Sermon for October 14, 2017

Finding Our Way

As he went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?” Jesus said, “Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God. You know the commandments: Don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, don’t lie, don’t cheat, honor your father and mother.”

He said, “Teacher, I have—from my youth—kept them all!” Jesus looked him hard in the eye—and loved him! He said, “There’s one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me.” The man’s face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.

Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who ‘have it all’ to enter God’s kingdom?” The disciples couldn’t believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: “You can’t imagine how difficult. I’d say it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for the rich to get into God’s kingdom.”

That set the disciples back on their heels. “Then who has any chance at all?” they asked. Jesus was blunt: “No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you let God do it.” Peter tried another angle: “We left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Mark my words, no one who sacrifices house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, land—whatever—because of me and the Message will lose out. They’ll get it all back, but multiplied many times in homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and land—but also in troubles. And then the bonus of eternal life! This is once again the Great Reversal: Many who are first will end up last, and the last first.”

Mark 10:17–31

Let me start with question. A simple question. A dreadfully hard question. What is the one thing that is at the core of who you are that holds you back you from being the follower, the disciple, the believer, the witness God wants and needs you to be?

The rich man in our Gospel lesson for today faced that question. It’s as if Jesus asks, “What’s the one thing that keeps you from following me as we walk along the Way?” I can’t help but wonder, if Jesus looked lovingly at me and asked me the same question, what would I say? My family? My livelihood? My house and car? Would I sell my possessions and give the proceeds to the poor? These are the middle-class nightmares of those like me who have more than enough to be comfortable, but don’t have enough to make ends meet all at the same time. Is that what Jesus wants? Because if it is, he is not going to have a lot of followers. The one’s he gets either have nothing to lose, or they are insane.

Or, maybe Jesus experiences something else going on with the rich man – something beyond the money.

Have you ever wondered how the rich man got rich in the first place? Being a rich Jew in first century Palestine was rare. Most of the Jewish population was reduced to poverty by oppressively high rents and excessive taxes set by the Herods and the Romans. Many sold themselves or their children into debt bondage or slavery. A select few participated in the system from the inside. There were Jewish landlords, Jewish tax collectors, and Jewish governmental officials who were part of Herod's court and Pilate’s executive offices. A handful of Jews had been granted privilege.

A Jewish resident who accepted insider privilege knowingly violated God’s Law. If a Jew was a landlord, he knew that he was part of the problem. He could see the harm of the dominant system on his fellow nationals. I’m sure Jewish landlords and tax collectors did some good. They might have given to the poor. Government advisors may have counseled against harsh new regulations and laws. They went to worship and put money in the collection plate. But, they knew their gains from the system were illegal under the Law of Moses. The problem was not that they were rich. The problem was that riches were given to a few insiders by a government that imposed suffering on their fellow occupied people.

One of these people of privilege approaches Jesus. Respectfully. Sincerely. He wants to be saved. Jesus diagnoses the problem right away. It’s not just about the money. The man needs to be healed. The man approaches Jesus just like all the others who come to him and want a miracle. A healing. An exorcism. They both know that whatever his appearance looks like on the outside, whatever his pious life looks like, he’s still missing something that’s a matter of life and death. Jesus perceives here is someone who might be ready to renounce the privilege system at the root of the people's plight. Better to renounce all its trappings than to compromise. Better to let go than try to change it from the inside. God's Law eliminated privilege. God's Law provided for everyone. It had in the past and it would again – if only his people would remember it. Jesus offers the cure – “Give up your privilege and follow me along the Way” –  and this guy can’t accept it. Mark says the man is “clouded up.” Jesus loves the man, but the man's love of privilege obscures his soul sickness so much, he can’t embrace the love of God.

“What’s the one thing that keeps you from following me as we walk along the Way?” I can’t help but wonder, if Jesus looked at me and asked me the same question, what would I say? Certainly not riches? My family? My livelihood? My house and car? Do I sell my possessions and give the proceeds to the poor? What if it’s not about the money, the clothes, the cars, and the trappings of wealth? What if it’s about the privilege? What if Jesus were to look at us with deep love and offers to heal us if we can find a way to deny privilege and follow him along the Way.

Deny privilege. That’s where it really starts to hurt. I like to think my happiness and success have to do with the fact that I work hard and earn what I have. That’s the American Way, right? My happiness can also be attributed to the fact that our culture affords me privileges as a white, middle-class, educated, heterosexual male. Are people like me in need of some healing because we benefit from unjust social structures that treat us like insiders and reward us for arbitrary qualities like the lightness of one’s skin, or male gender identity, or being a heterosexual marriage? None of that is my fault. I did not choose any of these qualities. So, what is my responsibility?

To be honest, when someone tells me I have privilege, I don't always know what to do with that information. In America, most of us want all the privileges we can get. Some might think, “I'm going to take full advantage of my privileges!” It gets confusing in our individualistic culture to decide that the privileges one has, whether through effort or circumstance, is a negative thing.

