earthly life, a descendant of David, but through the Holy Spirit, he was transformed into the Son of God by his resurrection. (Romans 1:1-4). Other New Testament writers say this differently. For Mark, it happens at Jesus’ baptism, when the Spirit descends and a voice announces that he is God’s son.  For Luke, it happens at conception. The angel tells Mary that he will be conceived by the Holy Spirit and that is why he will be called God’s Son.  The timing differs but the consistent point is that Jesus’ Sonship is inseparable from his being marked by the Spirit.  Jesus is God’s heir through the Spirit and then, Paul says, so are we.[2]   

Jesus moved through suffering to glory via the power of Resurrection. Paul is asserting that the same Spirit is at work in us.  God is transforming us into what humanity was always supposed to be, which Christ already is.[3]  

Wendy Farley is professor of spirituality at San Francisco Seminary.  She says that “For Paul, this embrace of life in the Spirit not about individual life after death; it is about the salvation of the entire world—all humanity and the earth itself.  . . . Paul is inviting us into a completely different universe from the one we know. To wake up to the fact that we are children of God is at the same time to wake up to our common humanity; all creation woven into one broken, beautiful, beloved whole.”[4]

Paul says “For the creation waits in eager longing for the children of God to be revealed.”  The entire creation is in bondage, groaning as it waits for freedom.

“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.”

That’s verse 18, a verse I love and yet, one I cannot claim to understand.  Paul knew real suffering – he was beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and lonely.  I have suffered very little.  But Paul says that all of his personal suffering and all that he is witnessing in the systems of violence, deception and alienation – none of that compares to the glory which is coming.  Even though I personally have suffered little, some days it is hard to trust, hard to hope that Paul is right.

If we allow ourselves to hope, we make ourselves vulnerable to the pain of disappointment. Some of us have been so disappointed that we don’t risk hope any more. We may really only hope to the extent to which we can trust.  Trusting the Spirit, whom we cannot see or measure, that’s the only action Paul assigns to us. The rest of the work of moving from global suffering to cosmic glory seems to be in God’s hands. 

Sometimes, I am encouraged to keep hoping by others who have suffered and still they keep rising.  One of those people for me is Alice Walker.  You might know her as the author of The Color Purple.  She grew up in Georgia in the Jim Crow era.  Her father was a sharecropper; her mother was a maid.

When she was 8, her brother accidentally shot her in the right eye with a BB gun.  It took a long time for her to get medical care.  Her parents had to raise the $250 necessary to pay the white doctor.  When she finally saw him, the doctor just gave her a bottle of eye drops and told her that eyes are sympathetic, so she would likely become blind in her other eye as well. She continued to fear that possibility into young adulthood.  

Before the accident, Alice had been a pretty, lively, talkative child. After the scar tissue appeared, she grew self-conscious about her appearance and withdrew to a solitary world of books and writing. During this time, she felt ashamed, alone, and abandoned by her family.

 Six years later, the scar tissue was removed and she recovered her confidence. She went on to become a popular high school valedictorian. However, the years spent in isolation made a permanent impact on her worldview. She learned to feel “empathy and a sense of kinship with other people she perceived to be afflicted” She also developed the powers of observation that serve her as a writer. She was active in the Civil Rights movement and has protested the South African apartheid, the Iraq War, the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and female genital mutilation.[5]

Paul writes about suffering and glory to encourage us, to implore us to trust and hope.  Those who have suffered much and still allow themselves to hope – I seek to learn from them. 

 When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, a woman named Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother of five, lost her home and her property, and was forced to flee to Jordan. A decade later, she filed a lawsuit against six key members of the Bush administration, arguing that the war was not conducted in self-defense and constituted a crime of aggression under international law.  Alice Walker wrote a poem in honor of Sundus Shaker Saleh.

 

Hope Is a Woman Who Has Lost Her Fear[6]

In our despair that justice is slow

we sit with heads bowed

wondering

how

even whether

we will ever be healed.

