Sermon for September 22, 2019

Abundant Prayer

Preached by Pastor Matt Braddock

Philippians 4:6-8

It’s not too difficult to see that this is a fearful and painful time of history. It seems that that the powers of darkness are more visible than ever, and that we are being tested more severely than ever. Have you ever wondered what it’s going to take to survive our times? What is required of those of us who want to shine light into the shadows? What is required of those of us who feel called to enter fully into the agony of our times to offer a word of hope? In her song “If We’re Honest”, singer-songwriter Francesca Battistelli sings about one of the biggest struggles of our culture:

Truth is harder than a lie,
The dark seems safer than the light,
And everyone has a heart that loves to hide,
I’m a mess and so are you,
We’ve built walls nobody can get through

Many of us have grown tired, bitter, resentful, or simply bored. Where are we supposed to find nurture and strength?

You know what I don’t find helpful? It’s when I talk about my difficulties and someone else says, “I’ll pray for you.” It’s not bad or wrong. It’s just that I have some hang ups about it. Is that person going to pray, or is it just one of those phrases someone says to be polite? What exactly is the person praying for? Who are they praying to, and what do we all expect from this? Or maybe the person is uncomfortable with my vulnerability and says, “I’ll pray for you,” to get me to stop talking. Or, they disagree with me and pray that I will see the light.

The phrase, “thoughts and prayers” is now controversial. Thoughts and prayers are offered by politicians and public leaders after mass shootings to offer comfort. It gives politicians and public figures something to say that sounds sympathetic. Thoughts and prayers … at its best it’s a three-word sympathy card, spoken when there’s not much else that can be said. At its worst thoughts and prayers don’t offer much that is thoughtful and are about as far as one can get from prayerful. The backlash on social media criticizes “thoughts and prayers” as ineffective to bring about change, when it comes to preventable violence.

My biggest hang-up with prayer is that I don’t believe in a god who intervenes in our lives like a cosmic puppeteer in the sky. I’ve given up on the Big Guy or Big Gal upstairs who hears my prayers and then may decide to bend the laws of nature to answer me … or not. I’ve given up praying to the god who cannot or will not fix the plague of poverty, the deception of discrimination, and the wounds of war. Some want be to pray to a god who lets a multi-million-dollar football player score a touchdown over saving those suffering from starvation. It doesn’t make sense It’s a strange thought to think that God cares for the elite but not those suffering.

But here’s the thing: Just because my ideas about who God is are changing, I still believe in the power of prayer. I believe prayer has worked and continues to work miracles! I pray expecting it can make a difference. How do I think prayer works? The truth is, I just don’t know. I don’t know how prayer works. Prayer remains a mystery to me. I can’t do anything more than speculate, and I’m fully aware that I may have it all wrong.

I wonder if part of being human is the power to heal one another, to heal the planet, and to heal the world. There is tremendous power in the bonds between us, in the gentle touch we can offer one another, in the hospitable presence of love extended to our friends and even to our enemies. The power that lies in the connections between us is the power we access when we pray.

Prayer is vulnerability. Maybe that’s why I have such a reaction when someone says, “I’ll pray for you.” I want people to pray for me. I really do. But not in a cavalier way. Not in a way that makes someone superior to me. I do not like to be condescended to. If I risk being vulnerable to you in my sharing my pains and weaknesses, I want you to enter my pain with your pain, my weakness with your weakness. We seek help and healing from a place of mutuality.

It’s never easy to admit our faults and weaknesses, and then speak them to God. But it’s necessary. Vulnerable love is how we connect with each other.

It may be hard, but the best thing we could ever do
Bring your brokenness, and I’ll bring mine,
‘Cause love can heal what hurt divides,
And mercy’s waiting on the other side,
If we’re honest.

Many people hear vulnerability and think weakness. Genuine vulnerability is hard. It takes courage and boldness. It is also the beginning of true connection between people.

