6/21/26 - They Will Not Move Us - Jeremiah 17:5-8; Romans 13:8-10

They Will Not Move Us

Jeremiah 17:5-8; Romans 13:8-10

June 21, 2026

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

They trolled our Facebook page this week.  When I posted pictures of our Pride booth, they left angry face emojis.  When I shared pictures from the Interfaith Blessing service and pictures of the Pride Center Youth float with some EBC members aboard, they came back to spew Bible verses and more angry face emojis.  More pictures of the parade got more responses.  These posts were made some time apart.  It took some time and energy for them, whoever they were, to keep scrolling through our page in order to express their displeasure, but they did so.

They can say what they want, but they will not move us from love.  They will not move us from justice.  

We called ourselves to worship by quoting Jeremiah, repeating “We shall not be moved.”   The song “We shall not be moved” began as a spiritual, sung by enslaved persons and their descendants.  It was picked up by the labor movement of the late 1930’s and 1940’s where it was translated into Spanish.  When you translate it into Spanish with the right number of syllables to fit the tune and then translate it back into English, it comes out “They will not move us.”   

Friends that right there, at the very beginning of the sermon, is the point.  Whether they are internet trolls, white supremacists and/or self-righteous Christians, they will not move us.

They will not move us from the truth that every one, every person of every race or ethnicity, of any immigration status, every person of every sexual orientation and gender identity is sacred, gifted, and beloved to the Body of Christ.  Every single one.  No exceptions. 

On Monday, I went to a townhall hosted by Paul Tonko because he wanted to hear from the LGBTQ+ community.  In a room of about 40 participants, there were 5 clergy.  Most of the others were from around the Capital District

representing several Pride organizations and others who provide services like counseling, healthcare or housing to members of the queer community. I was there to listen.  One person said that internationally the USA is seen as on the verge of genocide because of the violence here against trans and non-binary people.  She said that the trans youth she works with are aware of that reputation and they tell her that they don’t believe they have any real future.  She said, “There are so many messages of rejection and cruelty.  We have to be even more brazen with our messages of affirmation.”   

They will not move us from love and justice.

Friday was Juneteenth, which commemorates the day in 1865 when, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas learned that they were free.  For approximately 250,000 enslaved people, it represented the first practical realization of freedom and equality under the law.

But, contrary to the white-washed version of the story, it did not simply happen because a white Union Army General proclaimed General Order No 3 in Galveston.  No, freedom came because Granger’s 2,000 mostly Black Troops moved from plantation to plantation freeing the enslaved.[1]

The Rev. Eric Folkerth is one of my Methodist clergy colleagues.  He says “There is a very credible understanding of American history that says that the Union won the Civil War, but that the South has generally won a “guerrilla war” that has continued for 150 years since. In between Juneteenth and Little Rock [Central High School in 1957] American history is filled with one hundred years of lynchings, Sundown Towns, the resegregated cities and schools, Confederate Monuments…and the so-called Great Migration.”[2]

The latest assault on Black and Brown freedom might be found in the Supreme Court’s decision in April to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act of 1965.[3]

But we remember that We Shall Not Be Moved was first sung by enslaved people in hush harbors.  We remember that it became a natural bridge from the labor movement to the civil rights era, when Black people refused to be moved from segregated lunch counters and schools and voting booths.

Beloved ones, we are not here because the world has been kind.[4]  We are here because God has called us into a community of love and justice.  They will not move us.

Jeremiah uses the imagery of trees to contrast those who put their trust in God with those who trust in human resources, like military or economic or technological or political power.   There are two trees.  One is like a piece of dry scrub in the desert; it bears no fruit, has no permanent sense of nourishment.  No companionship.[5]  The other one grows beside a stream where it sinks its roots deeply, becomes richly fertile and productive. 

In our second reading, Paul was writing to Roman Christians, people living in a hostile world who needed to know what to do, how to live as those who put their trust in God.  To that fledging community, he said love your neighbor.  Love does no harm. The key to flourishing is keeping love at the center.

About a decade ago, a German forester named Peter Wohlleben wrote a popular book called The Hidden Life of Trees.  In it, he says that trees do better in community that on their own.  Trees in a forest grow their branches until they start touching their neighbors, and then they choose to grow upward or to fill in more leaves. That’s so everyone can get the sunlight they need.

And under the ground things get really complex. That’s not only where a tree takes in lifegiving water. Through its same vast network of roots each tree can share messages with its neighbors via chemical or even electrical communication. A tree can warn others to prepare for predators. Trees even transfer nutrients to each other, established trees shoring up weaker trees, making the whole forest more resilient.  [6]  Jeremiah says those who trust in God, who follow in God’s good way, are like trees planted near abundant water.  And what we now know about trees just enriches the ancient prophet’s metaphor.[7]

“Theologian Paul Wadell has said, ‘Friendship is the crucible of the moral life.’  By which he means that the virtues we need to live well are shaped by sharing a life together with friends who help us to become all that God calls us to be.”[8] Christian community can be like a network of trees.

In Jeremiah 17 we read, “Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water . . .” What I learned this week is that the verb there is actually “transplanted”.[9] Jeremiah is speaking of what it is like to purposefully move that tree from the desert and place it beside a stream where its thirsty roots drink deeply and it learns not to fear the assault of the elements, even in dry, hot times.  

And I began to wonder, what if we are called to be the communities of transplanted trees, placed beside the living water, loving our neighbors and sharing the sunlight?

They will not move us because we are rooted and we drink deeply of the truth that everyone, every person of every race or ethnicity, of any immigration status, every person of every sexual orientation and gender identity is sacred, gifted, and beloved to the Body of Christ.  Every single one.  No exceptions. 

Proverbs says to train up children and when they are old, they will not depart from it.  That’s another way of saying to give them roots.  Be the community of Christ with love at the center, the church that is concerned about getting the job of love done better and better.  And they will not be moved.

A few years, Caitlin Stout was attending a Christian college where her identity as a lesbian was met with rejection.  Reflecting on growing up in the church she said, “I realized that for the most part it was the kids who took their faith the most seriously who eventually walked away.  Those of us who tearfully promised that we would follow Jesus anywhere eventually followed him out the door. The Queer kids, more than anyone, learned exactly what it meant to work out our faith with fear and trembling. They told us to read the Bible and take it seriously and then mocked us for becoming “social justice warriors.”  Now they’re warning us not to deconstruct to the point of meaninglessness. But they took a chisel to God until he fit in a box. They “deconstructed” the concept of love until it allowed them to tolerate sexual abuse, celebrate white supremacy, and look away from kids in cages. Some of us got to where we are because we took it all to heart. We took the most foundational elements of our faith to their natural conclusions.”[10]

They shall not move us to surrendering our faith or abandoning our convictions.

They shall not move us to despair or indifference.

They shall not move us to violence or returning evil for evil. 

Beloved ones, we are not here because the world has been kind.  We are immovable because we are rooted.  In a world that keeps trying to uproot queer people, devalue black lives, and deny belonging to those who live beyond narrow norms,

We are here because God calls us to be like trees planted by water, grounded in love, sustained by justice and courageous enough to flourish even in hard seasons.  We are still standing because our roots found living water.

 

And they shall not move us.

 

 

[1] https://wordinblack.com/2024/06/second-juneteenth-just-as-important-as-first/

[2] https://open.substack.com/pub/wheneftalks/p/juneteenth-and-the-power-of-power?r=3j1qaq&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

[3] https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-voting-rights-congressional-redistricting-louisiana-aa5d7dbde7c13654f341d152c2ad5229

[4] The theme of this sermon and the worship service in which it was preached were developed by the Rev. Derek A. Terry, Acting Executive Director of the Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ.  https://openandaffirming.org/ona26/

[5] Patrick Miller, New Interpreter’s Bible Volume VI, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001), p. 708.

[6] This summary of The Hidden Life of Trees is from a sermon by C. Nolan Huizenga at Highland Presbyterian Church, Louisville, on February 16, 2025

http://hpclouisville.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2025/02/2.16.2025-6th-Sunday-after-Epiphany-NH.pdf

[8] As quoted by Scott Bader-Saye in Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear, (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2007), p. 69.

[9] Patrick Miller, p. 708

[10] https://www.tumblr.com/oneminute2/644319605845868544/blessedarethebinarybreakers-a-queer-seminarian

6/7/26 - Entertaining Angels - Genesis 18:1-10

Entertaining Angels

Genesis 18:1-10

June 7, 2026

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

If I asked “how does God show up in your life?”  some of you would say God shows up in the wonder and beauty of creation.  Some of you would say God shows up in the scripture passages you know by heart or as a palpable sense of calm or confidence.  Some of you would say in the moments when another person shares their own spiritual growth or insight with you. 

If we asked Abraham “how does God show up in your life?” he might have said, “just like anyone else.”  At the time of today’s reading, Abraham is 99 years old.  He has been in relationship with God for decades, but most of that time, the Bible just says “now God appeared to Abraham” or “God told Abraham”.  One time God appeared in a vision, while Abraham was sleeping, what we might call a dream.  But most of the time, it seems that God and Abraham conversed just like Abraham might have conversed with his wife Sarah or his nephew Lot or anyone else.

There is no precedent in Abraham’s life for today’s encounter.  He is at the oaks of Mamre, which is basically his home address.  He is not expecting company, but when three strangers suddenly appear, he knows his duty.  The code of normal everyday life in the ancient Middle East requires the offer of hospitality to anyone in need.  In a nomadic desert culture, a person never knew when he himself might be in need, when her food or water would run out, when beasts of burden would need a rest, or storms or illness would require someone else’s generosity and mercy. So, you were expected to welcome strangers and even enemies as well as family and friends into your home without question, sustaining a safety net that you might also need one day.

Seeing these strangers, Abraham springs into action, inviting them to rest in the shade while he brings a bit of bread for refreshment.  That offer turns into something much more --  with freshly-made bread and a full meal.  The entire household is involved in the act of welcome.  The strangers turn out to be divine messengers, but Abraham and Sarah provide a lavish welcome before they know that. The surprise comes later.  The surprise comes when the strangers announce that in her old age, Sarah will have a son. 

Now, God had previously told that to Abraham, in whatever way they usually conversed.  But this is the first Sarah is hearing of it.  I wonder why Abraham hasn’t mentioned it to her.  I wonder if the unprecedented visit from strangers is to confirm for her the truth of this promise.

God shows up in the form of strangers who are received with welcome and the result is surprise and blessing.  This experience is repeated often enough in Scripture, so that by the time the book of Hebrews is written thousands of years later,  there is a shorthand description of it – showing hospitality to strangers is equated with the possibility of entertaining angels.

Two things we might notice about this encounter, one practical, one theological.  First, the practical.  Abraham gets a lot of credit for being an exemplary host, but if we read closely, he does very little of the actual work. He does hasten to the tent to tell Sarah to make the cakes quickly.  Then he runs to the field to instruct the servant to slaughter the calf and prepare the meal.  Other members of the household do the rest.

A lot of behind-the-scenes work goes into hospitality. Before last Sunday’s picnic, some unseen heroes recruited people to work the grill and went shopping and schlepped coolers of food and tubs of supplies to and from the park and saw to many, many other details.  On Fridays for the last few weeks, a few dedicated folks have been showing up to accompany the Pride center youth as they create a float for the parade.  In both instances, strangers have been welcomed and blessings have been received which is truly wonderful, but my point is that hospitality involves real intention and work.

Theologically,  we see that God shows up in the form of three ordinary travelers on an otherwise ordinary day.  God stands nearby and waits.  Abraham sets aside his plans for the day, his comfort and convenience.  Perhaps he is risking his own safety, because these are strangers after all, but he receives and welcomes them.   

Kyong-Jin Lee is an Old Testament scholar at Fuller Seminary.  She writes, “Openness to the stranger is not a weakness, but a sign of trust in the God who chooses to dwell in the unfamiliar, the inconvenient, and the overlooked. Spirit-formed hospitality is not grounded in control, mastery, or theological certainty, but in loving and compassionate receptivity—the willingness to be interrupted, to be transformed by encounter, and to let the boundaries of self be gently redrawn by the presence of another. 

This mutual vulnerability—where host and guest meet in shared risk—is not a liability in the Christian life. It is its very center. For in that space of exposure, where we are neither self-sufficient nor guarded, God still chooses to appear.”[1]

Across the summer, in our Dinner Church sessions, we are going to delve more into this issue of hospitality, wondering together about how we may best welcome the stranger who might also be God.  I hope you will be present for those conversations.  And perhaps this image from today may linger in your memory for a while.

The image on the cover of your bulletin and the screen is the most well-known Russian icon painted in the 15th century by Andre Rublev.  It is old and doesn’t translate well to projection, but you might notice the house on the upper left, a 15th century representation of Abraham’s house which in reality, would have been a very basic tent. I like the detail of the tree in the background, a nod to the oaks of Mamre where Abraham and Sarah lived. This image represents the three strangers receiving hospitality.  By Rublev’s time, Christians had come to interpret them as three aspects of God, so this icon is also known as The Holy Trinity. 

The Greek word for stranger, xenos, also means guest and paradoxically also host.  “This one word signals the essential mutuality that is at the heart of hospitality. No one is strange except in relation to someone else; we make one another guests and hosts by how we treat one another.”[2]

Hospitality begins in preparation, but it may become first evident in how we greet people.  We might say “Hello” or “Good morning”  or “How are you?”  In South Africa, a standard greeting goes like this:

The first person says, “I see you.”  The second person responds, “I am here.”

“I see you.”

“I am here.”

Isn’t that lovely?  When we show up as a stranger, isn’t that what we want – to be seen, to be recognized for who we are.  And to respond, “I am here.”  “I am fully present, with all my strengths and weaknesses, bringing my whole self into this place.”

I see you

I am here.

 

Lutheran pastor, Nadia Bolz Weber, tells about a time when she welcomed a stranger.  Before an ordination service, she gathered with other clergy preparing themselves for it.  She introduced herself to another pastor, who shook her hand and said, “We’ve met, but I do not expect you to remember.  I’ve waited seven years to be able to tell you this:  You shared your chicken with me that night and you have no idea what it meant.”  She went on to say that she had been at a real low point, in the middle of a very painful divorce.  The two women were backstage before one of Nadia’s speaking engagements.  This woman was supposed to introduce Nadia.  She was exhausted and hadn’t eaten all day.  Apparently, I that moment, Nadia looked up from a huge chicken dinner that had been provided for her and said, “I’m never gonna eat all of this, please help me out here.” [3]

Recalling it, the woman said it had nearly made her cry.  She, who was technically the host, was blessed with the hospitality of Nadia, who was a stranger and technically the guest.  And seven years later, she surprised Nadia with recognition and the shared memory. 