 

Perhaps it is a question

only the ravaged

the violated

seriously ask.

And is that not now

almost all of us?

 

But hope is on the way.

 

As usual Hope is a woman

herding her children

around her

all she retains of who

she was; as usual

except for her kids

she has lost almost everything.

Hope is a woman who has lost her fear.

 Along with her home, her employment, her parents, her olive trees, her grapes.  The peace of independence; the reassuring noises of ordinary neighbors.

Hope rises, She always does,

did we fail to notice this in all the stories

they’ve tried to suppress?

 

Hope rises,

and she puts on her same

unfashionable threadbare cloak

and, penniless, she flings herself

against the cold, polished, protective chain mail

of the very powerful

the very rich – chain mail that mimics

suspiciously silver coins

and lizard scales –

and all she has to fight with is the reality of what was done to her;

to her country; her people; her children;

her home.

All she has as armor is what she has learned

must never be done.  

Not in the name of War

and especially never in the

name of Peace.

 

Hope is always the teacher

with the toughest homework.

 Our assignment: to grasp

what has never been breathed in our stolen

Empire on the hill:

Without justice, we will never

be healed.

 

I consider that the present suffering (which is real and pervasively harmful and anathema to God) is not worthy to be compared the glory which is about to revealed to us.

Video clip from the performance of the song Glory at the Oscars 2015  

Hope is about choosing to trust.  Awakening to the reality that we are children of God. The ultimate victory has been won; even if God’s intention of shalom is not yet fully realized.  The reign-of-God movement that Jesus started did not disband and fade away.  We are still living by the Spirit of love at work for love and justice.  One day, when the glory of resurrection fully comes, it will be ours, it will be ours. Amen.

 

 

[1] Wendy Farley, Connections, Year A, Volume 3, p. 168

[2] J. R. Daniel Kirk, Romans for Normal People: A Guide to the Most Misused, Problematic and Prooftexted Letter in the Bible, (Perkiomenvill, PA:  The Bible for Normal People, 2022), p. 97

[3] Daniel Kirk, Romans for Normal People, p. 98

[4] Wendy Farley in Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, Year A, Volume 3 Joel Green, Thomas Long, Luke Powery, Cynthia Rigby, Carolyn Sharp, editors,  (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p.168

[5] Biography of Alice Walker, excerpted from this website https://americanswhotellthetruth.org/portraits/alice-walker/

[6] ©2013 by Alice Walker, https://alicewalkersgarden.com/2013/10/hope-of-healing/

4/20/25 - Between Grief and Hope - Luke 24:1-12

Between Grief and Hope

Luke 24:1-12

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

April 20, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysq27HceUHw

The night before my mother died, my father, my brother and I were in her room, keeping vigil.  It was during the Covid lockdown.  She had been moved from the hospital to a nursing home for her last week of life, for what they called Compassionate Care. Something had changed in my mom’s breathing or her vital signs and the staff had alerted us that the end might come soon.  So our nuclear family – Mom, Dad and two kids— were together, sleeping in the same place for the first time in decades.  In fact, during that night, at some point it struck me that the last time we had all slept in the same room was probably in our pop-up camper on family vacations when I was a teenager. 

But on this night, we didn’t sleep much.  My father was in a recliner next to my mother’s bedside where he could hold her hand.  It had been a hard few days for him and I knew that he was physically tired and emotionally weary.  But he seemed the least ready to sleep of any of us. As the night wore on, he told stories.  Stories of the 63 years of his life with my mother, including some from before my brother or I were born.  Stories we had heard countless times and some brand new ones.  Then he moved on to stories from his earlier life, before he met my Mom.  More and more memories.  They just tumbled out. One story led to another.   I kept thinking that he should really get some sleep, that we all should, but the need to share the stories outweighed that for a long time.

