A Tall Order (video)

A Tall Order: Jesus Followers Called to be Imitators of God

this is based on a sermon shared with the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, August 8, 2021. You can access the video transmission of the sermon here, beginning in minute 16:35

Paul’s letter to the Christian communities in Ephesus is an exposition of how the redeeming power of Jesus – in the cross and in his resurrection – was the beginning of the gathering of a community of witnesses from all diversities. From such diversity, God has called forth an assembly – the Church – as co-workers in the building of the kingdom of Heaven on earth, as witnesses of God’s intention to redeem the world and to make it whole again. This community is a gathering of actors of the message and work of Jesus in and from every geography; every language and culture; every social space a person redeemed by the baptism of Jesus is found.

At the beginning of chapter 5 of the letter to the Ephesians there are two sentences that are at the same time captivating and daunting – “Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. Live your life with love, following the example of Christ…” (1) I don’t know about you, but this reads like a tall order. I wonder what Paul was thinking when he penned this down. Paul’s letters show that he was well aware of what was going on in the communities he would write letters to. Often, the letters Paul wrote were a call to theological or pastoral correction. They were also calls address the social, economic and/or political reality in the city or region he would correspond with. An effective religious and theological witness is related to the contextual challenges it lives in. What was this call to be imitators of God, to follow the example of Jesus, all about?

“Tolerance is not a Christian Value... The Church is called to solidarity.”

I think had a deeper emotional, perhaps social investment with the Christians in Ephesus. This letter was personal. Paul encourages the Christians in Ephesus to keep up the high level of enthusiasm knowing that they were called to be a community of followers of Jesus with people gathered from the whole known world. Unity was paramount, but so was the diversity of perspectives found in the diversity of people. This unity and diversity will prove essential for a witness to Jesus in one of the most politically and financially consequential cities in Asia Minor and the Roman Empire.

When I originally shared these thoughts the news was at best sobering, at worst full of angst. An independent report had found that Governor Cuomo, of New York, perpetrated sexual harassment while in office. The lack of leadership at all levels of government in the face of an increasing threat from new variants of the pandemic was frustrating and confusing. Hyper-individualism was on display by those calling for the cease of mask mandates. A year and a half into the pandemic there was still a lack of access to information and outreach about the vaccines in some communities - especially those with accents in their speech and with greater amounts of melanin in their skin. There was also news purporting a rebounding of the economy even when many people, including neighbors of ours, faced the real possibility of losing the safety of a roof, most of them over lack of clear directives about access to resources to remediate just that threat. I would have summarized the news for that week with this headline: “Some in the US live under the impression the economy and public health measures are working for them, while many in this country have yet to hear how these measures meant to aid them will reach them.”

The news is a good way to gauge the context we live in. Our context (and our experience of it) inevitably provides a lens through which to read Scripture and ponder its teachings for us today. Our experience of the faith, and the community with whom we worship (or not), is also another important filter for interpretation. I told the community with whom I first shared these thoughts that they should know themselves to be loved by God and by its leaders. I went further to say that not every religious community is made aware of how much they are loved and appreciated. That is also an important lens for scriptural interpretation and witness discernment.

Ephesians 4:25-5:2 inspired these thoughts. From the Common English Bible:

Therefore, after you have gotten rid of lying, Each of you must tell the truth to your neighbor because we are parts of each other in the same body. Be angry without sinning. Don’t let the sun set on your anger. Don’t provide an opportunity for the devil. Thieves should no longer steal. Instead, they should go to work, using their hands to do good so that they will have something to share with whoever is in need.

Don’t let any foul words come out of your mouth. Only say what is helpful when it is needed for building up the community so that it benefits those who hear what you say. Don’t make the Holy Spirit of God unhappy—you were sealed by him for the day of redemption. Put aside all bitterness, losing your temper, anger, shouting, and slander, along with every other evil. Be kind, compassionate, and forgiving to each other, in the same way God forgave you in Christ.

Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. Live your life with love, following the example of Christ, who loved us and gave himself for us. He was a sacrificial offering that smelled sweet to God.