This is how it works sometimes.  Strangers are received with welcome.  There is surprise and blessing and God is present in the midst of it all.

I see you.

I am here.

Thanks be to God.

 

[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-16-3/commentary-on-genesis-181-10a-6

[2] Ana Maria Pineda in Practicing Our Faith, 2nd edition Dorothy Bass, editor, (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass, 2010) , p. 33

[3] https://thecorners.substack.com/p/the-sacred-act-of-having-no-idea?utm_source=publication-search

 

5/17/26 - Stewarding Joy - Philippians 4:4-7

Stewarding Joy

Philippians 4:4-7

May 17, 2026

Emmanuel Baptist Church, Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Image: Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash

 

Hundreds of years from now, if there are still such things as archaeologists, maybe they will study America in our era.  If they do, they will have all kinds of material to examine –videos of demonstrations, political debates and church services, records of court decisions and executive orders and actions of law enforcement, not to mention so many internet memes, emails and texts about what we’re living through.

All that is known about the church at Philippi comes from this letter and the book of Acts, which is precious little.  But from them, we might extrapolate.  We can imagine a group text from Lydia, a textile artist.  She sends a reminder about a meeting by the river for prayer at sunset this evening.  What she doesn’t have to say, because everyone knows, is that they’re meeting beyond the city gates because foreign or non-Roman gods are not allowed inside the city. [1] 

Or we might imagine a video clip of an ugly crowd at a town hall meeting, which would have likely been outdoors and open to the public.  Concerns about a higher cost of living and struggling businesses are easily manipulated into blaming one of the city’s minority groups, immigrants, who aren’t patriotic enough and don’t do things the right way. Perhaps powerful people make speeches in which they say that “those people” want to corrupt our youth by teaching them about their worth to God, contrary to our theology.  That will break down moral order and result in anarchy.   Which leads to people shunning the Christians, refusing to hire them as day laborers, and boycotting the few Christian-owned stalls at the market. 

We can imagine the economic and social struggles that these Christians feel all the time.  They remember that when Paul visited the city, some influential businessmen had filed charges for disturbing the peace.  So, Paul and his companions had been beaten and thrown in jail in violation of Rome’s own guarantees of due process to citizens. If it happened to Paul, it could happen to them. Every day brings new atrocities.  They wonder how to raise their children in such a time. They wonder when or how it will end. 

We can imagine that the constant pressure on them from outside the church leads to tension and conflict on the inside.  Two strong leaders, Euodia and Syntyche, are entrenched in conflict.  We have no idea what it was about, but it appears intense and protracted.[2] We can expect that people are taking sides and this factionalism is threatening the survival of the Philippian church.

As far as we can tell, this is the setting in which Paul writes the letter to the church at Philippi.  Perhaps you heard a few echoes of our own circumstances in that description.  Oh, I forgot to mention that Paul himself is writing from prison.  I hope that you have heard enough to understand that not much is easy or carefree in this situation.  There is mostly struggle and injustice and pain and uncertainty.  And yet. . . this letter overflows with joy.  In 4 short chapters, Paul refers to joy or rejoicing at least 16 times.

I think it is important to remember that context, because otherwise we might easily dismiss Paul as naïve or sheltered.  But he knew real hardship and still, he declared “Rejoice in the Lord always.” 

Paul is not happy about being in prison.  He is not telling the Philippians to be happy that their neighbors are ostracizing them.  He is not overlooking the fact that they can’t get work or sell their wares which makes it really hard to pay their bills.  But he does say “Rejoice in the Lord.”

 “In the Lord” – Paul emphasizes this because in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the world has been irrevocably changed.  The early Christians believed that resurrection had re-opened Paradise on earth, returning the world to the beauty in which it was first created.  Paradise was to be found on this earth, permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God.   That is the deep source of Paul’s joy. 

Theologian Henri Nouwen wrote “Joy is the experience of knowing that you are unconditionally loved and that nothing - sickness, failure, emotional distress, oppression, war, or even death can take that love away.” [3]

The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas was a keynote speaker and preacher at the Alliance of Baptists gathering last month.  It was such privilege to hear her.  She spoke of our nation in this time of crisis. She said “We are undeniably a nation, a people, as disoriented, doubtful, and despairing as we have been in a long time.”  She said that the deliberate scapegoating and intentional lies we see in the public square every day are disorienting. The disorientation is intentional because it leads to despair which may be more powerful than fear.[4]

Despair may be more powerful than fear. I think she is naming something significant.  And if despair is being cultivated, then perhaps our most powerful response is joy. 

Kelly Brown Douglas spoke about her grandmother, a poor black woman who was born in slavery.  They called her Mama Mary.  She migrated from the south to Columbus, Ohio during the great migration.  She migrated with little more than a sixth-grade education, working as an elevator operator.  She held a dream, a dream that her four grandchildren would one day finish high school.  It was a dream she herself was denied in a time when opportunities such as that were not available to black children.  So with faith, she set aside what little she could so that Kelly and her two sisters and her brother would receive something upon their high school graduations.  Mama Mary did not live to see it happen, but all four of them completed high school and so much more.

Rev. Douglas said, “I come from enslaved people who lived and died and never breathed a free breath, never thought they would, but they still fought for freedom because they believed in a God of freedom. I am here to honor that kind of heritage, to trust in the faithfulness of God and to refuse to give in to despair and doubt.”

She continued, “In a culture that profits from despair, joy is a revolutionary act.”

Several weeks ago, on Easter, I said that as people of the resurrection, we have a duty to hope. Today, I am saying that we also have a responsibility to steward the joy that is ours because of Christ, to summon our joy and bring it to bear on our circumstances, to rejoice in the Lord always.

The psalmist wrote “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Joy and sorrow are often two sides of the same coin.  Sometimes we recognize joy and hold it as more precious because of what we endured in the night of weeping. 

A long time ago, in a small town in England, there was a fire in a neighbor’s yard that became a fire in the house.  The neighbors gathered around.  They had called the fire department and they were all looking and watching this house come apart in the flames. On the second floor there was a little nine- or ten-year-old boy.  Through the window, they could hear him screaming.  They wondered what they might do but no one moved, until from the back, John William Breckenridge moved up to the edge of the house and found the drain pipe and shimmied it up to the second floor.  He broke the window, grabbed the boy, put him on his shoulder and came down burning his own hands, but saving the child. 

Three weeks later, this child was an orphan with no surviving family, but a tremendous insurance pay-out. They gathered in a court of law to figure out who would be adopting this nine-year-old boy.  The court was full, because of the large amount of money involved.  In the midst of the yelling and shouting, the judge decided that he might let the boy choose who would adopt him.  So, the boy got down from his chair and he weaved through the crowd.  It seemed as if he was searching for a certain face.  He came finally to the back of the room to a man who was sitting with his arms crossed.  He took the man’s arm and he pulled it out and he saw the bandages on the burnt hands, and he turned to the judge and he said “this is the one.”  And so it was.

We are a people as disoriented, doubtful, and despairing as we have been in a long time. We are in the night of weeping, no doubt, but can we hold on for the dawn, for the joy that comes in the morning?

Lots of people I know want to distinguish between happiness and joy.  They say that happiness varies with circumstances, but joy is a more permanent part of our relationship with God. I tend to agree with this in theory.  But I have some issues with it in practice.  When the people who claim to possess this permanent joy are perpetually stressed or irritable or short-tempered, then I start to wonder.  I think if you have joy, then at least occasionally, it should show up as happiness or laughter or a smile.

Depression and anxiety are real diseases and should be treated as such.   You cannot will yourself out of clinical depression any more than you can will yourself out of a broken arm.  Please hear that.  But there is always a range of mental/emotional/spiritual health that we can effect, just as we can effect physical health through sleep, diet and exercise.  And I have also noticed that joy can be contagious.  It is easy to be grumpy when everyone around me is grumpy.  It is harder to persist in my grumpiness when other people are joyful. (Not impossible, mind you, but harder.)

If joy is our most powerful response to despair, if joy is a revolutionary act, and we have forgotten how to be joyful, we might need some help exercising those muscles.  When my now-adult daughters were young, I hung up this poster which says How to Really Love a Child.  I’m sharing it here because I think these ideas work for adults too or for the child that still lives inside us.  So, I’m going to read this poster and I encourage you to listen for one or two things you might do to reach for joy.

Be there. Say yes as often as possible. Let them bang on pots and pans. If they’re crabby, put them in water. If they’re unlovable, love yourself. Realize how important it is to be a child. Go to a movie theater in your pajamas. Read books out loud with joy. Invent pleasures together. Remember how really small they are. Giggle a lot. Surprise them.

Say no when necessary. Teach feelings. Heal your own inner child. Learn about parenting. Hug trees together. Make loving safe. Bake a cake and eat it with no hands. Go find elephants and kiss them. Plan to build a rocket ship. Imagine yourself magic. Make lots of forts with blankets. Let your angel fly. Reveal your own dreams. Search out the positive. Keep the gleam in your eye. Encourage silly. Plant licorice in your garden. Open up. Stop yelling. Express your love. A lot. Speak kindly. Paint their tennis shoes.

Handle with caring.[5]

 

Henri Nouwen said “Joy does not simply happen to us.  We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day.  It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”[6] 

Beloved ones, let us choose joy and keep choosing it every day.  Amen.


[1] Ralph P. Martin The New Century Bible Commentary: Philippians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmanns, 1983)  p 5.

[2] Todd Still, Smyth and Helwys Bible Commentary: Philippians and Philemon (Macon:  Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2011), p 122.

[3] Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living (New York:  Convergent Books, 2017) p. 169

[4] Kelly Brown Douglas, keynote speech at the Alliance of Baptists Gathering, April 16-19, Evanston, Illinois

[5] Poster by SARK, https://planetsark.shop/products/how-to-really-love-a-child-by-sark-premium-matte-vertical-posters

[6]Henri Nouwen, You Are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living

 

5/3/26 - The God We Yearn For - Acts 17:22-28

The God We Yearn For

Acts 17:22-28

May 3, 2026

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Photo by Dns Dgn at 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=vyjyGMpO2YM

Athens was just a rest-stop for Paul.  He escaped to this big city after crowds of protesters were stirred up in response to his preaching in smaller towns.  He was only supposed to be waiting for his traveling companions Silas and Timothy to catch up.  But Paul rarely passed up the opportunity to argue theology, so we are not surprised to find him at the Mars Hill, the most popular place in the city for public debate.

Paul has been in Athens for some days and he has taken in all the sights, which would have included numerous shrines and sculptures to all kinds of gods. There are statues and spaces for the gods of beauty and youth, the gods of agriculture, wine, sea and fire, the gods of war and of the hearth. Most of what Paul can see had been built centuries earlier by the Greeks and is currently being inhabited by the Romans, who renamed them for their own corresponding gods. So, even Paul’s time, the city feels religious in an ancient way.

He credits them for being religious, although that probably isn’t actually intended as a compliment.  Looking over the city, he says, one altar stood out from the rest.  It was the one intended for “an unknown god”. 

I have been wondering about this all week. I have been wondering how a god comes to be unknown.   I wonder if a god becomes unknown when the majority of one generation fails to tell the next generation about that god. 

I’ve been seeing video clips of a small number of people raising their voices to say that Never Again is for everyone.  The expression Never Again emerged after World War II as an affirmation that the world should never allow the atrocities of the Holocaust to be repeated.  It was a weighty moral imperative based on the understanding that all humanity is created in the image of God.  But, now, as we bear witness to systemic genocide in the Gaza strip, Never Again is a controversial minority report offered by some rabbis and a few people who learned it from their grandmothers who survived the Holocaust. The idea that all people have sacred worth is a faint echo, an almost forgotten, inconvenient memory.

And so, I wonder what else we have forgotten or are in danger of forgetting about God.

There are a number of churches, some well-known and some not, that take their name from this story.  Mars Hill Church is a name probably intended to signal a congregation poised to engage with its culture, but within that name is another name. Paul was speaking in a public place dedicated to the gods of war.  The place was called Mars Hill by the Romans.  The god Mars represented military power as a way to secure peace.  The Greeks called this place the Areopagus, or the place of the god Ares.  Ares embodied the physical strength necessary for success in war, but can also personify sheer brutality and bloodlust.  On one hand, I have to think that people did not intend to honor the gods of war when they chose the name of their church.  On the other hand, these gods are still too much with us, currently being evoked loudly and often to create “Christian” soldiers for wars in Iran and Venezuela.

It seems that the God of compassion, the God of mercy and lovingkindness, the God who prioritizes the foreigner, the widow and the orphan, that God is unknown to many in the public square, while the gods of war are rarely forgotten and often worshipped.

I wonder if we need to remember the multicultural, multi-ethnic God who speaks all languages, the God represented more often as a black woman than a white grandfather.  Can we still hear the echo of the song taught to us so long ago – Jesus loves all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white are precious in his sight.

The unknown God we need to remember may be the one represented in the Bible as wild and mysterious, the daytime cloud and the nighttime fire that guided the people through the wilderness.  We may have settled for a God who fits within our concepts and structures, forgetting that God cannot be housebroken or domesticated. 

You might remember that in the Chronicles of Narnia stories, Aslan is the lion who represents God.  When Lucy learns that Aslan is a lion, she asks “Is he safe?”  Mr. Beaver says “Safe?  Who said anything about safe?  ‘ Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.”  Another character says “He’s wild, you know.  Not a tame lion.” [1]

You can probably add many other ideas about the God we are in danger of forgetting. But I also have to ask -- what compels someone to create an altar to a god who is unknown?  Why is this unknown God worthy of a public tribute?

In Paul’s time, there was a frieze on the Parthenon depicting the king of Athens sacrificing his daughters. It was the price the gods required of him in order to save the city of Athens. Greek writings of the time were full of the sentiment that just as boys go to war, girls go to sacrifice, both for the good of the nation.[2] It was the civil religion of the day.  We might suppose that the altar to an unknown God was created by someone who longed for a different normal.

Perhaps the altar to an unknown God indicates a small openness to something else, something forgotten or never known.  Even in the midst of the pantheon of the worlds’ gods, there remains an aching human need.