Because that’s what we do when we grieve, we remember.  You and I have shared many funerals, celebrations of life.  At those times, our primary tasks are to remember our loved one and to remember our faith.  We gather photos, trying to capture a life span in images. The photos trigger stories, the stories trigger other memories.  We remember what our loved one used to say, the way they laughed or made an entrance, habits that were endearing or annoying, their favorite things and pet peeves. We remember their accomplishments and special trips and weekly routines. We remember and we grieve for what we have lost in that death. 

The women from Galilee are deep in grief at dawn that day.  They are women of means who have been financially supporting Jesus since early in his ministry. They have undoubtedly been telling stories.  As they gather water and soft cloths to wash his body, as they grind and mix the burial spices, as they reach out to clasp and arm or exchange a hug, they are remembering.  Perhaps Mary Magdalene recalls that day when Jesus healed her, the profound difference he made in her life.  Joanna, was the wife of Herod’s chief steward.  Maybe she remembers Jesus’ own grief when Herod executed John the Baptist.  Some memories make them laugh, like when Peter tried to walk on water, or that time Jesus spotted a grown man up in a tree or his joke about trying to put a camel through the eye of a needle.  They laugh and they cry.  They remind each other of all that was so good and true about Jesus and all that has been lost in his death. 

They are still remembering, still deeply grieving as they make their way to the tomb.  When they arrive and see that the heavy stone is rolled away, their first thought may be of grave robbers.  The nails used on the cross were considered to have magical powers. [1] It may come as just one more gut punch on top of the pain they’re already carrying.  Before they can process that, two beings appear, presumably angels.  They say “What are you doing here?  Why are you looking for the living among the dead?  Don’t you remember what Jesus told you?”

They have been remembering.  It is pretty much all they’ve done for the last two days.  But, as Biblical scholar Sharon Ringe says, the memory of Jesus’ teaching about his death and resurrection “has not been available to the women to help them understand. . . The chaos and horror of the events have blotted out memory.”[2]

Friends, we are grieving. We are grieving the loss of ideals that we believed were bedrock in this country, grieving unfounded attacks on our allies, grieving the wanton destruction of our institutions, threats to agencies that support life at the basic level, like Social Security and Medicare and the right to due process, as well as support for deeper, richer meaning in life like the endowment for the arts and the wide swaths of the histories of black and brown people and women which are being whitewashed, deliberately expunged from official records.  We grieve.  We lament.  We speak and shout in anger.  That is right and good.  But we must also remember who we are and whose we are.  We cannot allow the chaos and horror of these days to blot that out. 

I recently heard about a church that is in danger of forgetting its identity.  This church is one of the most progressive churches I know.  It is old enough that it was active in the abolitionist movement before the Civil War.  In more recent decades, it offered sanctuary to undocumented immigrants and was one of the early leaders in advocating for the LGBTQ+ community. 

But something happened a few years ago.  The church installed a Black Lives Matter sign in a highly visible place on their front lawn.  Some of the neighbors and passers-by objected.  Threatening phone calls were made.  The church Facebook page was targeted.  The sign was vandalized and had to be replaced.  Fear and anger swirled.   After some time, the pastor gave in.  They let the church’s active anti-racism ministry go dormant.  They took down the sign and silenced their own voice on racial justice. In response, some church members left because they were so disheartened and let down by the pastor’s lack of courage.  It made me sad to learn this story.  It seems like the fear and chaos of those events blotted out the pastor’s memory of that church’s long history of courageous, risky, justice-seeking.  The pastor lost courage and along with it, maybe they lost hope.

The women are grieving.  They have forgotten what Jesus said -- that he would be killed and rise again. But when the angels remind them, it seems that they remember. And somewhere between remembering his words and seeing the empty tomb, they dare to hope that resurrection could be true.

On the strength of that hope, they go to tell the other disciples – that the tomb is empty.  That the angels say Jesus is alive. But the disciples are having none of it.  They think it is nonsense, that the women are in indulging in fantasy, ridiculous drivel.  Except, maybe underneath their bluster, they also have a glimmer of hope.  Just a tiny, persistent wish that it could be true.  Something they don’t acknowledge in words. 