The power of Christ is the power of vulnerability. We can only be vulnerable with one another because God was first vulnerable to us. This is where the traditional language of falling to our knees in prayer and surrendering to God has the most power. We must make ourselves vulnerable to God. That’s the hardest part, but it’s the only way we can give our whole selves to God in prayer. God does not coerce or force God’s self on anything. God lures and draws everything into the divine adventure of justice and beauty, healing and wholeness. God calls and we respond. God does not force, act “supernaturally” or invade. God doesn’t manipulate. God calls.

I pray because God exists. In case you heard me differently earlier, let me be clear. God exists. I’m just not into God as the cosmic monarch whose will controls all things and rewards the rich. God exists in love. Love is God’s fundamental character. Love is vulnerable. God exists in all of our faults, in all of our mistakes, in all of our worries, and in all of our pain. If we come to God with our whole selves, we will experience something holy. When we are at our most vulnerable, that’s when God’s can be the most present. That’s when we find the courage to be vulnerable. For me, this is prayer.

Bring your brokenness, and I’ll bring mine,
‘Cause love can heal what hurt divides,
And mercy’s waiting on the other side,
If we’re honest.

What it’s going to take to survive our times? What is required of those of us who want to shine light into the shadows? What is required of those of us who feel called to enter fully into the agony of our times to offer a word of hope? It’s going to take some prayer … prayer that changes who we are and how we acts, prayer that moves us to embrace our neighbors in deep bonds of love, prayer that seek the healing that our world so badly needs. Pray without ceasing. Pray abundantly. Offer your requests to God as you open yourself to the power of love. Expose yourself to the divine who lives and breathes in you, and with you, and through you, and beyond you, so that you can become more fully human. Embrace all that you are. Embrace your humanity in prayer, embrace it in your life which is the greatest prayer you will ever pray. Feel the embrace of the bonds of love that bind us one to another. Be the love that is God in the world.

Bring your brokenness, and I’ll bring mine,
‘Cause love can heal what hurt divides,
And mercy’s waiting on the other side,
If we’re honest.

Let us pray:
We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end war; for we know that You have made the world in a way that we must find our own path to peace within our self and with our neighbor. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end starvation; for You have already given us the resources with which to feed the entire world if we would only use them wisely. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, too root out prejudice; for You have already given us eyes with which to see the good in all if we would only use them rightly. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end despair; for You have already given us the power to give hope if we would only use our power justly. We cannot merely pray to You, O God, to end disease; for You have already give us great minds with which to search out cures and healing if we would only use them constructively. Therefore, we pray to You instead, O God, for strength, determination, and willpower to do instead of just to pray, to become instead of merely to wish.

https://pastordawn. com/2018/02/04/so-as-a-progressive-christian-how-do-i-think-prayer-works-a-sermon-for-epiphany-5b-mark-129-39/
http://www.bobcornwall. com/2010/05/what-difference-does-prayer-make.html
https://thethread.ptsem. edu/culture/vulnerable-god
https://lightbearers. org/blog/the-power-of-vulnerability/

Sermon for September 1, 2019

Thirsty for Justice

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

Matthew 5:6

Access to clean, safe, and affordable water is a basic human right essential for a healthy population, environment, and economy. Not everyone gets that right. The Commission for Racial Justice of the United Church of Christ first coined a term to explain why. About 30 years ago, the UCC came out with a report and coined the term, “environmental racism,” calling out corporate and government actions that result in the unequal exposure of racialized and low-income people to environmental dangers that threaten their physical, social, economic, or environmental health and well-being.

The Commission found a link between a person’s race and one’s likelihood of living near a hazardous waste facility. This ground-breaking report prompted numerous other studies that supported the UCC’s conclusions. Evidence mounted quickly saying that racialized and low-income communities bear a lop-sided share of environmental dangers and are victims of environmental racism. Some will go on the defense and argue that exposure to environmental toxins has to do more with income than race. But, signs indicate that race is more of a factor than class. In other words, if one were to compare a middle-class community of color to a low-income white community, and look at which community is more likely to have a hazardous waste facility near its neighborhood, the middle-class community of color would have a greater chance of being targeted for such a facility. In fact, in some cases, race is a more significant indicator of pollution burdens than income, childhood poverty, education, employment or home ownership.