“Therefore, imitate God like dearly loved children. Live your life with love, following the example of (Jesus)…” That is a tall order, but one we are called to take on with courage. In the first century – as the Ephesian Church was facing the challenge of the economic power benefiting some and need was rampant among most – Paul calls the followers of Jesus to be imitators of God, to actively embody in word, action, and engagement what is the reaction to knowing that God wants to redeem the world. God is the followers of Jesus to actively embody in word, action, and engagement what is it that being redeemed by God can be in and for the world. That requires that we shed every layer of political, economic, social, and theological service to the status quo in our words, actions and engagements, and to put on the ways of Jesus as the Spirit has and will continue to inspire and empower us to.

Dialogue is not a Christian value. Dialogue is a lazy paradigm for engagement with diversity, one that reduces any encounter we might have with the world to a transaction that calls the world to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. The Church is called to conversation with the world. In conversation we will have the ability to simply be with and among the world learning about their yearns, hopes, pains, and aspirations while sharing the spiritual gifts of joy, peace, justice, and reconciliation. In conversation the world will get to know the community called out by Jesus because the Jesus community will be intentional and committed to stay in relationship with the world. In conversation with the world the Church will grow in awareness of the world, and hopefully in understanding. In conversation with the world, the Church will participate with the world in its challenges and turmoil. In conversation with the world, the Church will convert into an effective presence of Jesus in, with, and for the world. In conversation with the world, the Church may just be able to shine some light, share some flavor, be Jesus with and among the world. The Jesus we worship, the Jesus we serve did not call to a transactional relationship of acceptance. The Jesus we witness to the world opened himself, was made vulnerable, to be in conversation with the world so that he could be with and for the world in every profoundly struggling way in order for the world to gain knowledge of the love of God. That knowledge of the love of God, we believe, leads an experience of God which reveals in the mind and spirit of the believer the certainty that God’s intention is love, justice, peace, and reconciliation for all (and the whole created order).

Tolerance is not a Christian value. Tolerance is a lazy social and theological attitude that allows the tolerant to keep the understanding that the other is on the wrong side of everything. The Church is called to solidarity. Solidarity is, perhaps, the most vulnerable social, political, economic, and theological way of being. When one is in solidarity with the other, one opens oneself to live with, be with, be for the struggles and opportunities of the other. Solidarity even takes one step further. It opens engagement to an understanding that the struggle of the other is not only just, but the struggle of all. Solidarity is acknowledging, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (2) That is solidarity. Tolerance is not only a lazy standard. It is not a social, cultural, political, philosophical, or theological value. The Church is called to be in solidarity. Persons of goodwill are not called to tolerance. They are called to solidarity.

It is in conversation and solidarity that one can understand, embrace, and enact Paul’s call to speak the truth. It is in conversation and solidarity that one can speak the truth in love, that is, with the intention for the wellbeing of everyone with whom one engages. It is in conversation and solidarity that one can recognize that there are far too many reasons, because of far too many circumstances, stemming from far too many contexts why one would feel angry.

Anger is a most human of feelings. Left to its own devices, and Paul says that much, anger will lead to sin. Period. However, living in a paradigm of conversation and solidarity, one can channel the energy of anger through a commitment to love and goodwill. And there is nothing individualistic about love and goodwill. If you love, if you have a sense of goodwill, you have a sense of community and of neighborhood. The commitment of anyone that operates in conversation and solidarity will be goodwill, the upbuilding and wellbeing of the community, of the whole community, as diverse and complicated as communities brought together are.

Say truth. Live truth, not only to and with those in church, or with those of a common theological, political or social persuasion. Speak truth to everyone who is a neighbor.

To be the Church is to speak, to inspire, to witness Jesus to everyone who is our neighbor for the sake of building up community. The church builds community by rejecting tolerance and practicing solidarity. The church builds community by rejecting dialogue and being in conversation and life together with the world we have been placed with and in service to.

The church is called to be community by recognizing the anger that is in us and around us, and by inviting all to use that energy to dismantle inequity and build for radical welcome and wellbeing.

The church is called to be community by choosing the more difficult and Spirit-empowered higher ethical ground – with kindness, compassion, and forgiveness. The church is called to realize that assuming that higher ethical ground is possible not because of our theological, social or political persuasion, but because we are also objects of God’s forgiveness, compassion, and kindness.

In word and deed, so help me God, I will continue to invite the Church to be with the world – the community God has called us to be in Jesus – a sacrifice worth God’s worship for it embodies love, justice, joy and reconciliation.