We need a different kind of discourse. We can tune ourselves to the voices of those for whom our systems do not benefit. In the case of white male privilege, I can walk around with a lot of shame and guilt. I can lament my own unintentional participation in the ways white supremacy continues to leave racial relations undone in the United States. But feeling sorry for myself doesn’t do much. What transformation can take place when I begin to really listen to the pain and anguish of my sisters and brothers who are hurting and suffering, and then do something about it. I can divest from my advantages, beginning with ways that whiteness and maleness has been used to name God and define the human condition. What we need is a different method -- a different relationship with the world that has borrowed the loving eyes of the Divine; a different set of ears that hear God summoning us to follow Christ along the Way. Those obstacles that seem like they will never change, those boundaries that separate us from one another – they are not as fixed as we think. You are I are living in a condition that God wants us to change.

When it comes to our racial justice work here at CCC, I believe white Christians must renounce any desires to dominate and control everything. Christians from the dominant culture can no longer follow the lead of mainstream and popular Christianity. Within the Church, some of us need to do the truly hard work of demoting ourselves, turning down decision-making opportunities, and refusing to accommodate the dominant culture’s strongholds. We begin by getting rid of the idea of White Jesus. We all know him. White Jesus is the domesticated diety who is made in White America’s image. Sometimes he looks like a Swedish mystic with flowing robes and a glowing halo. Sometimes he looks like Uncle Sam, a good citizen. White Jesus doesn’t ask people to follow along the Way. White Jesus asks that you maintain the status quo: Be a devoted American, eat your vegetables, say your prayers, and don’t cause any trouble. The Americanized Jesus must be rejected for the Jesus that brought good news to the poor and came to liberate the oppressed. Following him puts us in solidarity with the oppressed. His Way takes us to the most vulnerable in our society, including those that have been historically oppressed by race, class, gender identity, or sexual orientation in America. The Way of healing becomes clear when the oppressed are privileged at the table of Christ, and where oppressors can turn around from their way of life and join in Christ's vulnerability in a world that cannot recognize him.

The liberated community cannot be achieved through our own productivity and hard work. Liberation comes by yielding to the Spirit. It comes through risk. No longer conformed to the racialized, male-dominant patterns of America, the Church can confront police brutality, the school to prison pipeline and mass incarceration, patriarchy and sexism, economically-deprived communities and the lack of access to livable conditions and wages.  I am calling for a risky, Jesus-shaped vision that renounces the dominant culture’s inclination to control and run things. I’m calling for a liberated community that embodies the struggle for healing and peace. When we can work on these things, we will begin to understand the true nature of God, always coming to us, always at work in us, always inviting is to follow Christ along the Way.

In a moment of quiet, I invite us to a contemplative exercise – a way to begin to become aware of how our thoughts, prayers, and actions can intertwine … how we can live into the vision of becoming a liberated community…

• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to destroy the life or spirit of others.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to take what is not given.
•  Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to engage in abusive relationships.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to speak falsely or deceptively.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to harm self or others through poisonous thoughts or deeds.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to dwell on past errors. 
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to speak of self-separate from others.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to possess any form of life selfishly.
• Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I vow not to harbor ill-will toward any human being.

https://acton.org/rich-young-man-law-versus-privilege

https://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2014-09/beyond-white-privilege-modelnbsp

http://lectionarygreek.blogspot.com/2012/10/mark-1016-31.html

http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/mark10x17.htm

http://www.davidlose.net/2015/10/pentecost-20-b-curing-our-heartsickness/

Sermon for October 7, 2018 | World Communion Sunday

The Way of Wheat and the Resistance of Wheat

He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” Matthew 13:33 (NRSV)

On their way to the other side of the lake, the disciples discovered they had forgotten to bring along bread. In the meantime, Jesus said to them, “Keep a sharp eye out for Pharisee-Sadducee yeast. Thinking he was scolding them for forgetting bread, they discussed in whispers what to do. Jesus knew what they were doing and said, “Why all these worried whispers about forgetting the bread? Runt believers! Haven’t you caught on yet? Don’t you remember the five loaves of bread and the five thousand people, and how many baskets of fragments you picked up? Or the seven loaves that fed four thousand, and how many baskets of leftovers you collected? Haven’t you realized yet that bread isn’t the problem? The problem is yeast, Pharisee-Sadducee yeast.” Then they got it: that he wasn’t concerned about eating, but teaching—the Pharisee-Sadducee kind of teaching. Matthew 16:5-12 (The Message)

The violence that accompanied the European colonization of the Indigenous people of Mesoamerica is a well-known fact. Historians have elaborated on the devastating effects colonization had on Indigenous societies, cultures, and mortality -- we know guns, god, and glory altered the cultures of the Americas. Europeans arrived on the coasts of what is now referred to as “the Americas” mounted on horses, armed with advanced weaponry and a bunch of European diseases. Europeans had one principal tool of colonization that gets overlooked: food and nourishment. Food is power. The Indigenous people of the Americas encountered a radically different food system with the arrival of the Spanish. The legacy of this system is still present in the food practices of modern Latin American people.

