A Confession from the Storm

Hi all,

What follows is the text of a sermon I preached earlier this morning at Messiah Lutheran Church in Schenectady, New York where I'm incredibly blessed to serve as pastor. It was simply my best attempt to speak to horrific act of racially fueled terrorism that took place in Charleston this past week and brings in the gospel message for this Sunday as well, Mark 4:35-41. Please, let me know what you think!

God's peace,
Dustin

I’d like to start out today with a couple of confessions… First, while I had finished my sermon early for once this past week, all excited to talk about how Jesus shows up in positive masculinity for our first ever Father’s Day Eucharist, I knew immediately upon reading the news on Facebook late Wednesday evening about the massacre of those nine black saints at prayer and studying the Scriptures down in Charleston, that it was essential to preach something different. Yet, despite having three days to prepare, I have to confess that I still couldn’t come up with much… as I speak to you this morning my heart aches. As pastor here at Messiah, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the powerful, life-giving sessions many of us spent together learning about our Creator on Wednesday evenings this past Lent for instance, and what a horrific sin it was to so violently cut short a quite similar gathering last Wednesday at Emanuel AME Church. On top of being sad, just really sad, about what transpired, I can’t help but be infuriated either, especially at the perpetrator of that violence, who it was just found out was in fact a member of an ELCA Lutheran congregation, but also at the folks who over the last few days quite publicly stated this act of domestic terrorism had nothing to do with race, or that the perpetrator’s actions were not representative of wider issues of racial injustice, a sin, indeed America’s original sin, a storm of sorts that still rages across our entire country.

So, while I’ve tried to find some good news in all this, and I promise, we’ll definitely get there, I thought I’d first ground our conversation today in a few more personal confessions as well, stories that I imagine may prove demonstrative of the wider situation we find ourselves in regarding the current way the storm of racism rages in America. One of my first memories of thinking I could have done better regarding race was when I was about ten years old. Growing up living in a two family house owned by my great, great uncle, an amazingly compassionate and highly decorating veteran of the Second World War, after making friends with one of the black families who lived a couple blocks away and playing army in our front yard, my uncle told me, and I quote, “there was only only one colored boy in the yard at a time,” and he thought he was being generous. I mean yeah, I was only ten, but I knew my beloved uncle was wrong, and I should have done something more than simply shrugging him off as a product of his time. I think back to one night in middle school, when I use to make a few extra dollars shoveling the walk in front of the club/ bar place my father was a member of, located in the primarily African American neighborhood my family lived in. An incredibly intelligent buddy of mine from the middle school basketball team, a fellow named Byron was with a few of his friends and saw me shoveling alone from a distance. Wanting to make a point he put his hoodie up before walking towards me and once he got up close, and I could see who it was, he asked if I had been more afraid because he was a black guy. I said no of course, but still deeply taught by our society to make assumptions about folks that looked like he did, I should have probably said maybe.

In college, especially with the idea that I was just sarcastically making fun of folks who were overtly hateful or perhaps because I was a poorer kid around wealth for the first time and I wanted to attack political correctness as just this sort of uppity rich people thing, or maybe just because I was a loud, big personality trying to get attention, I definitely made more than enough stupid jokes about race, religion and ethnicity. As I’ve preached on before, it wasn’t really until the required anti-racism training I took at seminary, where the organizers aptly were able to help the white folks in the room understand racial oppression through the lens of various other types of oppression we had in fact lived through, that I truly was able to understand how thinking we could laugh about our differences was simply not taking the sin of racism seriously enough.

I confess these things, my sisters and brothers, not to throw my own guilt on you this morning or to make you feel uncomfortable, not at all, but rather to demonstrate how the storm of racism rages on today, in our own lives. I mean I had the benefit of growing up in fully integrated schools with roughly a third African-American population in the most progressive part of the country. I prided myself in getting the nickname “Brother Dus” for a bit of my senior year of high school because I was the only white kid taking the African-American History elective. A few years later, at pretty much the same exact time I was making those stupid jokes back in college, I was volunteering with the Obama campaign in four or five different state primaries, so incredibly enthusiastic about what it would mean to have an African-American president. It would have been hard for me to grow up exposed to much more diversity and cross-racial understanding, but coming from that blind place called white privilege, America’s original sin still became my own. And despite my best intentions to learn, to listen and to grow, overcoming the sin of racism is something I know I could always improve upon.