This week I met an Episcopal priest.  She has served her current church in a southern state for 3 years.  She said that in the last two months, she has preached twice on the gospel to love our neighbors and resist empire.  She received more positive feedback on those two sermons than on all her previous sermons there added together.  There is, in our time, a yearning for the God of the Bible who is epitomized by loving-kindness.

One of my favorite Advent anthems is called The Yearning.  It begins

There is a yearning in hearts weighed down by ancient grief and centuries of sorrow.

There is a yearning in hearts that in the darkness hide and in the shades of death abide, a yearning for tomorrow

There is a yearning, a yearning for the promised One, the Firstborn of creation.[3]

I wonder about the God we yearn for and how we might recover what we are in danger of forgetting. You might want to take some time to name that specifically for yourself. 

I am aware of my own longing for a God I miss.  The God I remember from young adulthood who felt like energy and courage inside me, the God whose existence permeated every aspect of my daily life, the One who was close and could be felt and was not the abstract, intellectual god I may have created in my own image.

There is a yearning in me and in many of us, I believe.  A yearning for connection with the Holy. I wonder how many people are out there building altars to unknown gods, because not enough of us are telling the next generation about the God in whom we live and move and have our being.

There is growing number of people who may just barely remember being taught about a God of love and truth and hope and righteousness and life.  Or maybe they never learned it at all.  They still yearn for that.   Micah Murray is representative of some of those folks, a spiritual seeker and guide.  Some years ago, he said, “I want a community where we can sit on a couch together and swear about how badly we want to be loved by a god we’re not even sure we believe in anymore.”[4]

There is a longing for a faith that is authentic, that is found in community, that lends us courage when we are afraid and helps us to trust when we doubt.  It is a yearning that so many people are feeling.  What they want, what we want, is Jesus’ alternative to the culture of enmity and fear at work in the world.  It is what can happen when we remember who God is really, when we accept God’s radical, untamed love ourselves, and let it flow through us to those who are desperate for it. May it be so for you and me.  Amen.

 

 

 

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, (New York:  MacMillan Publishing, 1950).

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/04/science/new-analysis-of-the-parthenon-s-frieze-finds-it-depicts-a-horrifying-legend.html  

[3] The Yearning by Susan Bentall Boersma and Craig Courtney https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1gqDXx8CCM&t=6s

[4] https://www.facebook.com/micahjmurray/photos/a.10150997569992820/10153648604412820/?type=3&theater

4/5/26 - Hope is a Duty - Jeremiah 31:1-6; Matthew 28:1-10

Hope is a Duty

Jeremiah 31:1-6

Matthew 28:1-10

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

April 5, 2026 Easter

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1xaS5gRpWA

Hope can be born out of death.  Death creates heartbreak, loss and loneliness.  Death may be violent and unnecessary.  All of that is true, and still, hope can be born out of death.  It happened in recent weeks, the violent, tragic, completely preventable deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, shot by federal agents.  We lament those deaths and pray for accountability.  Without diminishing the grief of those families, we see that the response of the people of Minneapolis, their persistent organized protest and resistance has given hope to the rest of the country.  [1]

Hope can also be out of trauma.  Angela read from the prophet Jeremiah.  We are not going to unpack that reading this morning, but it evokes three stories of generational trauma – the time of the enslavement in Egypt and the wilderness wandering that followed, the fall of the Northern Kingdom to the nation of Assyria in 722 BCE and the Babylonian Exile, 125 years later.  Jeremiah is writing at the time of the Babylonian Exile.  His words of comfort “disrupt the harsh clamped-down life of people who live in the persistent grip of trauma and disaster.”[2] Jeremiah reminds them of their history, tells them that even in the scattering of exile, God will do what God has done before to form a new people because of God’s unfailing love.  Hope can be born out of trauma.

The historian Howard Zinn wrote “To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.” [3]

Easter is that kind of history.  To tell this story is to remember the grisly execution of an innocent man, to remember the betrayal, mocking, derision and cruelty, but also to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, courage and compassion.  And then to recall the quavering courage of his community on that resurrection morning.  We tell this story every year to recall our own history with God’s unfailing love, to remember the hope that is ours.

Hope can be born out of death.  Hope can be born out of trauma.

During World War II, some American and Russian soldiers were held in the same camp as prisoners of war.  Russia had not signed the Geneva Convention, and the treatment of the Soviet prisoners was especially appalling.   Their barracks were in different areas, separated by barbed wire. 

The Americans received a weekly package of food from the Red Cross, but the Russians were given only one liter of turnip soup and one liter of water per day.  The plan was to use them for labor until they died. And it was working.  They were dying by the hundreds and the Americans noticed. 

Among the prisoners was a Russian army dentist who was allowed to attend the needs of the Americans.  Two American brothers communicated a plan to him, a plan to share their food.  They would secretly set aside portions of meat, beans, biscuits, and a little chocolate from the Red Cross parcels. 

At night after the sentry went past, they threw some of their food to the Russians.  It was a distance of only 8 meters. Some of them were capable of throwing such a parcel 100 meters.  The danger was not in the throwing, but in the possibility of getting caught. It took quite a while to get all the food delivered in the dark this way.  If they had been caught, they would have been executed.  But they did it anyway . . . for weeks. 

Then, when some of the food was discovered on the Russian side, all 4,000 Americans were brought out into the hot sun, and four Gestapo men went down the line demanding to know who organized the plot.  For hours they stood there. They stood in absolute silence. Not one American spoke. The Germans eventually sent the Americans back to their compound.  And that night, when the camp went quiet, the parcels flew over the wire again. [4]

There were only 8 Americans involved in this, because the fewer who knew, the safer it was.  They probably saved the lives of hundreds of Russian strangers.  They provided food to keep them alive. But they did more than sustain physical life. Living in those conditions was no gift. They kept alive the possibility of liberation and the hope of a return to life at home with family, life in all its fullness.  Hope born in the midst of trauma and death.

Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, probably Jesus’ own mother, are living through unimaginable horror, having watched every moment of the violence Jesus suffered and been utterly powerless to intervene. They come to the tomb fully aware that they are still at the mercy of Rome.  The soldiers who crucified Jesus still occupy the city and even guard his grave.  Pontius Pilate is still governor. Rome has significant real-world power to inflict do serious and deadly pain.  

Arriving, they experience another surreal event. The earth shakes, an angel descends, rolls away the stone sealing the grave and sits on it.  The Roman soldiers shake and then pass out from fear.  The angel’s first words to the women are “Don’t you be afraid.” 

And then, as if their systems are not already overloaded, they are told that resurrection has happened.  The stone has been rolled away, not to let Jesus out, but to let the witnesses in. In defiance of Rome and its murderous power, Jesus has risen from the dead.

The angel said to tell the others “Jesus is risen.” On the way to do that, they encounter Jesus himself. He tells them “Stop being afraid.  Go tell the disciples to meet me in Galilee.”

Leaving the tomb, the women carry tenuous hope.  Jesus is alive and is going ahead to Galilee.  Galilee is where it all began.    It is the border land -- the place where cultures clashed and merged.  It is not a center of power, but a place where ordinary people live and struggle to survive. Where they first received the goods news of his teaching and healing.

Galilee was also home for the disciples, the place where their friends and families and jobs were.  Galilee was where they had lived their ordinary lives, . . .until the day they responded to a call from Jesus. 

And now, he has gone ahead of them, back to Galilee, where it all started, where there is still work to be done.   It becomes the implicit “invitation for every [one who reads] this Gospel: Go to Galilee, continue the work of the kingdom that Jesus left unfinished, and there you will see him. He is not in the tomb.”[5]

This is the hope that Mary and Mary carry to the other disciples who are also fearful and traumatized.  That, incredible as it sounds, Jesus is alive.  Empire killed him, but death cannot hold him.

At this point, it seems to me, the disciples have to make a decision, a choice about despair or trust.  To persist in despair would mean continuing to be afraid, in hiding, dismissing the women’s words.  To trust would mean to accept the women’s hope and act on it, without any proof, because they haven’t seen Jesus for themselves, to go back to Galilee and pick up where they left off, but as people who are no longer afraid.

Austin Channing Brown is one of my favorite contemporary writers.  As a black woman in white supremacist America, she says “Don’t lose hope. Hope is a duty we have to each other … a duty to work toward the freedom of all humanity- no matter what.” [6]

It turns out she is not the first to say that hope is a duty.  Pope Francis said it.  And so did the Romantic poets Coleridge and Shelley in the 1800’s.  Now I have to tell you, even though I really like her writing, the idea that hope is a duty did not sit well with me at first.   Probably, mostly because I don’t like to be told what to do.  And also, because hope is hard right now. 

On social media recently, I saw a story about another outrage, another surreal event in American 2026. In the comments under the story, someone wrote “Things are going to get worse before. . . they get even more worse.”   That pretty much sums up my mood most of the time.  It’s not a good place from which to summon the hope that is my duty. 

But I’m rethinking that.  I’m thinking about the men who received the hope carried by the women on Easter.  They accepted their duty to trust it and act on it.  We know they did, because in just a few verses, Matthew tells us that they showed up in Galilee.

And because they did, we are here.  They kept the hope of resurrection alive for the next generation and the next.  It’s a hope we now carry within, a hope we may enliven in others because it is our duty.

If hope can be born out of death,

If hope can be born out of trauma, then how much more enduring is hope born from resurrection.  

So, friends, let us stop being afraid. The powers that seem immovable have been shaken before and will be again. 

Therefore, go back to Galilee and practice hope. 

Go and tell that goodness is stronger than evil.

Go tell that death does not have the final word. 

Go and tell the good news that God is alive in the world because Christ is risen.  Christ is risen indeed.

 

 

[1] Susan Thistlewaite, Holy Week Begins with a Yes to Life and a No to Death https://open.substack.com/pub/susanthistlethwaitewaite/p/holy-week-begins-with-a-yes-to-life?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

[2]  Kathleen M. O’Connor Jeremiah:  Pain and Promise, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2011), pp 103-4

[3] Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Suppress (San Francisco: City Lights Publishers, 2006), p. 270

[4] https://youtu.be/xf8aM5zYzNk?si=80p8dcHAGo3Ok79X

[5] Alan Culpepper, Smyth & Helwys Bible Commentary: Mark, (Macon, GA:  Smyth and Helwys Publishing, 2007,) p. 597

[6] https://austinchanning.com/

3/29/26 - Save Us Now - Matthew 11:1-11

Save Us Now

Matthew 11:1-11

Emmanuel Baptist Church

March 29, 2026

Rev. Kathy Donley

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm146dOamZY

If the first Pride Festival was a riot, the first Palm Sunday was a protest.  The images on the screen as we sang about Jesus and paving the way with branches were of some of us at the No Kings rallies yesterday.  If it felt like religion and politics were getting mixed up, they were.  And they were in Jesus’ day as well. 

It was the time of the Passover festival. The Passover celebrated the liberation of the people from slavery centuries earlier.  It was a volatile time, since they were celebrating liberation while simultaneously being under Roman occupation. The Romans were so wary that they increased the normal number of troops in the city, and the governor himself, a man by the name of Pontius Pilate, moved inland from his headquarters in Caesarea to Jerusalem during Passover. 

Jesus has been teaching and healing for a few years.  Crowds have been following him. Across the Lenten season we have been looking at the good news that Jesus brings. We remembered Jesus turning water into wine, saving a wedding party and offering news so good that it catches us by surprise. We remembered the abundance of the feeding of 5000 people, the good news that sometimes what seems impossible is possible. We’ve remembered teachings about care and protection of the vulnerable, and faith that is rooted in both mercy and justice.

These teachings resonate with Jesus’ listeners. Their country has been under occupation for the last century. The rich are getting richer.  The powerful are getting more powerful, while the poor and the powerless are being pushed more and more to the margins.  It’s the kind of political oppression and economic exploitation that the world has seen over and over again. 

But the system is not acceptable to Jesus.  So, he reaches a point where he has to go to Jerusalem, has to confront the authorities, has to put his principles into action.

Jesus and his followers are joining a huge crowd. Scholars estimate that Jerusalem’s population swelled from its usual 40,000 to as much as 200,000 at Passover. [1]   That’s a lot of people in one place, a lot of emotions running high.   It’s probably true that this piece of street theatre is small.  Jesus on the back of a donkey, people running ahead to create a make-shift red carpet, people alongside yelling Hosanna.  Even if two or three hundred people get involved, most of the thousands of people in Jerusalem that day probably remain unaware of it.  But it is still revolutionary.

What Jesus does is subversive and creative, not just in terms of speaking against Rome, but in challenging the mindset of his supporters.  They want the same kind of power that Rome has.  They want the system to work in their favor.  Jesus wants to abolish that system of power and exploitation altogether.

One scholar writes, “Revolutionary and subversive acts do not have to be grandiose or immediately altering. They can be small, seen but immediately unseen, loud and expected but bewilderingly unconventional. In that way, the powers that be cannot control, stop, or even anticipate the next revolutionary act. . . In other words, Mark 11:1–11 is depicting to us the revolutionary side of Jesus and his disciples who performed their unconventional jab against the empire. This is their act of solidarity with the oppressed.” [2]

Revolutionary acts don’t have to be huge.  That’s good news, isn’t it?

Near the end of the rally yesterday, a stranger came up to me.  He said, “May I ask you a question?”  His English was very good, but from his accent, I deduced that it was not his first language.  My sign said “We love immigrants.” Maybe that’s why he came to me.  I don’t know.  He looked at around at the hundreds of people lining both sides of Central Avenue and he asked me, “Are these people here because they are paid or because it comes from the heart?”  I was so grateful to be to look him in the eye and say that it comes from the heart. 

Then he said, “This is important because the country is being ruined. What is happening is dangerous.”  We talked a few more minutes and then he said a sincere thank you to Angela and me for being there. I hope our interaction was strengthening to him.  It was for me.

Subversive actions don’t have to be huge.  Actions that seem small can remind us that we are not alone.  Another person’s revolutionary action can empower us to take action ourselves.

About 5 years ago, Bill was baptized here. It was a step in his faith journey, a public statement of his desire to follow Jesus whole-heartedly.  In the congregation that day was a boy named Judah. Judah witnessed Bill’s baptism and began to wonder if he might also be baptized. 

Several months, later Judah also took that step to proclaim his desire to follow Jesus. On that day, Judah said that when you follow Jesus, it leads you on the path of execution. He also said that Jesus is the one we know we’re safe with, the one we trust.  You cannot hear his testimony and think that baptism is not a revolutionary act.

