June 21, 2020 - Third Sunday After Pentecost

Third Sunday after Pentecost

Jeremiah 20:7-13; Psalm 69:7-10 [11-15] 16-18; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39

June 21, 2020

Adapted for print from transcription.

Well hello, Shepherd Family. I said I would try to do a regular update on returning to what I call "real time" worship. I'm sure you know this, if you're watching the news or are connected to what's happening in the world at all, that our numbers as a state continue to go up in terms of those impacted and testing positive with the Coronavirus, so we will continue to worship virtually. Know that your church council has developed a subcommittee on returning to in-person worship. They have now met twice and will be meeting again this upcoming week to share with the council, their recommendations, but there is a commitment to continue to worship virtually until there are 14 days of declining infection rates or a downward trajectory of infection rates for the Coronavirus. So that is your COVID-19 update. Most importantly for this weekend. I want to wish all of our fathers, as I said in the greeting, a very happy Father’s Day. Happy Father's Day to all of our dads out there.

There's a lot going on in this week's readings. Jeremiah essentially gives God a chewing out. But Jeremiah ultimately announces that he cannot abandon his call to proclaim the word of God, because the word of God is in his heart; “He is in my heart. Like a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in. And indeed I can not,” which we hear in chapter 20 verse nine of Jeremiah today, and then our second reading, we hear from Paul and Romans, and what we hear ultimately in Romans is that baptism brings about a radical change in our identity; a change that has implications for every aspect of our lives. It is not a demand, but a glorious possibility. A glorious possibility to be alive in God. And that is good news. That is good news.

So bringing us full circle to the continuation of our chapter from last week where we have the disciples that are sent out, where we experienced the same sending. So, connecting it to Jeremiah, he's chewing out God because he is experiencing everything awful in life, but he's doing the good work. He's still experiencing everything awful in life, but he finds that he can do none other. In Romans, we see that this is what it's about to be baptized in Christ. That there are changes. There are implications that have an impact on every piece of our lives.

And so in the gospel of Matthew today in this 10th chapter, there's a lot going on in this gospel. There's a lot going on in this week's gospel reading, but I did want to touch on one primary piece in that gospel, and that is division. So we see that Jesus has come to bring the sword in that reading, which, as we discussed that in our weekly Lectio Divina group, a lot of folks didn't really know how to engage that. That is not the Jesus that many of us grew up with in the United church of Christ. So when we hear scriptures that say such a thing, we're not really sure how to engage that. So suffice it to say in this week's gospel, when we hear “the sword,” all that means, is division; a separation. Using the sword to divide, using the sword to set apart. And so, connecting it back to Romans and to where Paul is speaking to us in Romans, we see that when we are baptized, when we become part of this new family, something's different.

As many of you know, I meet every other week -we haven't for a while, of course- but every other week I used to meet in person with a Jewish friend and a Muslim friend, and we would have coffee together. And one of the stories that was shared at one of those meetings was this idea that somebody converted to another religion. And when they converted to another religion, their family essentially pushed them out. Their family relationship was cut off. And that was a story that was shared by both my Jewish and my Muslim friend who have both experienced situations exactly like that, that when we transitioned to a new community of faith, or when there was a conversion of some kind, families will often cut others off or push them out of the family because of that conversion.

But what we're really beginning to see, hopefully this is something that we all know, is that when we live in a Christian way, as disciples of Christ, we're all ministers. We are the priesthood of all believers. So when we hear these stories about Jesus sending the disciples out, he sending us out. Because we are all ministers, many of you know that I don’t care for the word “volunteer” when we talk about church, because there are no volunteers in the church, we are all ministers because we've been called to this work. We've been set apart in our baptisms to this work that we do, of creating, just like our UCC Mission Statement, A Just World For All. So we see lots of division in Matthew's gospe, and I think that preaches, because America is seeing lots of division today. If you can't see that we're divided, I think you may not be connected to the news at all!

Because we are a very divided people. We are a very divided church. We are a very divided in terms of our communities of faith. So what we see Jesus sharing with us is that when we choose to follow this way of life and we're being sent into the world to share this good news, relationships will end. So a family division is bad news for everyone. I think we can all agree that family division is a bad. But what we see in today's gospel is that we have an implicit promise in this family division. You get a new family. You get a new identity. New belonging, redefining what a family and relationships are all about.

So we gain a new family; a family of cross bearers. So our own personal identities, and American Protestantism, and Americans on a whole, really struggle with this idea, because what it means is that our own individual identities, our own personal identities, take second place.

So, what is really interesting about this reading is this is the first time that Jesus mentions the cross in Matthew's gospel. Of embracing your cross and what it means. And again, our mission as the United Church of Christ really gives us a sense of what the embrace of this cross is all about, and that's creating a just world for all. A just and sustainable world for all. I've also mentioned the Disciples of Christ mission, with which I really resonate; a movement for wholeness in a fragmented world. So that's giving us some insight to what this Jesus message, and to what this Jesus movement should be all about. And often, we as Christians lose sight of that in terms of our own divisions and creating division in the world, because we cannot seem to get our act together so often.