Imagine that you are a Spaniard, newly arrived on the coasts of a foreign land. Your survival depends on two things: protecting yourself from danger and nourishing yourself for survival. The Spanish diet differed from the Indigenous diet, but it was more than a matter of different tastes. European settlers believed if they consumed “inferior” Indigenous foods, they would eventually become like the “inferior” original residents. They believed only proper European foods could maintain the superior nature of European bodies and protect colonizers from the unfamiliar environment. For example, the Spaniards determined that guinea pig meat was “Indian” food, so anyone who consumed guinea pig was considered “Indian.” The same was true for other staple Indigenous foods, such as corn and beans. The Spanish called these staples “famine foods,” fit for consumption only if all other European foods were scarce.

European settlers wanted beef and dairy. And they wanted wheat. They filled the fields with wheat in places where the Indigenous communities already had their sown their crops of yucca, cassava, and sweet potatoes. Europeans planted, thinking only of their own needs and not taking into consideration the pre-existing cultures and foods that were part of the native landscape. European foods literally supplanted much of the local food.

During one of the protests last week, as I joined masses of people demanding women’s voices be heard and honored, I ran into an acquaintance who works for Casa de Maryland. We caught up on our lives and careers as we marched. I asked him about this idea of food and colonization. He told me in his home town in El Salvador, there is an enormous building that was used as a warehouse for colonists. As ships arrived, they packed the warehouse with European food for distribution to settlers. He told me the building is still there in town. Everyone knows what it was for.

Wheat bread served as a powerful symbol of how the colonists considered their culture better than the original residents’. Wheat also became a symbol of European religion and greed. In one of Columbus’s early ship logs, he wrote about how he kidnapped nine island residents and shipped them to Spain. He wrote, “...Your Highnesses must resolve to make them Christians. I believe that if this effort commences, in a short time a multitude of peoples will be converted to our Holy Faith, and Spain will acquire great domains and riches and all of their villages. Beyond doubt there is a very great amount of gold in this country... Also, there are precious stones and pearls, and an infinite quantity of spices" (November 11, 1492). With Spanish colonization came Roman Catholic religion. Just as we see today, wheat bread and wine played a central role in the Catholic ritual of communion. Catholic doctrine required that communion must offered using only wheat bread and grape wine. When Spain planted wheat in their new world, it became a sign of religious domination married with political control.

So, what were the Indians supposed to eat? As their roots were replaced with fields of wheat, what would nourish them? Many settlers encouraged the Indians to adopt the dietary habits of Europeans. Settlers believed food alone would improve Indians’ level of civility. “You are as you eat.”  For Indigenous people, the struggle was in maintaining their own cuisine while understanding that they had to accept new foods to survive.

Jesus knew all about the way of wheat and yeast. When yeast is introduced to dough, it violently changes the physical state of the wheat to create something unprecedented. Wheat rises with a different form and purpose. Jesus knew that bread and yeast have a political dimension. We hear about it in Matthew 16 … “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” It’s another way of saying, “Look out for the religious and political elites.” Yeast symbolizes corrupt behavior that works its way through religious and political systems.

Jesus also talked about yeast as a symbol of political and religious upheaval. Yes, yeast can reveal corruption. But it can also grow into reckless abundance, shared in our daily bread. All it takes is little subversion. Jesus offered a one-sentence parable about yeast and subversion: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.” Most English translations say the woman mixed yeast into the dough. In Greek, the literal translation says the woman “hid”, not “mixed”, but “hid” the leaven into the flour. Subversion is afoot. Upheaval has begun.

Let me be clear. I’m not saying yeast is a moral agent. It is not good or bad. All it does is make dough rise. The yeast revels the true nature of the dough by making it bigger. Because the dough will inevitably rise, there’s no way to for the dough to hide what it really is. Some dough will rise and reveal political and religious systems that only serve their own needs. We experience it now in a toxic political and religious environment, driven by ratings, advertising dollars, ideology, power and religious fervor. Whether it is this “Christian spokesman” or that famous “spiritual leader” or this leftist politician or that radical conservative talk show host, we are bombarded hourly by the yeast of the religious and political elites. If we don’t watch out, it feeds on fear and divides into despair.

As I look at the world today, it just seems too much: Too much violence, too much fear; too much of demands and problems; too much of broken dreams and broken lives; too much of the sounds of people devouring each other and the earth; too much of stale routines and quarrels, unpaid bills and dead ends; too much of cruelty and selfishness and indifference. I want something different for my community, for my family, for my church, for my sisters and brothers who suffer.

I want something like and civility and mutual forbearance. Something like mercy instead of aggression. Something like the abundant living Jesus kept talking about. Something like yeast that transforms flat, cheap living into gracious open-handedness.

Food is power. So, on this World Communion Sunday, we remember. We remember what can develop when we hide some yeast into the dough of kindness. We get a taste of the steady growth of generosity … the heightening of healing … the deliciousness of deep care. Today, the same yeast that aggravates corruption also leavens our love. The growth can continue from here. We just need to hide a little yeast in the dough.

Sources:

http://www.foodispower .org/colonization-food-and-the-practice-of-eating/

https://academic.oup. com/ahr/article/115/3/688/41267

http://www.dickshovel.com/500.html