Jasmine was present at Judah’s baptism.  Seeing someone her own age do that prompted her to step forward on her own faith journey.  The revolutionary act of baptism cannot be controlled or stopped by earthly powers.

Revolutionary actions can be small, but often they are more effective when we do them together.  Every gospel writer records this story.  If Jesus rode the donkey, without the people’s response, there would have been nothing to tell.  If one person had stood on a corner somewhere with a No Kings sign yesterday, it would have been a non-event.

On that first Palm Sunday, Jesus was compelled to move his beliefs into action. He took the most difficult steps alone, but as a model of bold creative love, so that his followers would also act together with courage when their turn came.

In America 2026, we cry Hosanna, Save us. We want to be the country they taught us we were in school.  With freedom and justice for all.  The land of hard-working immigrants and generous neighbors.  The nation that led the world in fighting fascism and was once dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal.  

Yesterday’s No Kings Rallies included 3,300 protests in all 50 states and across the globe.  Some of us were compelled to join, to add our bodies, our presence, our voices to declare unequivocally that the current status quo is absolutely unacceptable. It was a loud collective cry of Hosanna. Save us now.  Save us from war.  Save us from self-destruction. Save our humanity.  Hosanna save us now.

We cry Hosanna as a country and perhaps with similar urgency, we cry Hosanna as Emmanuel Baptist Church. 

It is not the first occasion. Almost sixty years ago, when our neighborhood was endangered by the so-called progress of eminent domain in the construction of the Empire Plaza and a proposed highway that would have cut right through Center Square, Emmanuel and others responded with the subversive action of reaching across denominational lines.  In this unconventional way, the FOCUS Churches was born.  FOCUS continues to be one our best ongoing expressions of solidarity with the poor.

In the 1990’s, one Emmanuelite spoke up on behalf of himself and others.  He wondered out loud about how welcoming and inclusive Emmanuel was to the LGBTQ+ community.  The congregation took those questions to heart and wrestled with them, ultimately coming to the conclusion that the doors of God’s kindom are open to all people regardless of age, sex, race or sexual orientation. Because of that revolutionary action, we have the joy of strangers thanking us for marching in the Pride parade. Because of your action, I have the privilege of ministering to people who might not ever cross my path.  Just this month, I had the blessing of praying with a trans woman whose own faith community did not affirm her.  Small, revolutionary acts that we do together.

And now as a congregation, we may cry Hosanna, save us because we are not sure of our future.  But once again, some among us are modeling creative, subversive love. They remind us that the church does not exist for us, but was always, always intended for others. The good news of Jesus was never meant to be hoarded or contained in only the forms that we know and love.  On the contrary, we have a mission from Jesus.  A revolutionary mission to act on our beliefs, to share the creative, life-giving power of God’s love in new and perhaps uncomfortable ways as we stand in solidarity with all of those around us. 

Revolutionary and subversive acts do not have to be grandiose or immediately altering. The powers that be cannot control, stop, or even anticipate the next revolutionary act. May this be so for all of us. Amen.

 

 

[1] Borg, Marcus J. and John Dominic Crossan.  The Last Week:  What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus’ Final Days in Jerusalem   (New York:  HarperCollins, 2006), p. 18.

[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/sunday-of-the-passion-palm-sunday-2/commentary-on-mark-111-11

 

3/15/26 - Communities of the Broken and Blessed - Matthew 19:13-15

Communities of the Broken and Blessed

Matthew 19:13-15

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

March 15, 2026

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

It was my privilege to spend some focused time with Jasmine over the last year as she prepared for her baptism today. I remember in one conversation, she made a point to say that her decision to follow Jesus and be baptized was something she needed to do as an individual, and she would be doing it even if her family didn’t share and support her faith.  In fact, Jasmine’s mother and grandmother were baptized in that same baptistery.  Making a conscious individual decision is at the core of Baptist’s theology about believer’s baptism, but I’m grateful for Jasmine’s sake that she doesn’t have to choose between family and following Jesus. 

However, the earliest generations of people who followed Jesus were not always so fortunate. Family was everything in the ancient Mediterranean world.  Your family was your source of status and connection to community and also your primary economic, religious, educational and social network.  Loss of family was the most serious loss a person could suffer.  But the earliest Christians often chose the way of Jesus over all other allegiances.  One person’s choices reflected on the whole extended family and many families chose to cast out a new Christian whose faith was inconvenient or embarrassing to them. It was significant then, that churches became surrogate families for each other.

There is a lot of dysfunction in human families and that same kind of dysfunction is often mirrored in the church, so I usually avoid the image of family as a metaphor for the church, but “this is what the church was originally about – a place for all those who had been broken by life or rejected by the powerful and who came to experience God through the crucified Jesus as the One who met them precisely in their vulnerability. . . . it was a community of the broken, of the vulnerable, of those at risk”[1] who relied on each other for their very survival. 

This season, we are reminding ourselves of the good news in Jesus’ core teachings.  The verses from Deuteronomy provide specific instruction on how to care for the immigrant, orphan and widow by leaving part of the harvest of each crop for them. We Christians often act as though the God of the Hebrew Bible and the God of the New Testament are two different Gods, but that’s just not true.  In both, God is the one who offers protection and care for the vulnerable.  This is who God has always been; it is the behavior that God has always called God’s people to do.

And then there was the day that the disciples wanted to keep the children from bothering Jesus.  They rebuked the mothers who brought them, until Jesus stopped them. We can’t imagine the disciples acting that way, because we think of children in our twenty-first century context. Clear your head of all your sentimental ideas about children and understand this:  Childhood in antiquity was difficult. Fifty percent of children died before the age of five. They were the weakest members of society. They were fed last and received the smallest and least desirable portions of food. They were the first to suffer from famine, war, disease, and natural disasters. Recent estimates are that more than 70 percent would have lost one or more parents before reaching puberty.”[2]

Jesus does not welcome children because children are cute and innocent.  Jesus welcomes children because children were some of the most vulnerable, least powerful and lowest status people in his world.  Jesus says that the kingdom of God belongs to them. 

Who are those people in our world?  Well, children are still among them.   Things have improved.  We have laws against child labor and child abuse.  We offer formal education and music lessons and sports activities to some children.  But current estimates are that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 13 boys in this country will experience sexual abuse.  Firearms remain the leading cause of death for children.  More children die from gun violence than cancer or car accidents. [3]

But who else, would Jesus have us welcome or protect?  Who are the vulnerable among us?

We speak often of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, currently being targeted and deprived of due process, held in wretched conditions for unspecified lengths of time.  There are children among them.

Our transgender siblings are also being targeted. In Kansas last month, transgender folks received just a one-day notice that their birth certificates and driver's licenses will no longer be valid.  There has been a surge of anti-trans legislation across many states, affecting access to health care, education and legal recognition.  Research shows that the harm of such legislation extends beyond whether bills pass. Political debates surrounding anti-trans policies have been linked to increased anxiety, depression, and stress among transgender people, particularly youth.[4]

We might also think about ex-cons, who have done their time, paid their debt, but can’t find employment, can’t find a welcome anywhere, except possibly among those whose activities would lead them back to prison.  

The list of vulnerable people is long.  And frankly, any of us might land on it at any time, whether it is because of a family crisis or a medical diagnosis or the lingering effects of trauma.

So far, you would be hard pressed to find much good news in this sermon. I hope you can hang in a bit longer. 

Rev. John Perkins died on Friday at age 95.  He was born in rural Mississippi during the height of Jim Crow.  His mother died when he was an infant.  His older brother survived his service in WWII, only to be shot and killed by police after he returned.  John grew up to become a civil rights activist and a Baptist minister who devoted his life to racial reconciliation and justice. Jesse Jackson died last month.  We are losing the generation of elders who led the Civil Rights movement at a time when we really need their wisdom.  Most of us aren’t familiar with John Perkins but he founded community ministries in Mississippi and California that are still thriving.  And he wrote several books.  In one book he said, “I am all for churches being part of the nonviolent marches and protests that have happened in the wake of violent killings, but those protests happen only after a tragic event has taken place.  I want the church to be the community that is so dedicated to loving our neighbors, to caring for the poor and neglected, and to living out true reconciliation that these killings do not even take place.” [5]

Jesus’ good news is protection and care for the vulnerable, which happens because we form communities of radical welcome and refuge.  We advocate for those who have been broken by life or rejected by the powerful.  We are generous and mutually supportive and kind.

I just recently learned something about this word kind.  Kind can refer to things that are in the same category.  The same kind of things belong together.  Kind can also refer to kindness, how we treat each other – with friendship and generosity.  Both meanings of kind are related to the words for kin and kindred – words that speak to belonging and shared identity.  To be “kind” originally meant to recognize someone as your own kind. It carried the idea: you are of me, and I am of you. Kindness, then, was never just about politeness or good manners. It was about seeing oneself in another person. It was about mutual recognition — the understanding that beneath differences, there is shared humanity.

In a world that often feels divided, where individuality is amplified and differences are highlighted, this deeper meaning feels especially relevant. When people stop seeing each other as the same kind, community begins to fracture. There can be no true sense of belonging, tribe, or safety without kindness at its foundation.[6] 

This is what Jesus calls us to – recognizing that we are, at our core, the same kind.  All of us made in God’s image.  To all of us, the community of God belongs. 

Today, Jasmine stands among us as one who has said yes to Jesus’ call to discipleship and community and kindness. May her testimony and the presence of each other encourage us to strengthen our own commitment to Jesus’ good news for the vulnerable. Amen.


[1] https://www.davidlose.net/2015/09/pentecost-19-b-communities-of-the-broken-and-blessed/

[2] True to Our Native Land: An African American New Testament Commentary, edited by Brian K. Blount, Gay L. Byron, and Emerson B. Powery, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2024). 120.

[3] https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens

[4] https://prismreports.org/2026/02/09/anti-transgender-bills-2026/

[5] John Perkins, Dream With Me:  Race, Love and the Struggle We Must Win (Ada, Michigan: 2017).

[6] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kQbwrGYdkxs

 

 

3/1/26 - Show Great Love - Luke 7:36-50

Show Great Love

Luke 7:36-50

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

March 1, 2026

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

Once again, Jesus is at a meal in someone’s home, but for the guests who are leaders in the community, this is more than a dinner.  It is a gathering of the respected and respectable to discuss matters of importance. 

The flow of this important gathering of important men is interrupted by this sinful woman. She is described as a sinner more than once.  We should take that seriously. “We probably wouldn’t have liked her or been at all attracted to her. And Simon, the host, may have been charming and kind.  We have read these stories in a certain way for so long that we think we know the characters. But we should remember that Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors weren’t just “good” people that the world ostracized. They worked for the Roman Empire and extorted money from the poor. They did things that hurt people. And we probably would have liked the Pharisees. Though the gospels often portray them negatively, they passionately believed that their faith was expressed in acts of loving kindness, especially to the poor. They are the rabbis who made the word of God alive.”[1]

The woman is sinful.  We can accept that without jumping to the conclusion that her sins are of a sexual nature.  That’s often the assumption, isn’t it?  Two chapters before this, Peter said to Jesus, “Get away from me, for I am a sinful man.”  By his own admission, Peter is a sinner, and yet, no one ever interprets that to mean that he is a prostitute.

 Jesus would have been reclining, lying on a couch with his head close to the table and his feet extended behind him because in the ancient world, that is how they ate.  This woman crashes the party.  She goes to Jesus’ feet and washes them with her tears, dries them with her hair, kisses them with her lips and finally anoints them with oil. If you aren’t uncomfortable in this scene, you aren’t paying attention.  It is scandalous. She already has a reputation. This just plays right into what people already believe.   

Surely Jesus wouldn’t let her touch him in such an intimate way. The Greek word for touch also means to light on fire. Simon thinks “don’t do it Jesus.  Don’t let her lure you into temptation.  What kind of moral leader are you?”  Jesus could have said, “Please stop that. I’m not interested.” She’s making a scene, being inappropriate, ruining the evening.

He could have politely asked her to leave.

Whatever is going on, it is obviously important to her and therefore, to Jesus.  How do we respond with love when other people’s behavior makes us uncomfortable?

In his book, What’s So Amazing About Grace? author Philip Yancy tells the story of a Chicago social worker who tried to help sexworkers quit. A young woman was talking with the social worker, telling the reasons she became involved in prostitution—the money, the lifestyle, the near-impossibility of walking away, the living with a permanent sense of shame and guilt. She even told about hiring out her daughter. The case worker wrote:

I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. . . I had no idea what to say to this woman. At last, I asked if she had ever thought about going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure naïve shock that crossed her face. “Church,” she cried. “Why would I go there? I already feel terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”

And Phil Yancey reflects: “[People] fled toward Christ, not away from him. The worse a person felt about herself, the more likely she was to see Jesus as a refuge. Has the church lost that gift?”[2]

Jesus doesn’t ask her to stop touching him.  Instead, he turns to Simon.  I imagine him making eye contact with Simon and holding it, letting Simon know that Jesus is aware of his thoughts.  Jesus says, “do you see this woman?”

Of course, Simon sees the woman. Everyone sees her.  She has taken over the party.  But Simon sees her in the way that the powerful and privileged see those beneath them, the way that men are allowed to see women, the way that the majority are allowed to see minorities, as less than, as objects for their disposal.

But Jesus has the ability to see her as God sees her.  Simon and the other men in the room see her as a problem.  Jesus sees her as a person.  

Jesus was a human being who thoroughly inhabited his culture.  He knew the social norms about men and women not touching in public.  Being touched, having his feet washed, not in the usual way with water and a towel, but with tears and her hair and with oil – that probably made him uncomfortable too, and yet, his response was loving enough to spare her embarrassment.

Pastor Debbie Blue writes, “I don’t think we’ll get to the beauty and complexity of forgiveness and the grace of God until we are somehow given to see that Jesus is really on the side of the sinner. When you glimpse this, it’s always breathtaking. . . . The truly sinful woman is truly forgiven.”[3]

Jesus connects forgiveness with great love.  But did the woman love because she had been forgiven?  Or was she forgiven because she loved Jesus? 

Verse 47 can be accurately translated in two different ways.  The New International Version says, “Therefore I tell you her many sins have been forgiven – for she loved much.”  But the NRSV says “Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love.”

She is forgiven because she loved.  Alternatively, as a result of being forgiven much, she is able to love much. Or maybe both.