I say that because Luke tells us that Peter slips back to the tomb on his own, just to see for himself.  He sees the graveclothes and the empty tomb and he marvels.

What is the hope of the empty tomb? The hope is resurrection.  The hope is that death is defeated. Death, in all its forms, is the enemy, the thing we fear, the thing we rage against.  For Biblical people, death was anything that diminished life – sickness, injury, injustice, cruelty, war, oppression, evil.  Death separates us from those we love. Death dulls our senses and steals our joy.  But on Easter, Jesus overcame Death. In the resurrection, death is definitively defeated.

Rebecca Solnit is an activist and a writer. She advocates for human rights, women’s rights and the environment. After Hurricane  Katrina, after 9/11, after the wars kicked off by 9/11, she wrote a book called Hope in the Dark.  She says this “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch feeling lucky. [Hope] is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.  Hope should shove you out the door.  To hope is to give yourself to the future.”[3]

Hope is an emergency ax—I just love that. Hope propels the women from the tomb to telling the others.  Hope persuades Peter to check out the tomb for himself. The hope of Resurrection sustained the early believers and sent them out across the known world to share this good news – Death is defeated. Love has won. 

I know that Resurrection is a difficult concept.  Hard for our rational minds to absorb. One of the most compelling arguments for belief in the resurrection is that its first witnesses went on to live so boldly that they died for their faith.  They no longer thought it was an idle tale, but something so true that they shaped their lives around it.   Something so true that we should shape our lives around it.  Something so sturdily real that we can give ourselves to God’s future.

Professor Tom Wright declares: “If God’s world of justice and mercy and beauty has already been inaugurated, then those who believe in Jesus’ resurrection must be . . . people who do justice and mercy in the present, people who, together with [others] in the body of Christ, work for God’s healing love in creation; people who do beauty; people who celebrate art, because art and music . . . are ways in which we can pierce through the imagination, which gets stuck in the old creation, and can help people to imagine . . . that there might actually be a new creation in which the bullies and the wicked empires of the world are not in charge, and in which Jesus is in charge. .”[4]

Friends, some of us are grieving. Some of us are raging.  Some of us are tempted to despair. But we do not grieve as those without hope. We have the hope of the Resurrection.  We know that everything that relies on violence and cruelty and fear and pain, as real as it may seem, is already dying.

In this moment, this critical moment, we see the suffering, we hear the groaning of creation, and we know the world needs the truth of Resurrection as much as it ever did. Friends, we are Easter people and our calling is to proclaim loudly and boldly that death is not the end of the story.  Our calling is to grab that emergency ax and wage peace against violence, to wage love against hate, to wage truth against fear, to wage hope against despair.  Our calling is to follow Jesus all the way to Life because Jesus is in charge. Alleluia! Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed.

 

 

[1] Amy-Jill Levine, Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 650.

[2] Sharon H. Ringe, Luke:  The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), p. 285.

[3] Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, 3rd edition, (Chicago:  Haymarket Books, 2016), p. 4

[4] N.T. Wright, Resurrection of the Son of God Preview, Published on Vimeo. May 17, 2017. vimeo.com/217829344

4/6/25 - Between Righteousness and Mercy - Luke 19:1-10

Between Righteousness and Mercy

Luke 19:1-10

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

April 6, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkQ4s3bEu6Y

Full disclosure – I didn’t want to preach this sermon. I went to a clergy Bible study this week.  It’s a group of pastors who preach from the lectionary just about every Sunday.  I preach from the lectionary about half of the time, so I’m often out of step with them.  The story of Zacchaeus is not today’s lectionary text, so I was out of step again.  They were all talking about the time that Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus,  anointed Jesus’ feet with expensive perfume.  The conversation about that story became very rich.  We noted parallels between that time and ours, especially similarities about politics and economics then and now.  I left that Bible study wishing that I was on lectionary this week, because the sermon that we had started to generate together felt better and more comforting than one about Zacchaeus.  It would certainly go down easier than this one.  Or so I imagined.  I seriously thought about changing to that text, but by that time, Dorothy had all the bulletin material and Michael had made his musical selections.  I didn’t want to start over at that level, so I stuck with Zacchaeus and here we are.