So all that said, we see a new family being forged. And so what do new families do? If you're joining us virtually today for the first time, contact me and I'll mail you or email you one of these brochures, but at church we have these brochures and it's one of the United Church of Christ brochures, and it's called, “We Are People of Extravagant Welcome.” And inside this brochure, it says that, “Jesus didn't turn people away. Even those often rejected by others. We don't intend to either. We are like a company of strangers made family by the grace of God in Jesus Christ. God welcomes all people. God claims all people. God loves all people.”

So when you, as a follower of Christ, as a person of faith, share those values and begin to adopt those kindom values as your own, you begin to experience rejection all around you, as Jeremiah did. As we hear in the book of Romans. As we hear in today's gospel. We begin to find, or see, that there is division in the world; that our families become torn apart.

And so this is what happens when we speak out in truth. And so some of those things that this brochure shares that we actually had a hand in as people of faith, is that when you adopt these kindom values that Jesus shares with us and then sends us forth into the world, as he did last week, as we adopt those values, we do amazing things.

And so, as I shared with our young people in our children's time, we are able to do magical things together in the context of community that we cannot do alone. And so one of just a couple of things that this brochure shares that many of us know, but again, if you've only been exposed to United church of Christ just recently, or maybe you're just joining us for the first time, as I said, we ordained the first woman pastor in modern history in 1853. Now, we did that. Her name was Antoinette Brown, and we just celebrated the 166th anniversary of her ordination. As I've mentioned before in past sermons, other denominations are just celebrating their 40th anniversary of women's ordination, their 60th anniversary of women being in professional ministry in their churches. These are kindom values. This is what the gospel is calling us out to do in the world; being people of radical hospitality, challenging institutional norms. Also, we ordained the first openly gay man back in 1972. His name was Bill Johnson.

These two things, I mean, this brochure mentions many things, but these two things, we, as a denomination, had a hand in. Now, many of our brothers and sisters, just to name a few, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church USA, The Disciples of Christ, the Episcopal Church, most of our siblings in Christ, all ordain LGBTQ folks, and they all ordain women into professional ministry.

So thus begs the question; How are we being divisive today, as disciples of Christ? And I know we're meant to be a movement towards wholeness in the world, but how are we being radically transformed by the gospel to ask deeper questions about institutional structures that have long needed to be revamped?

My spouse mentioned how impacted he was at the beginning of this Coronavirus. We listened to a sermon by Bishop William Barber, who's a Disciples of Christ pastor. And he said that, “They want us to get back to work. They need us to get back to work, because when you're just sitting, you begin to think about things. You begin to question things.” And so my one hope for us, not only as Christians, but as all people of faith is that during this lockdown that maybe we didn't only sit here, but maybe as we sat, we started to question things, like institutional racism. There's a lot going on in the world in terms of changing institutions. What institutions are we called as people of faith to question today and to change today; systemic racism, systemic injustices.

I mentioned last week that I had an opportunity to meet with the governor, through our friends at VIP, and we had a long conversation about how we are specifically impacting our incarcerated brothers and sisters in the Arizona department of corrections, specifically in terms of COVID-19 testing. And so numbers came out about that this week, and while I am really excited to report that we will again meet with Director Shinn of the Arizona Department of Corrections, this upcoming week and continue that conversation, some of those numbers that came out this past week are really disturbing.

265 inmates have now tested positive. These numbers have gone up since, of course, but the numbers that came out in the news show that 265 inmates tested positive. Only 2,764 inmates to date have been tested out of the 40,547 inmates here in the state of Arizona. So that means fewer than 10% of our incarcerated brothers and sisters have now been tested.

So this is just one example of so many examples of things that we, as people of faith need to question. We are called to stand up and to question these systemic problems in society. That's a requirement that we hear from Jesus. Maybe another thing that we can ask as a people here in Arizona is if you go to the Coronavirus site and look where you can get testing is the fact that the closest we'd have in the Phoenix Metro area to a historically black area would be South Phoenix. Maybe let's start at seventh street, going up to 48th street, south of the river, north of South Mountain. If you were living in that area, there is no place to go and get testing. Now, what if you're having symptoms and you have no transportation? Well, you're not supposed to get on a city bus.

So, how could you ever expect to get testing if you live in the South Phoenix area? And we know, as these numbers come out, that this specifically impacts people of color at higher rates than white folks. So it's not only our Christian duty. I believe that it's our human responsibility as people of faith to educate ourselves, to ask questions.

And more importantly, as I've mentioned, to journey alongside folks and learn the questions that they're asking. To be ministers of accompaniment. This is what we're called to. This is what we're sent into the world to do. And when you do those things, it will be viewed as being divisive. You will lose relationships, but it's important.

It's important that we be advocates for all people. And to not close those lines of communication down, but to continue to go forth, to instigate, to ask questions, to be ministers of this movement for wholeness in our world. Amen.