For me, this is a faith issue. It is a thirst issue. Are we thirsty for justice? If we are thirsting for God to fill us, mold us and use us, are we also thirsting for all people to experience the same blessings? If others do not receive them, then my faith compels me to do my part to spread God’s love and compassion cover the earth, as the waters cover the sea.  And for me, it starts locally. People of faith are called to care for each of our neighbors, regardless of race, income level, or life circumstances. Can we look around us, during these dry and withered times, in our region, with our neighbors, and say, “We thirst for righteousness, God”?

There are important parallels between racism and climate change denial. Both ideologies protect the interests of a wealthy elite. Both continue to undermine the interests of the working class. Both are a form of willful ignorance. While researchers produce report after report detailing the cataclysm to come, Americans remain ambivalent about whether humans are causing climate change. To end the debate, citizens concerned about the steady rise in temperature should decide that climate denial, like racism, has no quarter in the public square. Advocates should call out climate deniers and shame corporations who associate with them. And journalists should refuse to give a platform to climate change denial.

Fighting both racism and climate change denial means treating these dehumanizing and dangerous systems of belief as outside the bounds of public debate. Denial of degradation is too ugly, too hazardous and too backward to be validated in the marketplace of ideas. While we are busy debating whether racism and environmental degradation are real, American businesses take taking advantage of racists structures and general ignorance to make money. Did you know that during the 2010 BP Oil Spill, incarcerated workers were hired from the prison system to help with the clean up? Inmates on the cleanup were forbidden to speak to the media about their work, which state agencies called ‘green jobs’. Inmates earned between $0-$0.40 an hour. So, BP and its subcontractors got workers who were not only deeply discounted but also easily silenced—and BP received lucrative tax write-offs in the process. In a region where nine out of ten residents were white, the cleanup workers were almost exclusively African-American men. The racialized nature of the cleanup was so conspicuous, Ben Jealous, who was the  president of the NAACP at the time, sent a public letter to BP demanding to know why Black people were over-represented in “the most physically difficult, lowest paying jobs, with the most significant exposure to toxins.” It’s environmental racism: the unequal exposure of racialized people to environmental dangers that threaten their physical, social, economic, or environmental health and well-being.

California hired incarcerated workers to help fight wildfires. While non-incarcerated fire fighters earned $22-$34 and hour, prison laborers earned $2 a day. And we know who most of the incarcerated workers are – they not white-collar criminals like Michael Cohen, right? We are talking about incarcerated Black workers brought up in a cradle-to-prison pipeline. The most dangerous place for a child to try to grow up in America is at the intersection of race and poverty. Black and Latino children are more likely to go to jail in their lifetime than their white peers not because of potential, but because of systemic inequity as a result of race and poverty. We should be very alarmed by the idea that the greatest predictor that a baby will succeed in life is the color of one’s skin and the family’s income level.

On a day like today when we commemorate the first enslaved Africans who were brought to this country against their will and forced to labor here, it’s hard to believe we, as Americans, are over the sin of slavery when we still find people laboring in similar situations today.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Righteousness is not just the private practice of doing good; it sums up the global responsibility of the human community to make sure every person has what they need, that everyone pursues a fair sense of justice for every, and that everyone else, that we are living in right relationship with one another, creation, and God. Jesus instructs us to be passionate for social, economic, and racial justice. Resist systemic, structured, institutionalized injustice with every bone in your body, with all your might, with your very soul. Seek justice as if it were your food and drink, your bread and water, as if it were a matter of life and death … because it is. Within our relationship to the God of justice and peace, those who dedicate their lives to that struggle, Jesus promises, will be satisfied. It will take a long time, but our nonviolent persistence and truth-telling will eventually win out and bear the good fruit of justice. Truth is on our side; God is on the side of justice.