Now while your own stories and experiences may take different forms, and frankly you’re all probably much better people than I am, just because of who we are and the legacy we’ve been born into, whether it was in the 1930s or 1960s or 1990s, in a yes improving but still significant way, the storm of American racism continues to rage in all our lives. Whether it’s letting a relative’s inappropriate joke pass without comment or simply living in a society where you’re less likely to get pulled over because of the color of your skin and not doing much about it, we all have room to improve. And, my sisters and brothers, that’s where the good news starts… You see, recognizing our shortcomings isn’t about being on a guilt trip or being down on ourselves, but rather the exact opposite. Being vulnerable about our shortcomings is about being in turn completely torn open by Christ, about being shown how God is present in all the storms of our lives, working to improve us and thereby equip us to go out and serve our neighbors. Confession is simply saying what’s really going on… that we live in a country where folks are more likely to be arrested and are less likely to get jobs and can even still be murdered simply because of the color of their skin and that as predominately white folks, as people who are on the periphery of but are still negatively affected by and oftentimes passively complicit with the particularly heinous storm that is racism in America, we can always learn more from our black sisters and brothers who are in the middle of those choppy seas each and every day.

No matter though how much we have or haven’t contributed to racial injustice, the incredibly good news is that as we heard into today’s gospel message, Jesus is in the storm. Jesus is in the storm. Jesus is with us in all the storms we face, particularly as we work to grow beyond America’s original sin of racism. Jesus is in the storm, even when we mess up, misspeak or misunderstand. Jesus is in the storm of black lives as well, whether it be while they confront the institutional violence of an unjust criminal justice system or the individual violence of a racist young man shooting up a church meeting. And while most of us will never entirely know what it’s like to face the storm of racism in such a way, we can know Christ is there with our black sisters and brothers, there in the storm, calling us to listen, to learn, to accompany our fellow children of God as allies in the cause of justice, of peace, of freedom, of the highest ideals of both our country and even more importantly our faith. Jesus is in the storm. Amen.

Dustin serves as pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church, a Spirit-filled church following Jesus Christ in Rotterdam, New York. An evangelist, urban gardener, mountain climber, community organizer, saint and sinner, he spends most of his professional time wrestling with God and proclaiming liberation in Christ. Otherwise, Dustin likes hiking, playing frisbee, hanging out with his fiancée Jessie, his amazing pup Willy Bear and pretending to know how to sing.

Chief Priests, Pharisees and Professional "Perfect People"

Friends,

What follows is a rough manuscript of the sermon I preached this Sunday at Messiah Lutheran Church in Rotterdam, NY where I'm incredibly blessed to serve as pastor. It's primarily on the appointed gospel passage for this Sunday, Matthew 21: 33-46. I'd love to hear what you think!

God's peace,
Dustin

So wow, upon first read this is a pretty tough gospel message, one that does not seem to have much good news at all… I’ll provide some context and also do just a bit of recap for those of you who, like I sometimes do, have a hard time staying focused on whatever’s being read up front in church. While I haven't been preaching a whole lot on ‘em over the past few weeks, this Sunday’s gospel passage is yet another one of Jesus’ “vineyard” parables, where the vineyard typically is meant to symbolize the kingdom of God. In this one, which follows right after our gospel message from last week in the Bible, Jesus is speaking to the chief priests, Pharisees, the professional “perfect people” in other words, who throughout history have often been found leading various religious institutions. A landowner sets up a vineyard, essentially builds a fort around it, and then perhaps goes on holiday. He sends over his slaves though at harvest time to collect his portion from the tenants left in charge of the vineyard, and then the tenants promptly decide to kill the slaves. This same thing happens a second time… even more slaves are thrown into the mix, who the tenants once again kill. Finally, in what seems like an oddly cruel decision, the landowner decides to send his son over, who is promptly killed as well.

Jesus then of course traps the chief priests, the Pharisees, the professional “perfect people,” by asking them what the owner will do with those no good tenants. “The tenant will puts those wretches to a miserable death,” the professional “perfect people” reply back, only later to figure out Jesus was talking about them. Jesus, seemingly confirms this, by in fact directly quotes Psalm 118, which is a song of victory: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” He then goes on, “The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” Now jeesh, this parable seems like quite the bummer! If we place God as landowner in the parable, first we have to deal with God being okay with having slaves, and then we have to be okay with God sending his slaves AND his Son to a certain death, and then worst of all we have to deal with the idea that we’ll be crushed by God if we mess up like those no good tenants. There’s another difficulty with the text as well, particularly since we’re reading it the day after Yom Kippur, one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar. Texts, and these like it, have throughout much of Christian history been used to the support the foolhardy notion that God rejected the Jewish people with the coming of Christ.