She brought the alabaster flask with her which suggests that she experienced acceptance and forgiveness prior to this event. We don’t know her sin or when she repented of it, but even if other people insist on labelling her a sinner, even if they continue to hold her past against her, she has come to trust that Jesus has forgiven her, that she is released.  She has received that.  She relies on it in a profound way and because of that, she can live with more love and freedom.

There is a backstory here that we don’t know. Just like we often have no idea what a person has lived through or what they’re currently carrying at any given moment.

“Does love lead to forgiveness or is the ability to love the result of being forgiven?”  Yes. 

The Rev. Michael Lindvall was a pastor in New York City for many years. It was his practice, when he performed a wedding, to ask the couple to write each other love letters.  They were private, not to be shown to anyone, especially not to each other.  The letters were sealed in envelopes and delivered to him.   He asked permission to share excerpts from the letters in the wedding sermon.  He said that they were usually quite moving and meaningful.[4]

One was especially memorable.  Lindvall said that this groom talked about how his wife-to-be loved him. Not knowing that he was penning Lukan theology as well as declaring love, he said that his fiancée’s love was most amazing because she loved him as he was, imperfections, male foibles and all. That was amazing enough, he wrote, but even more wondrous was the fact that her unconditional love had this way of pulling him to grow to be more worthy of it.

Her love did this without ever implying that he wasn’t worthy of it. Her unquestioning love took him as he was but somehow nudged him to be a better man without ever saying that there was anything wrong with him.” Lindvall says, “Maybe that’s why the entire congregation—including the couple, the family, the hired cellist and me—were in tears.”

“Jesus accepted the woman’s expression of love as a sign that she had been forgiven much.  Love is the natural response of the forgiven, but the capacity to love is directly related to the ability to receive grace, forgiveness and love.”[5]

The story is about an offering of love, an excessive, scandalous love that renews life and shares deep joy.  A joy that this woman tries to share with an entire community.  This love is barely contained.  It makes a spectacle of itself and makes us uncomfortable.  It offers a challenge to really see people as people, to accept them as they are and love them anyway.  It unleashes the love of God so that we can see more like God sees and love more like God loves, recognizing people as human beings to be accepted and not problems to be solved or objects to be used.

Anne Lamott asks

You want to know how big God’s love is?
The answer is: It’s very big.
It’s bigger than you are comfortable with.[6]

How big is God’s love?  VERY big.  Bigger than we are comfortable with.  Thanks be to God.

 


[1] Debbie Blue https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-06/blogging-toward-sunday-0

[2] Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace? Revised and Updated: The Key to Transforming a Broken World, (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2023) p. 11

[3] Debbie Blue https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2007-06/blogging-toward-sunday-0

[4] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2004-06/scandalous-behavior

[5] R. Alan Culpepper, The New Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. IX, (Nashville:  Abingdon Press, 1995), p 171

[6] Anne Lamott, Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2007), p. 125

2/15/26 - Do Not Worry! (?) - Matthew 6:24-34

Do Not Worry! (?)

Matthew 6:24-34

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

February 15, 2026

 

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

Americans are feeling gloomy about the future.  A recent Gallup poll asked people to evaluate how good their life will be in 5 years.  Americans gave the most pessimistic responses When asked to evaluate how good their life will be in 5 years on a recent Gallup poll, Americans responded with the lowest measure of optimism since Gallup began asking this question about twenty years ago. [1]

A pastor once knew about some particular challenges in a certain household, so she asked the father if they were worried about the situation.  The father replied, “No, but I worry that it is already past the time when I should have started worrying.”

Many of us are worried and stressed.  I know someone who loses valuable time because she gets caught up in doom scrolling and then she loses more time because when she finally puts down the phone she is so depressed that she has to take a nap.  I know someone who feels the stress as chronic, low-level nausea which is never fully relieved no matter how many antiacids or ginger ale he consumes.  I know some folks who have not got a full night’s rest in many months.  I know someone who has gone through the public motions of celebrating their children’s milestone accomplishments while privately grieving the world they are inhabiting.  I won’t ask you to raise your hands, but maybe some of you resemble those descriptions. I know I do. 

By many indications, we are worried.  We are anxious.  And for many good reasons.  It is not like our worries are unfounded.  Bad things are happening and even when they are known by many people and even by people with some power to effect change, they are not being fixed. 

In times like this, we should be able to turn to our faith, to be comforted and guided by the wisdom we find there. So I went to Jesus.  I went to this collection of his core teachings called the Sermon on the Mount.  Last Sunday at Dinner Church, we explored Jesus’ teaching on anger in this same collection and I heard from some of you that that was kind of helpful.  So, I thought to try again with this part about worry.

“Jesus’ longest discourse on a human emotion is about worry.”[2]  Jesus could have picked any number of different emotions to focus on – anger, fear, grief, affection – but he chose worry.  One scholar writes “It is clear from Jesus’ attention to the subject that worry has been an unwelcome guest in human hearts and minds from the very beginning, . . insinuating itself, creeping up and settling in wherever and whenever it can.” [3]

So, Jesus had a lot to say about worry.  That seems like a good sign as I reach for my Bible, as I anticipate receiving the wisdom I’m looking for.  I also know that Jesus’ audiences were the 90% of the population who were poor.  They were people who earned enough to eat today, but who might not work tomorrow and therefore might not eat tomorrow. People who had good reason to worry about the world their children were inhabiting.   People who were suffering brutal oppression and military occupation.  They carried all the physical signs and symptoms of worry and anxiety and fear with them all the time because life was so uncertain.

If Jesus talked a lot about worry, if he had guidance and comfort for those first century Palestinians, then surely I will find what I need in this passage, right? Confidently then, I open the Bible and discover these words.  Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life. . .”   He says a little bit more, something about not being able to get any taller or live any longer just by worrying.  None of this seems especially helpful.

When I am deeply concerned about something and someone says “Don’t worry about it. I am sure it will be fine. ” that is the opposite of comforting.  The result is that I am still concerned but also now angry about the other person’s cluelessness. 

I know Jesus is not clueless, but so far is not giving me much to go on. So I read more slowly, trying to figure it out.  He says “Look at the birds of the air.”  “Consider the lilies of the field.”

It turns out that look and consider are very strong verbs in Greek.  Jesus is saying “No really,  look at these things, study them.”

Barbara Brown Taylor writes “As moral as [Jesus] was—as much as he cared about the blessedness of the poor, the welfare of widows, the healing of the sick, and the raising of the dead – he seemed to know that what anxious people need is to get over ourselves for a moment, losing ourselves in the kind of beauty that loosens our grip on all the things we mistakenly think will keep us safe.”[4]

I was very fortunate that Wayne Oates was one of my teachers.  He was professor of psychiatry at the University of Louisville School of Medicine and also taught at my seminary.  His work was foundational to the field which is now known as pastoral care.  He is the person who coined the term “workaholic.”  

One particular lecture has stuck with me.  It’s one in which he talked about how to manage chronic pain.  He said that if you live with chronic pain or if you care for someone who does, you have to create coping strategies.  One strategy is distraction or interruption.  In this strategy, you take breaks, to give yourself opportunities to shift your focus from your pain and from whatever you have to do to manage your condition. In some way, you change your routine, your location or whatever is receiving your primary attention. 

So today I’m thinking about worry as that chronic pain. Maybe Barbara Brown Taylor has it right.  Jesus could be saying, interrupt your pain with beauty.  Look up from your doom scrolling and watch the birds.  Watching the birds is not going to right the world’s wrongs, but Taylor says, “beauty can make them seem small in the presence of something so luminous, so unexpectedly lovely and generously given that we welcome its disruption; the silver wings of a bird, the purple throat of a lily.  Beauty can hold our gaze for a moment of perfect stillness.  Then, when it is done dismantling us, beauty can bring us back to ourselves with a wider gaze and a surer sense of connection to every living thing, ready to engage the divine work of creating more beauty in the world, more justice and true love.”[5]

It is counter-intuitive to me, not easy to trust that turning my attention away from the struggle is the right thing to do. 

The world has watched as two white people were murdered by authorities in broad daylight in Minneapolis. Accountability for those crimes has been elusive or non-existent and some people have said, “this is not America.”  But other voices have said, “This is who America has always been.”  Brown and black people have always lived in this America.  They are too familiar with lynchings by those supposedly charged to serve and protect.  They know well the rage at injustice and the chronic worry that a loved one could be next. 

And so, I am wondering if I might also turn to their faith and wisdom to understand what Jesus meant.  Rev. Otis Moss III is the pastor at Trinity United Church in Chicago. Moss embodies black spirituality and black liberation theology.  His first book was Blue Note Preaching in a Post-Soul World:  Finding Hope in an Age of Despair. That sounds like the kind of wisdom I’m looking for.  More recently, he released another book, entitled Dancing in the Darkness. 

He said that the title comes from an experience with his daughter in 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama, who was a member of his congregation, was running for president.  The church and Moss’ predecessor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, were receiving death threats.  Moss was also on the church staff at the time.

He said, “One night we heard something in the house and my wife tapped me and said, ‘[You] need to check that out,’” Moss recalled. “So I grabbed my rod and my staff that comforts me — that being a Louisville slugger — and looked around the house and I heard the noise again coming from my daughter's bedroom, and I'm thinking that someone broke into our home. Was I going to have to defend my children and my wife? I come into my daughter’s room and there she is in the middle of the room and she’s dancing. She’s saying, ‘Look, daddy, I'm dancing.’ It's 3 a.m. So I get that fatherly voice — ‘Baby, you need to go to bed.’

But then the spirit just rested on me and said, ‘Look at your daughter, she’s dancing in the darkness. The darkness is around her, but it’s not in her.’ And at that moment, I ran down to my study and I just started writing until the sun came up. And when I finished, I stepped into the pulpit and said, ‘We are called to dance in this darkness, dance with love, with joy, with justice, with compassion, with dignity.’”[6]

Here’s another story --  An American woman named Yvonne went to Honduras to work in refugee camps for people fleeing the war in El Salvador in the 1980’s.  One day a woman asked Yvonne whey she always looked so sad.  Yvonne talked about the grief she felt over all the suffering she was witnessing and her commitment to give everything she had to the struggle. The refugee woman told her, “Only people who expect to go back to North America in a year work the way you do.  You cannot be serious about our struggle unless you and play and celebrate and do those things that make it possible to give a lifetime to it.”  Each time the refugees were displaced and had to build a new camp, they immediately formed three committees, a construction committee, an education committee, and the committee of joy.  Celebration was as basic to their life as digging latrines and teaching their children to read. [7] 

We are now in a struggle for the long haul. I am aware that I don’t know much about that.  My inclination is just to grit my teeth and get through this.  America 2026 is not a joyful place, so if I don’t expect joy or justice.  If it seems wrong to celebrate, that seems reasonable.  But Jesus spoke about life in abundance, about joy being full. And in this passage, Jesus says that life is more than food and clothing.  Life is more than that.   Worry robs us of life, chronic fear results in a cautious way of living that is not really living at all. 

Jesus is always offering us an alternative. Look at the birds, consider the lilies. These are phrased like commands.

 “Jesus means for us to study and scrutinize a world where God provides freely and lavishly, to enter into God’s reign where anxiety plays no part, where worry is not a reality.”[8] 

Look at the birds, consider the lilies, dance in the dark, choose joy no matter what – these are commands that may save our lives.  Amen.

 


[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/new-gallup-poll-reveals-depth-of-americans-gloom-about-the-future

[2] Martin Copenhaver, Jesus Is the Question: The 307 Questions Jesus Asked and the 3 He Answered, (Nashville:  Abingdon, Press, 2014), p. 45.

[3] Martin Copenhaver, Jesus is the Question, p. 45

[4]Barbara Brown Taylor, “Errors About Beauty” in Always A Guest: Speaking of Faith Far From Home, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2020), p. 15

 [5] Barbara Brown Taylor,  Always a Guest, p. 15

[6] https://news.wttw.com/2023/02/11/seeking-light-during-difficult-times-dancing-darkness

[7] Told by Joyce Hollyday in Turning Toward Home (New York:  Harper and Row, 1989), pp 263-264

[8] Thomas G. Long, Matthew:  The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p. 75

1/18/26 - Risk Management - Genesis 12:1-10

Risk Management

Genesis 12:1-10

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

January 18, 2026

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiKGv9IjGaE

 

I have a new appreciation for Abraham.  I have, of course, read the Bible stories about him many times.  I am aware that three major world religions trace our beginnings back to him.  Even so, as recently as last Sunday, if you had asked me to name my most favorite people in the Hebrew Bible, I don’t think Abraham would have been in top five.  And frankly, I don’t know where he ranks, but it’s much higher than it was a week ago. 

It's because I spent some time this week putting myself in his shoes. When the call of God first comes to him, Abraham is 75 years old and childless.  He is facing an arduous journey to an unspecified land.  He and Sarah, his wife, are unlikely to beget children. In fact, God is telling them to abandon the home and most of the family they do have. 

What does it take for them to pick up and leave?

A strong conviction that it is God’s voice that Abraham is hearing.  And deep trust that God will do what God promises in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.  Being able to recognize God’s voice and trust it with his life.  Yeah, I have new appreciation for him.

Every scholar I read this week agreed that the transition between the end of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 is important.  One called it the “lynchpin of the whole Bible.”[1] Another called it “pivotal” saying “it is perhaps the most important structural break in the Old Testament and certainly in Genesis.”[2]

Chapter 11 tells us that Abraham’s father was Terah. Terah lived in a place called Ur.  One of his sons died there, leaving a grandson named Lot.  Some years earlier before chapter 12, Terah took his son Abraham and his daughter-in-law Sarah and his grandson Lot and left their home in Ur with the intention of going to Canaan.   They made it as far as Haran, which was maybe a bit more than halfway, and then they stopped.  Haran becomes the place where Abraham grows into adulthood and the place where Terah dies.

Chapter 11 also tells us that the family of Abraham is about to die out.  Abraham and Sarah have no children.  It doesn’t say why.  It does not say whose fault it is, whether this is some kind of punishment or curse.  It is simply given as a fact that “this family has played out its future and has nowhere else to go.  There is no foreseeable future.” [3]

But then, in chapter 12,  God speaks into the situation.  God speaks a word about a future spoken to a family without any expectation or hope of having a future.  God says “Go.  Go from your country and your family, from the house that your father built,  to an unknown place that I will show you.” 

In his commentary on Genesis, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann explains that this story is the first in the Bible where we find an important theme that will appear again and again.  The theme is this: to stay in safety is to remain lifeless; to leave in risk is to have hope. [4] It is a theme of letting go for the sake of life.