If we’ve been around church for a while, and most of us have, we know this story in a certain way.   The way we know the story starts like this:  Zacchaeus was a rich tax collector who got wealthy collecting taxes from his own people and handing them over to the enemy.  

Walter Brueggemann describes tax collectors as revenue men for the Roman Empire.  He says, “The purpose of that empire, like every empire, whether Babylon among the Jews, Rome in the time of Jesus, or the US empire . . .is to coercively extract wealth for the sake of the center.  Zacchaeus served such a regime. . . Zacchaeus was an agent of the violence of the empire.” [1]

Ancient Roman tax systems were regressive which means there was a heavier tax burden on lower income levels and a lighter one on wealthier social classes.  Throughout much of Roman history the tax burden was almost exclusively laid on the poorest people of the Empire while wealthier bureaucrats could avoid taxation. These systems contributed to the concentration of wealth and land in the hands of a small class of aristocrats.[2] Does any of that sound familiar?  Poor people paid proportionally more in taxes than the rich.  In return, they did not get education for their children or healthcare or security for their old age.  They had no way to demand something better.  The government was rigged to benefit those already in power.  Again, this sounds like something we’re very familiar with.

So, the way we have usually been taught to understand this story is that Zacchaeus has found a way to make the system work for him.  He has turned his back on his own people because he is greedy for money and power. In a world of good and evil, we know which side he is on and we have no sympathy for him. But Jesus does.  Jesus does not call him out, but calls him in, naming him a child of Abraham.  Essentially, he says to the crowd, “this man is one of us.”   Jesus gives to Zacchaeus the supreme honor of hosting Jesus in his own home.  And he does it in front of everyone.  Not you too, Jesus.  Are you falling for this?

What we know about Jesus is that he is into forgiveness.  He is into transforming people’s lives, helping them change.  And so, we can kind of stomach this story if it’s told like that. In fact, that’s what translators and interpreters have done with this text for a very long time.  In most translations, after Zacchaeus gets down from the tree, he tells Jesus “half of my goods I will give to the poor; I will pay back four times as much.”  It seems like this is a story of repentance.  Because Zach has encountered Jesus, he will change his ways. The people of Jericho may not believe it.  They may still not trust him, but we know that’s how Jesus works.

Except that’s not a good translation.  Zach actually says “Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.”  The verbs in that sentence are in present tense.  He is describing what he already does, not something he is going to start doing from this point on. Jesus does not challenge that narrative

Zacchaeus is already doing good. Maybe he is trying to change the system from within.  Or maybe he realized some time ago that he could use his privilege and his wealth to make reparations, and he has been quietly doing this for years.  But the lines have been drawn between rich and poor, the lines have been drawn between the good guys and the bad guys, between enemies and allies.  We already know who is on our side and who is on the other side. We are suspicious of THEM.   THEY must have an angle.  THEY aren’t capable of change.

This is the hard part of the sermon, the part I didn’t want to preach.  No doubt you have seen the pictures from yesterday, the incredible crowds across the country at Hands Off Rallies.  Emmanuel was well-represented at the one in Albany.  More than a dozen of us were there and maybe more who I don’t know about it.  I saw the images last night, all across the internet.  Mostly people were celebrating the exercise of free speech and being encouraged to know that so many are standing together against destructive power grab.  But I also saw those same images being shared by people who represent a different point of view.  I saw them shared by people who mock the demonstrators for being clueless or stupid or “Leftist Lunatics.” 