(1) - from the Common English Bible

(2) - from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Individualism Is a Sin (video)

Individualism Is a Sin: Attention and Intention are Required

based on a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Albany, July 25, 2021. You can access the transmission of the sermon here, beginning in minute 17:17

The lesson from II Kings 4:42-44 (Common English Bible) inspired these thoughts:

A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing the man of God some bread from the early produce—twenty loaves of barley bread and fresh grain from his bag. Elisha said, “Give it to the people so they can eat.”

His servant said, “How can I feed one hundred men with this?”

Elisha said, “Give it to the people so they can eat! This is what the Lord says: ‘Eat and there will be leftovers.’”

So the servant gave the food to them. They ate and had leftovers, in agreement with the Lord’s word.

There was no shortage of news in the weeks preceding this sermon regarding social engagement and community responsibility. I had joined federal, state, and local officials reminding the parents and guardians of over 87% of minors throughout New York State that the Child Tax Credit was being disbursed in cash, and encouraging those who do not traditionally file taxes and who qualify to report themselves and their children in order to receive this significant albeit temporary cash support from the federal government.

The Schenectady Community Ministries, the organization I serve as CEO, was already 1/3 of its way into our summer meals program. For the past 27 years, SiCM has served free meals to school-aged children and youth throughout the city of Schenectady. During the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021, regulations blanketed the whole city of Schenectady, and even areas in Rotterdam, Scotia and Niscayuna as areas of need, making children there eligible for these meals. During the summer of 2020 we served just shy of 60,000 meals. This year, the United Way estimated that we could hit close to 62,000 meals.

The day I shared this sermon I joined a press conference in Schenectady where community leaders gathered to call on our local hospital system to be transparent with the community as a large regional hospital system buys them up and community engagement has all but ceased in this process.

Gun violence became the focus of Albany’s local government narrative, including the murder of two persons in separate circumstances the Friday and Saturday preceding my sharing this sermon. Violence throughout the city was increasing, no question about it. And City Hall referred to this crucial situation of public safety and community stability as an issue of certain parts of the city that needed to be managed.

There were many other things I could have shared about Saratoga and Rensselaer counties. A quick read of local and regional newspapers, or having listened to local public radio would be enough to grasp the crisis we were in - a crisis of ability to engage as a larger society and to be responsible for each other in the community. The pandemic, of course, made everything worse. I am no expert in public health policy. However, generalized numbers of high vaccination rates in Schenectady and Albany counties, and in New York State continued to ignore very specific areas where vaccination rates roamed well under that generalized number, some well under half of eligible persons.

We need to pay attention to our response to all of these – individual, congregational, social, and political, especially if that response goes unchecked. Our initial responses to these, or to other news regarding public policy and public safety, are based on our biases. Most of us will have reacted considering how “they” are cause or victims of these circumstances. Maybe some of us even went as far as to think that these issues do not affect us – individually, as a congregation, in our social circle, or our political standing.

If this is your and/or my reaction, it’s ok. Our prejudices are set in our social and communal beings. There is no way to escape them. What we can do is decide how we will act upon them. A hallmark identity of U.S. American economic and socio-political structures is the obsessively committed encouragement of personal individualism in culture and society. Individualism, the U.S. American standard operating procedure, is core to how we live our social beings. Individualism drives many of us to social reactions that rationalize the pain, marginalization, and downright evil that others are suffering as “their” issue. We seek to make sense of the pain, suffering, and marginalization of others by believing the lie that accomplishment is a possibility with sacrificial personal effort. That rationalization often takes form in this way: “they” - that other that looks, sounds, lives, or earns differently from the individual or collective “I” - are going through “that situation” because “they” were not as socially, politically, financially, or theologically efficacious as the individual, yet often collective “I” is.

“I am tired of leading in this dissonant social space where individualism reigns on the one part, and the Spirit is leading us to embrace each other in reverent obedience.”

Individualism is what drives many of us and in this society to articulate constitutional freedoms as individual freedoms – rights that apply first and foremost to “me.” Individualism is what is drives the conversation about vaccination access, mask options versus mandates, pushing for an achievement of normalcy that is really a generalized yearn to go back to the future.