Perhaps it is not too extreme to suggest that we at Emmanuel find ourselves in place that parallels that of Abraham and Sarah.   A year ago, you voted to sell this building, to move out from this settled place into a location that we hoped God would show us.  It has been a year of tension as we have simultaneously embraced and resisted change.  We are committed and willing to go, but also we want the trip to be as smooth as possible please.

When I was a child, my father was a hospital administrator. I remember so many dinner table conversations in which he shared his day with my mother.  And this week, a phrase came back to me. It’s a phrase I don’t really understand now and I certainly did not understand it when I heard it as a child.  The words are Risk Management. Risk Management was one of the hospital departments under my Dad’s supervision.

Risk management is defined as identifying, evaluating and prioritizing risks, followed by the minimization, monitoring and control of the impact or probability of those risks occurring.[5]  I dare say that for many of us risk management is a way of life. I get a covid vaccine and a flu shot every year.  I wear my seatbelt. I buy insurance.  I stand by those choices. 

And yet, the Bible is full of stories of people who don’t seem bound by that kind of conventional wisdom. Abraham and Sarah moved from the known to the unknown, from the safe and familiar to the strange and unpredictable. They left not knowing where they were going or even why.

Biblical scholar Dan Clendenin writes “This Abrahamic call from God can feel counter-intuitive. It's a call to move beyond three deeply human and unusually powerful fears — fear of the unknown that we can't control, fear of others who are different from us, and fear of powerlessness in the face of impossibilities.”[6]

“To stay in safety is to remain lifeless; to leave in risk is to have hope.”  But we want to be wise stewards and also our fears are powerful.  So, we seek to manage the risks. 

Beyond our church community, we live in a wider context which is also fraught.  Are we witnessing the death of American democracy?   In light of that bigger picture, can we even justify the time and energy we are investing in seeking God’s future for our little church?   Perhaps our efforts would be better spent elsewhere.  But to Abraham and Sarah, God’s voice said “keep going into the future you cannot see” and on our best days, some of us still hear and trust that same voice. 

Among the many vigils held in memory of Renee Good, was one in New Hampshire.  Remarks by the Episcopal Bishop Rob Hirschfeld went viral. Speaking of Renee Good as a martyr, someone who died for her faith, he said “We are entering a new era of martyrdom.”  He also mentioned Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopal seminary students and civil rights activist who was killed in 1965 while shielding a black girl from a shotgun blast fired by a racist. He said that faith leaders today may end up in similar situations as they resist the actions of ICE.  “I have told the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” he said. “I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written. Because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us — with our bodies — to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.  . . . . Those of us who are ready to build a new world, we also have to be prepared. If we truly want to live without fear, we cannot fear even death itself, my friends.”[7]

The bishop was surprised by the attention given to this message. He said he has been issuing similar warnings for years.  We have also heard this before. It was Jesus who said “If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel will save it.”

The thing about Jesus is he doesn’t seem to know a thing about risk management.  “To stay in safety is to remain lifeless; to leave in risk is to have hope.” 

This has always been our call.  Perhaps, like Abraham’s father, Emmanuel Baptist Church has gone a good ways on the journey.  We found a comfortable place and settled into a familiar pattern but now God is again saying “Go. Move into the future I will show you.”  It falls to us to continue the task which our Baptist ancestors in Albany began so long ago. First Baptist Church was 23 years old and doing very well when they had a vision to plant a new church in part of the city where there were no Baptists. Our history records their conviction that duty “demanded something more than the tranquil and indolent enjoyment of the divine blessing.” [8]

They also had a national picture to consider.   When they built the first building in 1833, back when Emmanuel was called Pearl Street Baptist Church, they said “In spite of the financial difficulties arising from President Jackson’s policies with respect to national banks and currency, the work was pushed forward.”[9] Believe it or not, there was a crisis that year over federal tariffs.  Some of you will be interested to know that the Pearl Street Baptist Church cost $40,000 to complete.  That is about 1.5 million today.  They raised $28,000 right away and paid off the remaining $12,000 mortgage in 15 years.  If I have new appreciation for Abraham, I am even more grateful for the courage of those early Baptists in Albany. 

One of us has the star word “Courage” this year.  Courage doesn't come from the root word for analysis, or for strategic planning or goal setting. Courage comes from the French word for heart.  The theologian Paul Tillich wrote that the best interpretation for us of what the Bible means by faith is our word, "courage." When your heart opens, courage can rise, sometimes in the most unexpected ways, enabling you to do things you had never imagined.  Faith is not about managing risk.  It's about where passion lies in your life. " Where your treasure is, there is your heart." Where your heart is, there is your courage.

As a Christmas gift, I received one of the last books Walter Brueggemann wrote.  It’s called Alphabet of Faith:  Prophetic Prayers for a Chaotic World.

The entry “F is for Faith” grabbed me this week.  The whole thing is beautiful, but let me share just a bit from the middle.  Brueggemann says

 

We are glad to stand in the company of the great performers of faith, as their names easily roll off our lips:

By faith, Abraham. . .

By faith, Jacob . . .

By faith Moses. . . .

And then a whole procession of the faithful:

By faith Martin [King] with his dreams,

By faith Walter with his auto workers [Walter Reuther, founder of the United Auto Workers]

By faith Eleanor [Roosevelt] with her UN votes

By faith Norman with his relentless socialism [Norman Thomas was a Presbyterian minister and political activist]

By faith Jim [Wallis] as leader in the company of sojourners

By faith Desmond [Tutu] with his joy in justice

By faith Shane [Claiborne] with his habitat at the edge

By faith Angela [Merkel] with her passion for viable world order,

 

I love that he names the ancient faithful and the more recently departed and those still living all together.

 Then he goes on

And by faith all the company of those

Who refuse to let our unjust world go unchallenged

Who run risks and dare disruption for the sake of the neighbor,

Who live lives of unseemly joy amid a world of violation. [10]

 

Last month, I met a woman who has lived in Albany for a long time. She is a member of one of the FOCUS Churches.  Someone I had not met before. In our conversation, she told me what she knew about and admired about Emmanuel.  If I were to insert her words into Brueggeman’s pattern, she would say “By faith, Emmanuel Baptist Church with your creativity and passion, your willingness to create a plan for vitality, to risk in hope.”

It seems like this has been our call all along. 

 

 

[1] John Holbert, https://www.patheos.com/resources/additional-resources/2011/03/lynchpin-of-the-bible-john-holbert-03-14-2011

 

[2] Walter Brueggemann, Genesis: Interpretation A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, (Atlanta:  John Knox Press, 1982), p. 114.

[3] Brueggemann, Genesis, p. 116

[4] Brueggemann, Genesis,  p. 118

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_management

[6] https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3637-20080602JJ

[7] https://www.nhepiscopal.org/blog/2026/1/11/bishop-robs-reflection-from-the-renee-good-vigil-in-concord-nh-january-9-2026

[8] 125th Anniversary of Emmanuel Baptist Church Booklet, Robert G. Blabey and Maragret Ellis Blabey, editors, 1959, p .4

[9] 125th Anniversary Booklet, p. 4

[10] Walter Brueggemann, Alphabet of Faith:  Prophetic Prayers for a Chaotic World, Conrad L. Kanagy, ed, (Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2025),  pp 39-40

1/4/26 - This is Christ the King - Matthew 2:13-23

This is Christ the King

Matthew 2:13-23

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

January 4, 2026

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLfPYS4G6DM

 

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

 

Matthew is quoting Jeremiah. Writing at the time of the exile to Babylon, Jeremiah remembers Rachel.  Rachel, the wife of Jacob/Israel, died in childbirth.  As she died, she named her son Ben-oni, which means son of my sorrow. Rachel was buried on the road to Bethlehem, generations before the birth of Jesus.  Ramah is the temporary gathering place for the people of Judah who are being deported to Babylon. Jeremiah recalls a matriarch of Israel, weeping for children she will not to live to see.  In Jeremiah’s context, that ancient ancestor Rachel is remembered by the mothers weeping for all the children of Israel lost because of the conquest by Babylon.   Matthew picks up the same imagery of great mourning as he tries to describe the havoc that Empire wreaks on the lives of innocent people.

Matthew reminds his audience that history repeats itself, that there will always be those who oppose God, who work evil. History repeats itself.  Herod slaughtered innocent babies.  Before him, there had been a Pharoah who felt threatened by the number of Israelites in Egypt and he ordered the execution of those baby boys.  We know about one who escaped.  His name was Moses. 

Here is four-year-old Hudea.[1] In 2012, she was in a refugee camp for Syrian people displaced by war.  When she saw a camera with a telephoto lens, she thought it was a gun and put up her hands.  She knows things a four-year-old should not know.

Another Syrian child, about Hudea’s age, in a different refugee camp two years later. Like Hudea, she is terribly afraid.  Different child, different photographer, same experience.

Two children, terrorized by war.  I suspect they carry that trauma in their bodies to this day, if they survived.  History continues to repeat, and so, there are children and adults in Gaza, Yemen, Ukraine and now Venezuela who have been terrorized or are being terrorized and they carry the trauma of what no one should have to endure.   

Jesus’ family knew this pain. They packed up and left Bethlehem in the middle of the night, walking hundreds of miles to get to safety.  In his body, from a very young age, Jesus knew the trauma of fleeing, he felt the fear of his parents.

If we are to speak of terror happening in Gaza or Venezuela, we must also recognize what is happening right here in the USA, right here in Albany. 

In December, ICE abducted 10 Afghan men in Albany.  Four of them were members of the Bakhtani family – the father and three sons.  Two of them were taken as they left worship at their mosque.  Yesterday, Jim and I and some of you attended a rally in support of this family and all those who are being held unjustly by our government.  The father and one son have now been released, but two adult sons remain in detention.

The mother of this family went to the hospital on the day of their abduction, believing that she was having a heart attack.  In a statement yesterday, she told a bit of her family’s story.  She said, “We lived every day under the shadow of war.  Simply surviving felt like a struggle for life itself.  In 2021, our family was forced to flee Afghanistan due to Taliban prosecution. My sons’ longstanding work on American-funded projects as well as their involvement in teaching English and information technology left their lives in immediate danger.  Leaving was not a choice; it was a matter of survival. Our journey to safety was unimaginably brutal.  …We endured hunger, thirst, exhaustion and terror.  We walked endless miles, went days without food and faced death at every step.  We crossed oceans, confronted criminal cartels, and endured the unthinkable, driven only by the hope of freedom, peace, and protection of our children. After surviving all of this, we believed we had finally reached safety, but today my family is once again living in a nightmare, since December when my husband and three sons were taken away.  I am living with constant fear and unbearable grief. . . . my heart is breaking. I have endured war, exile, hunger and loss, but this pain is beyond my strength.”

History repeats itself. The USA is empire, whether we like it or not, whether we support it or not.  We are caught up in the ways of empire by default. And for many who have sought safety here, this land is now full of the very danger that they fled.

History repeats itself.  One empire replaces another.  When Herod the Great died, Mary and Joseph wanted to go home, to return to Bethlehem.  We don’t know how long they had been refugees, foreigners, outsiders, in Egypt. Probably a few years at least.   But as they were going home, they realized that Herod’s son, Archelaus, was likely as ruthless as his father. And so, again, their life plans were upended by Empire and they went to Nazareth instead.  Even there, Jesus grew and was formed by the constant presence of occupying Roman soldiers.

Stanley Hauerwas puts it this way: “Jesus is born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants. … The Herods of this world begin by hating the child, Jesus, but . . . end up hurting and murdering children. That is the politics, the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.” [2]

At the Christmas concert this year, Barb and I sang the carol “Some Children See Him” which has long been a favorite of mine.  The lyrics say “the children in each different place will see the baby Jesus’ face, like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace.”  There is truth here.  The incarnation means that Jesus came to be with us, came to be like us.  But that truth can also be distorted until we remake Jesus in our own image.  I have been struck this year, like never before, about the significance of the particular human being that Jesus was. God did not choose to put on the flesh of a person somewhat sheltered by wealth or power or privilege. The child Jesus knew the human experience in ways most of us in this room never will. He carried trauma in his body, years before he went to the cross. All the trauma he endured was at the hands of Empire.

You know all this already.  I often feel that I am repeating myself and that can feel pointless, but today it is important that I say these things and that we hear them together because there are many who claim to speak for Jesus who are aligning themselves with Empire.  Those who justify the terrorization of immigrants in the name of Jesus who was a refugee.  Those who champion American exceptionalism as if we have most favored nation status with God, as if we are not among those who most fervently need the course-correction of repentance.  

 “The God who chose to become flesh and dwell among us is always, always standing with the vulnerable and is never celebrating the cruel.”[3]  A colleague of mine said that in December and it has stuck with me.

Baptist theologian Ken Sehested says, that we “must sustain impervious resistance to imperial dominance.”  Sehested writes, “In these days, here and now—at historic levels—the community of faith in the Way of Jesus is threatened by the corruption of its purpose, its promise, its provision. A current, prominent name for this corruption is White/Christian Nationalism.”

“Maybe the most distinctive calling we have in this season is to undermine this corruption of Christian speech. . . This is heresy and must be loudly denounced as such, not just with our words but with the very shape of our lives, livelihoods shaped and animated by the Beloved’s passion for the fate of those left behind, left out, left over.”[4]

History repeats itself, which means that Empire replaces Empire.  But history may also repeat itself as the followers of Jesus in each generation rise to resist. Staring down the Nazi Empire, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “I believe that God can and will bring good out of evil, even the greatest of evil.  For that purpose God needs men [and women] who make the best use of everything.” [5] One might say that Bonhoeffer made the best possible use of his time in a Nazi prison cell.

Friends, we are weary, so tired, perhaps even numbed by the depravity of our political leaders.  If some of us had allowed ourselves to think that maybe this year would be different, those hopes were crushed just three days in.  There is no sugar-coating it.  Jesus was born into a world in which children are killed, and continue to be killed, to protect the power of tyrants.  But I pray that you and I will make the best use of everything at our disposal to join God in bringing good.  We can be God’s alternative to Empire.  We need each other and we cannot give up.  Amen and amen.