I don’t know how this will end.  It seems hard to imagine that the people of this country can find a way to unite around our previously cherished ideals of freedom and justice for all. Some are saying that it will take more violence, more economic pain, more destruction. Some remind us that organized evil will always win over disorganized righteousness, so we better start organizing. 

Here's the hard place this story takes me: There has to be a place for mercy.  There has to be a place for recognizing that your enemy might become your ally.

Let us be very clear:  Jesus is not excusing evil.  He is not glossing over exploitation or gaming the system.    He is on his way to Jerusalem where he will be executed for speaking against injustice, for calling out oppression and systemic evil.  If we're modeling our lives on Jesus, then we also have to name evil when we see it.  We have to pray and hope and resist and act against it, even if we won't personally get to see the benefits.  But at the same time, Jesus is merciful.  Jesus is resolved to give his life in the fight against evil, but at the very same time, he is quick to listen and slow to judge a potential enemy. 

Jesus once told his disciples to be wise as snakes and innocent as doves.  That’s a hard place to stand.  Call out evil, but be alert for good in surprising places.  Pay attention to what is really going on. Stay sharp, but not so sharp that you cut others.

At the Alliance Gathering last week, one of the keynote speakers was Dr. Christena Cleveland, a womanist theologian.  Womanism is that school of thought that is concerned with the intersection of being female and being black.  That is a space where two marginalized identities meet. People who occupy that space, like Dr. Cleveland, are well aware of the cultural forces that would diminish and deprive them of rights and dignity.  They know from personal experience.  Referencing Dr. King, Dr. Cleveland said she believes that the moral arc of the universe bends towards love. She didn’t say justice.  She said love.  And her next words stuck with me.  She said, “I am a stronger, softer, more courageous person when I believe that the arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards love.” 

Stronger and softer and more courageous.  That stuck with me. 

Jesus was strong in his resolve, courageous approaching his execution and still soft as he dealt with people.

He was righteous and merciful and everything in between. 

Wise as serpents and innocent as doves.

Stronger, softer and more courageous. 

Stronger, softer and more courageous.

May it be so for you and me.  Amen.

 

 

[1] Walter Brueggemann, “Vision that Trumps Violence” in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann, Vol 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox, 2015), p. 235.

[2] DeLorme, Charles D.; Isom, Stacey; Kamerschen, David R. (10 April 2005). "Rent seeking and taxation in the Ancient Roman Empire". Applied Economics. 37 (6): 705–711. 

 

3/23/25 - Between Rest and Growth - Luke 13:6-9

Between Rest and Growth

Luke 13:6-9

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

March 23, 2025

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJUDEYJWHcs

 

On the first Sunday of this year, we received Star Words. That was way back in January.  In case, you weren’t here or don’t remember, Star Words are a relatively new prayer practice used by some Christians.  We’ve only done it about 3 years here at Emmanuel.  The idea is that on Epiphany Sunday, the day when we remember the magi who were guided by a star, we receive a word that might become a sort of companion or guide for us through the next year.  It is not a magic word, but a word that might pop up from time to time, a word that might help us listen for God in particular ways during the year. 

On that first Sunday in January, the cards were facedown, passed around in star-shaped baskets.  When the baskets came back to me, I reached in, mixed up the cards and took one.  When I turned it over and read the word, I had an immediate visceral reaction.  I hated this word on sight; I definitely did not want this word.  You are allowed to turn your word back in and get another one.  But the practice encourages us to trust the word that we receive and wait to see what might happen with it.  So I kept it.

My star word for this year is Grow.  That’s the word I hated on sight.  Every growth experience I can remember has been painful.  The time I went to college and learned that I was not as academically prepared as I thought I was.  The time I left a job that had become bound up with my identify and sense of self-worth.  Jim and I have moved 11 times since we got married 37 years ago.  Almost every time, I felt lonely and out of place.  All of these turned out to be times of important growth and stretching, but still, when I saw the word GROW on my Star card, my first impulse was “No Thank You” – only my mental words were a lot stronger language.