As a faith leader, I find myself living in a dissonant social space. I find nowhere in our Holy Scriptures a sanctioning of individualism. U.S. American Christianity, however, especially our Reformed branch of that Christianity, especially the branch that presumes (and often calls) itself to be more orthodox, has over 300 years of theological argumentation for individualism in society and salvation. I hope others find themselves in in a dissonate social space. I would go even a step further and join those that have articulated individualism, especially the U.S. American kind, a sin. Far from fostering a right relationship with God, individualism drives us as individuals, as a society, and as a culture away from God. Individualism drives us away from God’s most basic call to the Church in and through the example of Jesus – to love God with all that we are, and our neighbor as ourselves. That example goes hand in hand with the call to go share the good news of Jesus to the farthest corners of Albany and of the world. Individualism is nowhere in the message of Jesus. What is more – when directly confronted with his own cultural and religious biases, Jesus took a step back and corrected his action and message for the sake of that good news he embodied.

The lesson of II Kings, chapter, for, was a respite for me this week as I continue to inhabit the dissonate space between the social reality of individualism, and the contradictory call I find in the gospel. In just three verses, the lesson shows us four social commitments the prophet Elisha lived by, social commitments with profound theological repercussions – hospitality, doubt, solidarity, and provision.

We see hospitality in the generous gift brought by a Canaanite man to the prophet, a messenger of the religion of Israel. Hospitality is shown in bread and grains brought to the prophet – bread and grain from the first fruits, the best of the harvest. We see hospitality in the turning of a personal gift into the call for a feast for all that were present. Hospitality is about generosity, is about seeing and being with and for the other. Hospitality is about giving generously what has been received generously.

We see doubt in the reaction of the prophet’s servant to the order to share the gift. The gift was intended to be a generous, perhaps extravagant gift for one person. I’d be concerned with 100 people, perhaps around the time for a meal, wanting to eat and just enough food for a few. Doubt is one of the most human feelings and actions. Our social upbringing urges us to suppress doubt. This lesson, and the whole of the Scriptures, encourage the followers of Jesus to embrace doubt. No need to ignore it. Doubt is a part of who we fully are.

We see solidarity in the lesson in that this gift was given to a person of a different ethnicity – ethnicities that were pegged against each other for no other reason than the political control of the ruling class and theological sanctioning for political expediency of the religious class. Solidarity takes hospitality one step further – it demonstrates unconditional welcome. Solidarity takes generosity one step further, for it is about sharing what one has as if it wasn’t ours in the first place. Solidarity is about the courage to believe that if God says there is enough for everyone to eat, there is enough for everyone and then some.

And it is there that provision is seen in the text. When a people show hospitality, when a people learn to embrace doubt and other human feelings, when a people decide to pay attention and be intentional about how they live and move and have their being in society expressing solidarity, provision happens. Abundance happens when a people decide to obey reverently that most basic expectation of humans – to be respected, to be welcomed, to be included, to be sought out, to be seen for what each one of us is.

And here me well, I am talking about a people obeying reverently. The call is not for individuals. The call is to a people. Elisha was not leading a life of a personal relationship with God. Elisha was a godly man, but everything he said and did was for people, with people, and by people. Nowhere in this text does it say that those 20 loaves of bread magically multiplied into a feast. The only thing this text says is that bread and grain were gifted generously, that doubt was voiced, that solidarity was practiced, and provision happened because a people embraced who they were as a community of humans and decided to believe what the Lord had said through a messenger. They obeyed reverently because they believed that despite the appearance of some among them, despite what the amount of food might have seemed, despite any other doubt or social prejudice that might have existed, a people acted with attention and intention for the sake of each other, for the sake of community.

I confess that I am tired of leading in this dissonant social space where individualism reigns on the one part, and the Spirit is leading us to embrace each other in reverent obedience. To go up and against the forces of this world built on individualism, we will require attention and intention. But we have been gifted with all it takes. For hospitality, solidarity, and provision are all at our grasp because the Lord has said so. May we believe in the word of the Lord with attention and intention. May we obey reverently with attention and intention that most basic expectation of humans – to be respected, to be welcomed, to be included, to be sought out, to be seen for what each one of us is – a full expression of the image of God.

May it be so.
Amen.