[1] https://medium.com/on-human-rights/the-unfinished-story-of-hudea-ce62c1daa014

[2] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew, Brazos Theological Commentary Series, (Ada, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2015),  p 41

[3] The Rev. Marcella Auld Glass in her sermon on December 14, 2025 https://irp.cdn-website.com/95473ce8/files/uploaded/Sermon+12-14-25+MG.pdf

[4] https://prayerandpolitiks.org/articles-essays-sermons/its-a-sad-and-beautiful-world/?fbclid=IwY2xjawPKf6FleHRuA2FlbQIxMABicmlkETEzZ2ZWNzBUd1hMM2R5bWpOc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQQMjIyMDM5MTc4ODIwMDg5MgABHlx48ympS3D3CSmUfxdUDZ5GxbrcnJNfz91gW81L5r2m2RxigRB2-voLnbjJ_aem_GnNiwwW7uhYNRBN6LutBAg

[5] Dietrich Bonhoeffer in “After Ten Years: A Reckoning Made at New Year 1943” in God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas (Louisville: WJKP, 2010) p. 79.

 

 

12/24/25 - A Christmas Eve Reflection - Luke 2:1-20 

A Christmas Eve Reflection

Luke 2:1-20

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

 December 24, 2025

 

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

 

We tell this story every year.  We know all the parts. Augustus was Emperor.  Quirinius was governor.  There were Mary and Joseph, of course.  And the shepherds who say  . . . “Wow” and the sheep go . . . “Baa” and the angels say . . . “Do not be afraid.”  That’s right and then afterwards they sing. But the first thing angels always say is “Do not be afraid”. I think they know that we humans are fearful creatures.

We tell this story every Christmas, but we don’t really linger on the fearful parts.  You know Mary had to be afraid, terrified even.  Afraid to give birth, afraid that she might not survive the process or that the baby might not. We don’t hear that part. We don’t wait with an anxious Joseph.  We don’t see it through the eyes of the midwife who has seen it all go wrong too many times before. 

The house was full of people.  The spare room was already taken.  That’s why Mary gave birth in the place with a feeding trough – it was the space available with the most privacy.  But the whole house would have known that she was in labor.  Some aunts were probably her birthing coaches.  Some uncles were commiserating with Joseph.  Older cousins were playing with younger ones to keep them distracted and out of the way.  And everyone held their breath a little, until they heard that it was a boy and he was fine and Mary was fine and all was well.  Then there was a collective sigh of relief and some tears of joy and hugs and proud grandparents congratulating their son and their new daughter-in-law. 

We have already talked this season about the risks Mary accepted in saying yes when the angel asked her to bear God’s Son.  We have already mentioned Joseph’s struggle to reach the decision to stick with Mary and accept the baby as his own.  Those are also parts of the fear and joy of this story. 

Mary and Joseph are in Bethlehem, instead of with Mary’s family in Nazareth, because the government doesn’t care about forcing a pregnant person close to delivery to make a several-day journey.  The governor only cares about their value as tax-payers, so they have to go to Bethlehem for the census.  Come back for the next two Sundays to hear about how the authorities become even more of a threat, and how Mary and Joseph and the baby become refugees, fleeing the violence of their homeland to give Jesus the possibility of growing up to adulthood.

We tell this story every single year.  We tell it in the years when the economy is strong and peace is prevailing and everyone is getting along at the Christmas dinner table.  We tell it every year --  the times when not everyone makes it home for Christmas, during the hardships of a pandemic and when there’s not enough money to buy even one gift.  Tonight, somewhere in a war zone or at a hospice bedside, this story is being told.  We hear this story tonight together in a place where this month we have lamented the ongoing attempted genocide in Gaza and a shooting in Australia that targeted a Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah.  We hear this story against the backdrop of gun violence in our country, most recently as young adults at Brown University were killed and injured.  We are hearing it as we bear witness to ICE raids that are tearing families apart and creating terror in immigrant communities. 

We tell this story every year, because we need it.  We need to remember that God came to earth and joined a family, entering into the struggles, the fears, the anxieties, the joys, the dangers, and the tragedies that go along with being human. 

We tell it with all the details we know, because God came as a very specific human, one who was born to parents of humble means.  Mary and Joseph were poor.  They were pushed around by the powerful.  Their lives were shaped by historical forces beyond their control. They did not have fancy educations or investment portfolios or any kind of privilege to buffer their child from a hard life.  That child was God.

We tell this story because we are afraid and because this is a story of great risk and great love that can cast out fear. God, becoming a helpless child, susceptible to all the dangers that terrify us.  God, putting God’s own self right into the thick of it. 

As one of my colleagues says, “Remember the incarnation.  Remember that God chose to become one of us.  The God who chose to become flesh and dwell among us is always standing with the vulnerable and never celebrating with the cruel.”[1]

Friends, listen to the angels who say do not be afraid. I know, that’s a big ask.  So I’ll modify it.  Try it just for tonight. You can be afraid again tomorrow if you really want to.  But for tonight, do not be afraid.  Where fear would take up space in you, make room tonight for awe and wonder.  Make room for heartache and compassion. Make room for imagination and hope. Make room for the holy to be born in you.

 

 

[1] The Rev. Marcella Auld Glass in her sermon on December 14, 2025 https://irp.cdn-website.com/95473ce8/files/uploaded/Sermon+12-14-25+MG.pdf

 

12/21/25 - God-With-Us - Matthew 1.18-25

God-With-Us

Matthew 1.18-25

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 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=_fVu2_fcPcI

The Rev. Janet Wolf is a community organizer, college professor and has served as pastor of rural and urban congregations.  She remembers the year the annual Christmas program included a very reluctant Joseph. 

She writes: “We were trying to pull together a Christmas Play, and our own little Joseph had made it a challenging task. Nevertheless, someone decided our Joseph would be included. He and I would sit up front to remind folks when to come and go. Little Joseph was not enthused: ‘Ain’t coming to no stupid Christmas play. I got better things to do. Hah! My mama’s taking me to the Christmas parade.’”

It seemed unlikely that Joseph’s mama, a single mother with four boys and two part-time jobs, could take Joseph to the parade. So Janet tried again: ‘If you’re not here, the angels might stay too long. The shepherds might forget to show up. We can’t do it without you!’ Joseph’s parting words were these: ‘Ain’t coming to no stupid Christmas play.’”

But he did come, early even, and was wonderfully helpful getting the youngest children into their costumes. Then one of the older kids hollered: ‘Thought you weren’t coming to no stupid Christmas play?’ Janet’s heart sank, sure this would do Joseph in. But Joseph just turned and declared: ‘Course I’m gonna show up. They can’t even do it without me!’”[1]

The story of the incarnation, the story of Jesus being born, could not really be told without Joseph.  Even though he never speaks a mumbling word in all of scripture, not even to Mary, his role is essential. It might have all gone so differently. 

Mary is pregnant.  Joseph knows he is not the father.  Mary must not be the person he thought she was.  She has broken a contract, violated the law, betrayed his trust.  That kind of behavior demands consequences.  Matthew describes Joseph as righteous.  That means that doing the right thing matters to him, a lot. It also means that he has a good name, a reputation to be protected.   On top of that he is likely disappointed, humiliated, crushed and angry.  What is the right thing to do?

This is probably the most difficult decision of his life.  As far as we know, he struggles with it alone, not asking for advice from friends or family or his local rabbi. One legal option is to formally break the betrothal, to go to the community elders, and explain the situation.  If he does that, he could re-coup the bride price which he paid to her family.  That might be a little bit of satisfaction.  But if he goes public, Mary will be subject to community shame and possibly to death by stoning, if someone decides to make an example of her.  

So, he leans towards divorcing her quietly.  That means that he will forfeit whatever money is involved.  It also means that his side of the story will not be told.  People may assume that he is the father and that he is a jerk for abandoning his wife and child.  He will take that reputation on himself.  Maybe that is the right thing to do.  Of course, people may draw their own conclusions and decide that Mary is to blame and should be stoned, or at minimum shunned, anyway.

Whatever the rumor mill churns out, whatever people think, whether Joseph divorces her quietly or publicly, Mary is still going to be an unwed mother without any financial support.  That will make her life and the baby’s extremely hard.  What is the right thing to do?

I wonder if Joseph reflects on other women he has seen in this kind of situation. Women “found to be pregnant” as the story says about Mary.  It doesn’t say who discovered that or how Joseph learned it.  But it “fits with patriarchal culture – there is always someone looking to find women doing something they do not approve of.” [2]

As Joseph turns this decision over and over, I wonder if he remembers the women in his own family tree?  Because there are at least four women among his ancestors whose sexual morality had come under scrutiny and disapproval.  Those women referenced by Matthew in Joseph’s genealogy are Rahab, Tamar, Ruth and Bathsheba.  In each case, these many times great-grandmothers of Joseph had to fight against the cultural norms to demonstrate their own righteousness and to demand justice from the men involved.  I wonder if they even cross Joseph’s mind as he ponders the right thing to do. 

Those women among Joseph’s ancestors mostly had to push back against the system on their own.  They demanded justice in risky and subversive ways.  We only know their stories because they were successful.  How many others did not succeed and were lost to history? This time, God sends an angel to do that pushing on Mary’s behalf.[3]

Joseph decides to do what the angel says.  He marries Mary and names the baby Jesus.  Naming him serves as a formal adoption, acknowledging Jesus as his own first born son.  This baby will be first in line to inherit Joseph’s property and only Joseph knows that he is not the biological father.  He can’t even tell anyone about it without casting aspersions on Mary or calling into question his own gullibility.   He does the right thing without any credit.   That is a reflection of his character and the strength of the love he displays. 

Presbyterian minister Tom Long says “Joseph learns that being truly righteous does not mean looking up a rule in a book and then doing the right thing; it means wrestling with the complexities of a problem, listening for the voice of God and then doing God’s thing. To be a faithful disciple means prayerfully seeking to discover what God is doing in the difficult situations we face.”[4]

Last Sunday, we remembered Mary as a hero among heroic women of the past.  A feisty, courageous young woman.  Today we see Joseph as a different kind of hero, a father who loves with quiet strength and complex wisdom.  I’m beginning to see them as a power couple. These are Jesus’ parents.   If Mary and Joseph had not said yes to God, the story might have turned out so differently.

The angel says to name the baby Jesus which Joseph does, but there is another name in the story.  Emmanuel is a name for Jesus that only Matthew references. It means God-with-us.  It is found here at the beginning of Matthew’s book about Jesus and again at the end.  The very last words that Jesus says in the very last sentence of the gospel of Matthew are “I am with you always, even until the end of time.  

Jesus is never called by the name Emmanuel as far as I know. Maybe it was his middle name.  Did they even have middle names?  (But I’ve always heard that Jesus’ middle initial was H.)

Even so, it was significant.  When this church moved from Pearl Street, our ancestors selected it as the name of the church and of course many other churches have also chosen it.  But what does it mean to say Emmanuel, God is with us?  How do we know that?

Some people know it when they encounter art – music or a painted masterpiece or a great film.  Some identify God’s presence with joy or beauty which makes their senses tingle.  Some mystics among us know God in serendipitous happenings or miraculous events.  But some of us live without any experience of the thrill of the mysterious, we simply don’t tune in on that wavelength.  God-with-us happens for us in moments of deep connection with other people, when their words or actions embody God’s love and grace and kindness in very tangible ways.  Some inspire us by their faithful, sacrificial service and care for people they know and love.  Others by their passion for justice on behalf of strangers.  And some in wise and patient responses to their own circumstances or suffering or tragedy.   The goodness of God resonates from them and we know Emmanuel, God is with us.

Joseph stands out as one person who said “I will do the right thing.”  As long as there is one person in a community who is willing to wrestle with the complexities and listen for God’s voice and seek to do God’s thing, . . .

as long as there is at least one person will stand for the love and grace and kindness of God, we may know Emmanuel, God with us. 

The question is whether we will be that person. [5]

 


[1] Janet Wolf, Upper Room Disciplines 2009, p 14.

[2] Richard Swanson, https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-provocation-fourth-sunday-of-advent/

[3] Richard Swanson, https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2016/12/15/a-provocation-fourth-sunday-of-advent/

[4] Thomas G. Long, Matthew:  The Westminster Bible Companion (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 1997), p. 14.

[5] This ending is taken from the sermon God is With Us by the Rev. Dr. Fred Craddock https://day1.org/audio/5d9b820ef71918cdf2002b36/dr_fred_craddock_on_advent_part_4_god_is_with_us

12/14/25 - What Child is This?  Son of Mary - Luke 1:26-56

What Child is This?  Son of Mary

Luke 1:26-56

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 14, 2025

 

Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDHPwyc1dM0

 

Before she was the mother of Jesus, she was a girl, a young woman growing up in Nazareth.  We might imagine her in this story as about 13, keeping in mind that would have been about the age to be leaving her family’s home to marry.  She was probably uneducated and from a poor family. 

Her hometown, Nazareth, was a village of 100-400 people.  It is virtually unknown.  There are 63 villages mentioned in the Talmud, which is a collection of rabbis’ commentary on the Old Testament. Sixty-three villages, but Nazareth is not among them.  Josephus, a first century historian, lists 45 villages in Galilee in his work, but Nazareth is not among them either. 

Nazareth was in the region called Galilee.

Galilee was well north of the Judea and its capital Jerusalem. Galileans were considered lesser Jews by those in the south because they had inter-married with other peoples during generations of conflict.  Many were too poor to regularly participate in the worship life in the Temple.  Galilee was known for resisting all invading forces, whether they were foreign powers or authorities demanding taxes be paid to Jerusalem.  Something was always happening in Galilee – altercations, protests, uprisings.[1] 

The girl who grew up in Nazareth would have been shaped that resistance and by the presence of Roman soldiers responding to it.  “She [probably] saw soldiers riding into town, terrorizing her neighbors in the name of peacekeeping.  She [may have] witnessed uncles humiliated and cousins hurt.  She [probably] watched women taken by force to be punished in unspeakable ways.  . . . She experienced the push and pull of war and resistance that shaped the villages of Galilee.”[2]

Some might say that in Mary God chose a nobody from nowhere.  God might have chosen someone from a bigger city in Galilee or even from Jerusalem to be the mother of Jesus.  Some might think that a person like Mary, shaped by violence, resistance and generational trauma might not be the best choice to entrust with the raising of God’s Son. Or maybe only a young rebel would be willing to accept the mission.