I did not want 2025 to be a year of painful growth.  Absolutely not.  But here we are.  If you’re not having such a great year so far either, I guess we can both blame it on my Star Word.

----

There once was a fig tree. The seed catalog had promised it would bear a crop of figs in 3 to 5 years. The owner latched on to the smallest interval between planting and harvest.  Every year he has gone to inspect the tree, without ever finding even a single small fruit.  It has been at least 3 years.  His patience has run out.  The tree is taking up valuable land and resources.  It must be cut down. 

I wonder what the tree thinks about that.  Maybe the tree is also ready to quit, ready to be done.  Maybe the tree has tried one thing after another.  It has done everything it can to bear beautiful, delicious figs, but the soil is inadequate and there are no other fig trees around for support.  The world is too harsh.  Maybe the tree would not actually mind being cut down.  Becoming firewood might serve a better purpose.

But the gardener intervenes, pleading to the owner “let’s nurture it, care for it and give it one more year.”

This is a Bible story, a parable, so we expect that there is something about God in it.  We often try to interpret scripture through certain unchallenged assumption.  A common assumption is that God is always represented by the most powerful entity in the story. And so, without realizing what we’re doing, we may jump to the conclusion that God is the impatient owner, the one who would cut us down for not being productive.  But if God is any character in this story, the merciful gardener is more consistent with the God we find in the Bible. 

This is a growth year.  I think so, not primarily because of my Star word, because there is so much pressure on us.  All those years when we absorbed the teachings of Jesus.  All those years when we studied Scripture and prayed and told each other in so many ways that our calling was to love justice and do kindness and walk humbly with God.  One of the basic fertilizers of our faith is “love God with everything you’ve got and love your neighbor as yourself.”  There were years when that fertilizer was applied in abundance in the soil in which we were mostly just resting together.

But now, we have such an overwhelming urge to make a difference, to take action.  As a congregation, we are re-examining our purpose, seeking to identify the particular fruit that we can bear, and the soil that we need to be planted in.  As individuals, we are all dealing with something -- a personal wound, a tense relationship, a neighborhood that is no longer neighborly, a fractured nation.  We need the care and coaxing of the gardener. 

Justo Gonzalez is a Cuban-American theologian.  He notes that this fig tree is growing, not in a grove with other fig trees, but surrounded by grape vines in a vineyard.  He says that at the last possible time when the owner might have come looking for figs, the vineyard would have already been harvested and pruned.  All the green would have dried up, leaving the thick gnarled stumps.  In the midst of that seeming desolation, stands this fig tree. The gardener is digging around it, applying special fertilizer.  To the casual observer, it might seem like the fig tree, is the center of attention and the vines are cursed and forgotten.  Gonzalez writes, “ One would think that the fig tree must be particularly valuable if it is treated with such care, but the truth is exactly the opposite. The fig tree is receiving special care because it has yet to give the fruit it was meant to bear.”[1]

Jesus tells this parable, Luke says, in the face of Pilate’s random violence. Jesus tells this parable after Pilate had executed people while they were at worship, because he could, because his power seemed to be unchecked, because cruelty and terror are often the point. 

This story about a fig tree and growth and rest is told at a curious place, in response to an unpredictably harsh and violent world. 

I’m trying to learn all I can from those who have lived faithfully through hard times.  Fyodor Raychynets is one of those people.  He is a Ukrainian Baptist pastor and seminary professor.  If he seems familiar, you might remember that I mentioned him three years ago just after the Russian invasion.  His wife died of Covid just before the war.  At a time of grief and uncertainty, he and his adult children lived in different parts of Ukraine.  Then his son within the next year.  His office and entire library were destroyed when the seminary was bombed.  If there were ever a modern day Job, it would be Fyodor, who refuses to doubt God’s goodness. 

When the war began, he kept a journal.   On Day 15, he wrote "War is when evil reaches unseen dimensions and lowest forms, and when good manifests itself in its highest manifestations against the backdrop of total, uncontrollable madness."

And on Day 20: "War is when you understand changes; when not in theory, but in practice, you especially appreciate the moment-- here in now --and live it more consciously."[2]

Maybe this mysterious parable is about how we respond, not to a punishing God, but to the limits of mortality, to this moment which will not be ours forever.

Fyodor’s own initial response to the war was to cultivate a small group of volunteers to serve elderly people who were sheltering without electricity, without water, in basements.  They were scared to death.  These people had never dreamt that they would experience war again in their lifetimes. And so, he and his volunteers did what they could to deliver food and water and medical supplies.[3] They took stock of the great need and their own capacity and responded, in a small but critical way.

Barbara Brown Taylor says, “I am convinced that the longing to bear fruit – to live lives that matter- is embedded in us as deeply as the longing to eat, sleep, love and be loved.  The problem is that such loves don’t happen automatically.  They require a certain alertness to the way things really are, both in us and in the world; a certain willingness to make choices we would not make if we thought time would never run out, a certain awareness that we need all the help we can get, from any gardener willing to tend our roots.”[4]

Here's the thing – I believe that we are alert to the way things really are.  I believe that we are willing to act.  We would deliver supplies in a war zone, we are ready to speak truth to power, to put ourselves at risk, if only we could identify the specific ways to do that in our context. But that is not yet clear, at least not in the ways that would make the big changes we think are necessary. 

And while we are not bearing the fruit that we want to, we also resist the rest and nurture that we need.  You know I would have welcomed REST as a Star Word.  Napping is my super power.  But these are not restful times.  Anxiety and dread keep naps at bay.

I suspect that is true for many of us. We say to ourselves, “I cannot rest because someone is suffering.  How can I possibly enjoy myself in a time like this?  I cannot watch a funny movie or seek out the beauty of art or music while people are being killed and greed is running rampant and democracy is dying.  All my energy and efforts must be exerted to rage against the chaos and destruction.  I cannot rest.  It would be wrong.”

But then I think about the fig tree and the gardener’s extra care.  Sometimes growth or healing or bearing fruit takes much longer than we ever thought it would.  Sometimes it takes digging around our roots, rediscovering the supports that we actually have, understanding the deep wisdom we already know.  Sometimes it means giving ourselves permission to rest and receive.

Just week or two ago, Fyodor was interviewed again, three years into this terrible war. He spoke about the urgency of now and the challenge of holding onto hope when the world is falling apart.  He said “"If I want to say to someone, ‘I love you,’ I say it. If I want to forgive, I forgive. If I want to do something meaningful, I do it now—because tomorrow is never guaranteed."

He described living fully in the present as an act of resistance against fear and oppression, saying “"The enemy wants us to live in fear, to be paralyzed by it. But to live fully is to resist."[5]

Friends, maybe this parable is about allowing ourselves to be nurtured, accepting the care we need – laughter and love, experiences of joy and beauty, and rest so that we can bring all of ourselves to the life we are now living. Thanks be to God.

 


[1] Justo Gonzalez, Luke in the Belief Commentary Series, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 172

[2] https://for-the-life-of-the-world-yale-center-for-faith-culture.simplecast.com/episodes/a-voice-from-kyiv-fyodor-raychynets-faithful-presence-in-the-war-on-ukraine-ZlU7z8o3/transcript

[3] Fyodor Rayschnets, “A Voice from Kyiv: Faithful Presence in the War on Ukraine,” For the Life of the World, Yale Center for Faith and Culture. https://faith.yale.edu/media/a-voice-from-kyiv-fyodor-raychynets

[4] Barbara Brown Taylor, “The Wake-Up Call” in Always A Guest: Speaking of Faith Far From Home, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 144

[5] https://faith.yale.edu/media/the-fear-to-hope-ukrainian-pastor-on-democracy-fear-and-abundant-life-in-the-midst-of-war