One Advent, a grandmother gave her grand-daughter Anna a book about the birth of Jesus and they immediately read it together.  The book started the story at the point when the angel Gabriel comes to tell Mary what is going to happen in and to her. The book stated, “And when the angel told Mary she was going to have the baby Jesus, Mary was very happy.” And then, three-year-old Anna interrupted.   . “Well actually, Grandma,” she said, “that’s wrong. Mary was afraid.” The grandmother looked back at Hannah and her serious little face and said, “I think you are right, Anna. I imagine Mary was afraid.”[3] 

We have to take her fear seriously if we are to enter into this story.  Mary is not fearless. She is troubled, agitated, bewildered by Gabriel, but she says yes in spite of that. She is courageous, but not stupid. The more she thinks about it, the more she realizes how much there is to be afraid of.

 She needs someone to process this with, someone she can trust, someone who might have an inkling of understanding. The angel had mentioned Elizabeth, who is also unexpectedly pregnant. Maybe she can be that someone.

Elizabeth proves to be worthy of Mary’s trust.  Her first words to Mary are “Blessed are you among women.”  Today we recognize those words as part of the Hail Mary prayer. But Mary would have recognized them too.  This is a known saying, somewhat like Rosie the Riveter saying to women in WWII, “We can do it.”  Or more casually like today’s “You go girl!” 

“Blessed are you among women” is what the prophet Deborah sang about a woman named Jael during the Biblical time of the judges. Jael drove a tent-peg into the skull of an enemy general and killed him. 

“Blessed are you among women” is what the city leader said about a woman named Judith some two or three hundred years earlier.  The story goes that Judith decapitated an enemy leader and smuggled his head out of the enemy camp and back to her own, where she displayed it to the cowering male soldiers.

So when Elizabeth says “Blessed are you among women” she puts Mary in the company of ancient heroes. It is as if she summons for Mary all the courage and cunning and strength of her grandmothers.  “You’ve got this, Mary” is another contemporary way to put it. 

Apparently, that is just the right thing to say, because the next thing we know, Mary is singing, belting out a song that echoes the one Deborah sang about Jael, but also songs by Hannah and Miriam and the psalmist.

We call her song the Magnificat, because of the first line which says “my soul magnifies the Lord.”  The song is exuberant and subversive and joyful. 

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, the day when we light the pink candle.  Also known as Joy Sunday.   The lectionary offers the Magnificat as a possible reading every year on Joy Sunday. 

This is the crux of the matter for me, how does Mary move from terror to joy? She said yes to Gabriel. She was courageous and dutiful, – but where does she find the capacity for joy?

I think of the character of Ma Joad in John Steinbeck’s book The Grapes of Wrath about the dust bowl.  Steinbeck said it was Ma’s habit “to build up laughter out of inadequate materials.”  To build up laughter out of inadequate materials. 

By all indicators, Mary should have inadequate materials to build up joy.  I think about mothers and fathers in Gaza today – from where would they summon joy?  Or immigrant families in our city and others who live in fear of being abducted by ICE. Even those whose families are still intact, how can they possibly have joy in the midst of so much fear and trepidation? 

But Mary, who is going to raise her son Jesus, in the same place where she grew up, under even more heavy occupation following a rebellion that took place shortly after Jesus was born, young Mary who is shaped by violence and resistance and a keen passion for justice, Mary the courageous one, finds her way to joy that explodes from her in a song.    

I think she finds that joy because of Elizabeth, because Elizabeth reminds her of the community of women in which she stands.  She enables Mary to tap into the strength she already has, to summon all of who she is to meet this task.  Mary’s joy bubbles up because of Elizabeth’s solidarity.

Last month, some representatives from Churches for Middle East Peace came to Albany.  They mobilize Christians in the United State to advocate for equality, human rights and safety for Israelis, Palestinians and all people of the Middle East. Jim and I went to Delmar to hear them.  One of the speakers was a Palestinian woman named Susan. 

Susan’s family lives near Bethlehem in the area called the Shepherd’s Field.  People from all over the world make pilgrimages to Bethlehem.  Many decades ago, five women on that kind of pilgrimage decided to walk from Bethlehem to Shepherd’s Field.  Susan’s mother encountered these women out on their walk and invited them to her house.  She was simply offering the hospitality of her culture, providing refreshment on a hot afternoon.  Susan’s grandmother was also at the home and the women spent some time together, getting to know each other. The Palestinian women gave home-made sweaters to the Americans.

All of the American women were professors at a college in Michigan. Two weeks after their visit, Susan’s mother received a phone call from those women inviting Susan and her sister to attend their college on full scholarships.  With great fear, but also gratitude, the two women accepted.  Susan’s sister earned a degree computer science and Susan majored in math. 

Susan talked about what life is like there now.  She said that 60% of the population earns a living from tourism – all of those pilgrims I mentioned earlier.  Whenever there is a crisis in Palestine (and we know happens often), there is no government to sustain trade and people lose their primary source of income for months or even years.  So, Susan created the Bethlehem Fair Trade Artisans which markets and exports the kinds of local crafts that would normally be sold to tourists.  This is hard work, made more difficult because of US trade policies, but Susan keeps at it. She said, “I want my granddaughter to have a better future, to live without fear.” 

Susan lives in an occupied land where it might be easy to give in to despair.  But, at a young age, she was strengthened by solidarity and a gift from women much older than her. From that solidarity, she has created a network of purpose and hope, and even I think, joy.

Friends, on this Joy Sunday, I confess to you that I don’t feel very joyful.  I live these days mostly in places of duty and dismay. I do what is required of me, but joy seems elusive.  And I also have to tell you that I don’t sense a lot of joy among us.  As individuals, we are carrying many things – health concerns, care-giving responsibilities, worries about the state of the world and our nation.  As the congregation of Emmanuel Baptist Church, we are anxious about the future, pondering decisions with huge implications and not nearly enough information for any confidence.   I wonder if we might try to follow Mary’s lead – to let ourselves feel all of these things and then still say yes to God’s call and claim on our lives anyway. If we wait to say yes to whatever God would have us be and do until the moment when we no longer feel any fear at all, we might never say yes to anything.[4]  And as we say yes together, can we encourage each into joy? 

Mary’s song is joyful, but also subversive.  In many times and places it has been illegal to read it in public because it was seen as revolutionary and dangerous.  One of my favorite stories about that is that when an Anglican missionary went to Calcutta in 1805, he was appalled to find that the British authorities had banned people from reciting it at Evensong. The British were, of course, the colonizers of India and those spreading Christianity there. On the final day of British rule in India in 1947, Mahatma Gandhi, who was not a Christian, requested that Mary’s song be read in all the places where the British flag was being lowered.[5] 

So, as an expression of being joyful even though we have considered all the facts, I invite us to read the Magnificat together.  This is a modern version by Rev. Jade Kaiser. It uses the gender-full pronoun “They” to refer to the triune God.  Would you read with me please. 

My soul is alive with thoughts of God.[6]
What a wonder, Their liberating works.
Though the world has been harsh to me,
God has shown me kindness,
seen my worth, and called me to courage.
Surely, those who come after me will call me blessed.
Even when my heart weighs heavy with grief,
still, so does hope abide with me.
Holy is the One who makes it so.
From generation to generation,
Love’s Mercy is freely handed out;
none are beyond the borders of
God’s transforming compassion.


The power of God is revealed among those who labor for justice. They humble the arrogant. They turn unjust thrones into dust.
Their Wisdom is revealed in the lives and truths of those on the margins.
God is a feast for the hungry.
God is the great redistributor of wealth and resources. God is the ceasing of excessive and destructive production that all the earth might rest.
Through exiles and enslavement,
famines and wars,
hurricanes and gun violence,
God is a companion in loss,
a deliverer from evil,
a lover whose touch restores.

This is the promise They made
to my ancestors, to me,
to all the creatures and creations,
now and yet coming,
and in this promise,
I find my strength.
Come, Great Healer,
and be with us.  

 

Amen.

 

 

[1] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope  (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022),  pp 40-41.

[2] Kelley Nikondeha, p 51

[3] Rev. Shannon Kershner, December 20, 2015. Singing Mary’s Song, https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2015/122015.html

[4] Christine Hong, A Sanctified Art commentary on Advent 2, 2022

[5] https://prayerandpolitiks.org/signs-of-the-times/news-views-notes-and-quotes-66/

[6] https://enfleshed.com/blogs/liturgies/marys-magnificat-luke-147-55-remix/

12/7/25 - God’s Peace Campaign - Luke 1:5-25, 57-80

God’s Peace Campaign

Luke 1:5-25, 57-80

Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley

December 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=UAVePS3No54

 

It was a precarious time to be a priest in Zechariah’s day.  Herod the Great was King of Judea, serving his own interest and those of Rome. Caesar Augustus was the Emperor.  He had beaten down all his military opponents until they lost the ability to resist.  This absence of war in the Mediterranean ushered in the golden age known as the Pax Romana.  It was not as wonderful as you might have been led to believe.

As military violence waned, economic oppression increased.  Tributes were demanded by Caesar, taxes had to be paid to Herod and tithes were required by the Temple.  When Herod became king, he had killed the current high priests and brought in those from other regions who supported his interests. These priests collected the temple tithes and used them to subsidize their opulent lives in Jerusalem.  What little remained went to local priests.  Zechariah received a smaller and smaller paycheck.  Today, we would call him a bi-vocational pastor.  He was likely a farmer.  As he had aged without children to help share the labor, the planting, pruning, harvesting and threshing were likely more physically demanding every year. 

As a village priest, Zechariah was in a position to see the burden that peasants were bearing.  Farmers were required to give over half of their harvest to Rome, leaving little for families to survive on.  Small landowners often had to borrow against their land to pay tributes, taxes and tithes. This world of peace was a world of foreclosures, evicting families from their land.  Economic loss separated families, caused malnutrition in children and left many women widowed and vulnerable.  What looked like a world of peace kept most of the population in a constant position of economic stress by imperial design.

Zechariah lived in a village and worked as a farmer, like the other peasants.  But, as a priest, he made trips to Jerusalem twice a year to serve in the temple for a week at a time.   He was well aware of God’s concern for justice and the provisions for the poor, widows and orphans. He would have seen how that was disregarded in order to support the lavish lifestyles of Jerusalem elites.  He would undoubtedly have bristled at the practice of offering sacrifices two times day for Rome and Caesar. He was in a position to recognize the hypocrisy, to be most sensitive to the oppression of his people. And so, in the song he sings when his son John is named, we hear these words “that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us . . . to remember the holy covenant that we might serve him without fear.”

It was a precarious time to be a priest in the days of Joseph Mindszenty.  He was a Catholic bishop in Hungary who spoke out against the Nazis and their racial persecution before and during World War II.  On the day after Christmas in 1948, the communist government of Hungary arrested him.  By then he was an Archbishop.  He was tortured and subjected to a show trial on trumped-up charges and ultimately sentenced to life imprisonment.  In 1956, during the Hungarian Uprising he was temporarily freed by revolutionaries.  When the Soviets regained control of the country, he sought sanctuary at the US Embassy in Budapest. He lived within the embassy for the next 15 years. Because of his presence there, his story was known all over the world.  His unrelenting opposition to dictatorship was a source of hope for millions of people. He was finally allowed to leave the country in 1971.  He died in Vienna two years later.  

Both Zechariah and Mindszenty remained true to their vocations; somehow. they held onto their faith in the midst of truly difficult times.  Zechariah was an old man.  His country had been ruled by the Romans and the Herods since before he was born. How hard it must have been to believe that the birth of his son would be the beginning of change, but eventually he found the courage to trust it.

While the Archbishop lived in the US embassy in Budapest, a girl named Katarina was born behind the Iron Curtain in what was then Czechoslovakia. As a child, she watched her father walk around with a radio standing still in awkward positions when he picked up the BBC or Voice of America radio in spite of the jammers. She asked him “What are you doing, Daddy?”  But he did not explain because she was a child and that knowledge was dangerous.  She was raised as a Catholic Christian and had to celebrate her first Communion in secret because it was illegal.

Her mother was known in town as a rebel because she refused to vote in Communist elections.  The people warned Katarina not to take after her mother, but to vote because it would help her get along with the Party.  However, she followed her mother’s example and also became known as a rebel. As a young adult, she saw the break-up of the Soviet Union and the end of communist rule.  Today she lives and travels freely and runs her own tour guide business. She talks openly about politics and the history of her country and votes for the candidates she prefers. An outcome that Cardinal Mindszenty worked and prayed for, but did not live to see.

When the angel informs Zechariah of what is coming, Zechariah says “How shall I know this? I am an old man.”  Can we hear the weariness?  He has lived long.  He is well acquainted with corruption, hypocrisy, the will to power.   The technology may vary from generation to generation, but the basic tools of the oppressors remain – fear, intimidation, pain, threats to family, safety, and economic security.  Zechariah doesn’t see how that can possibly change. “How shall I know this?”  I wonder if every meeting with something larger than ourselves, something that speaks wonderfully to our deepest longings, has us responding in doubt.[1]

From that moment, Zechariah enters a period of enforced silence.  We often interpret this a punishment, but perhaps it is more of a gift.  It allows him time and space to listen and reflect on a deeper level. Perhaps in the silence he overhears the conversations between his wife Elizabeth and Mary as she stays with them, to catch from them a sense of hope and possibility. 

Bible scholar Justo Gonzalez says, “This entire episode reminds us of a situation in which many faithful believers often stand.  They are called to do the unexpected and perhaps the culturally unacceptable.”[2]  

When the baby is born, his mother breaks with the tradition of using family names.  John is not named after his father.  He will not be a priest like Zechariah, but a prophet.[3]  He will be part of a generation that returns to God’s vision of peace, one that does not rely on the tools of oppression, or run families out of homes or off their lands.  God’s peace proclaimed by John and embodied by Jesus will be good news for the poor and create anxiety for kings and power-brokers.  John will be born into an ordinary family with unexpected strength and faith.  Elizabeth and Zechariah may have been old and weary, but God was not finished with them yet. 

If the angel Gabriel came to us today, what might he say?  Maybe “do not be afraid.”  Words we need to hear.  And then he might say, “God is not finished with you.  There is a future.  You have life to live and work to do and people to love.  You have no idea how you will nurture the next generation.”

May the dawn from on high break upon us, that we may be saved from our enemies and the hand of all who hate us, to guide our feet into the way of peace.  May Zechariah’s song be our song.  Amen.


[1] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope  (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2022), p 34.

[2]Justo Gonzalez, Luke in the Belief Commentary Series, (Louisville:  Westminster/John Knox Press, 2010), p. 28

[3] Amy-Jill Levine, Ben Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke New Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2018), p. 44

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