So let me be pretty blunt here… by no means at all is Jesus saying to the chief priests and Pharisees that God has rejected the Jewish people or Judaism. Absolutely, positively, not at all. Jesus was learned Jew… he shows that much by quoting the Psalms in today’s gospel passage. Just a few verses before this passage, Jesus is welcomed with opens arms into Jerusalem, in the scene we experience every Palm Sunday. Let me be pretty blunt here… Jesus was and is completely cool with Jewish people. One thing Jesus is saying to the chief priests and Pharisees however is that God was in fact pretty darn upset with the religious elite of Judaism at the time, the professional “perfect people” who while pretending to act all zealous and holy, were simply leading all their followers astray. Now, anyone who’s spent much time at church over the last fifty odd years knows this phenomenon of professional “perfect people” at the head of religious institutions isn’t something relegated to first century Judaism… many Christians, and especially Christian clergy, haven’t done a particularly good job heeding Jesus’ warning as of late.

Whether its the more old fashioned fire and brimstone preaching or the more popular nowadays picture of the perfectly happy Christian family wearing inoffensive polos standing alongside the handsome young pastor in a really nice necktie, either way, for whatever reason, us Christians, and perhaps especially us clergy folks all too often like to portray ourselves and our families as perfect or at very least quite pious to the folks in our congregations, and of course, to the general public as well. And now after decades of church decline, partially as a result of having these “perfect people” as visible leaders in our congregations, we’re in a pretty dire situation. So many of the folks my age, a majority of my non-seminary friends probably, seeing church as a place full of judgement and backward thinking rather than a place full of the good news. And it’s not just young people who feel this way about church of course… all sorts of folks have been made to feel less than worthy of God’s love in many Christian congregations… folks who have gone through a divorce, folks who don’t fit inside heterosexual norms and folks who can’t afford a nice set of dress clothes are just a few of the groups who often are made to feel they don’t measure up to the “perfect people” in Christian congregations.

Now, upon first hearing it, today’s gospel message seems like one that solely condemns… you will be cast off by God, you will be crushed if you act like those no-good vineyard tenants! Now on one level, it does condemn. It especially condemns us folks who try acting like we’re perfect, who try acting like they have everything together, and especially us clergy folks, the professional “perfect people” found all too often as leaders of religious institutions, myself included. On one level, today’s passage from Matthew does condemn, but on such a more important level, my sisters and brothers, it holds a message of incredible promise. Remember, when Jesus is doing all that condemning, he’s quoting Psalm 118, which is a song of victory… “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” And just listen to what comes after the verse he cites in Psalm 118… 

“this is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it! Save us, we beseech you, O Lord! O Lord, we beseech you, give us success! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We bless you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God, and he has given us light! Bind the festal procession with branches, up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will give thanks to you; you are my God, I will extol you. O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures for ever!”

Wow, now why do you think Jesus would quote a psalm like that if He wasn’t preaching good news?

On one level, God does expect a lot out of us. Jesus does shortly following the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 famously say, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect,” after all. We should do the best we can do as Christians, out of love for all the amazing blessings God gives us everyday. The funny thing though, and the thing the chief priests and Pharisees and far too many Christians, myself included, can’t always seem to remember, is that doing the best you can do for other folks and for your community usually means not being “perfect” at all! Indeed, in our human imperfection, in our human sinfulness, at least in terms of day to day stuff, it often hard to agree on what “perfect” would mean anyway. And in being “real,” in making ourselves vulnerable to one another, to be okay with bearing witness to our scars and flaws, that in turn creates space for our friends and family and neighbors to be themselves as well. And here’s the best part, and the most important part, that those professional “perfect people” couldn’t seem to get… in trying to be perfect, we make things all about ourselves, which in turn simply distracts us from the new and exciting things God is doing again and again and again in our lives and in the lives of our communities.

In today’s gospel message, my sisters and brothers, Jesus is saying geesh, get over yourself, get outside of your own head for a bit, but he’s not saying that in the end as a message of judgement! Not at all! Christ is instead calling us again and again and again to look at all the amazing ways God is constantly breaking into our lives, doing new things, making new possibilities no matter who we are, how we feel or what we’ve done. God is constantly breaking into our lives, making new and surprising things happen… the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone! So, my sisters and brothers, as we move into this month of hoping and thanksgiving together, know that everyday is a day the Lord has made, where in Christ new dreams are possible and new hopes will be stirred up in our hearts. Everyday is a day the Lord has made, everyday is a day where stones that have seemingly been rejected have become the cornerstones of new and exciting things in Christ. Amen.

Dustin serves as pastor at Messiah Lutheran Church, a vibrant congregation ministering with the local community in Rotterdam, New York. An evangelist, urban gardener, mountain climber, community organizer, saint and sinner, Dustin spends most of his profession time wrestling with God and proclaiming liberation in Christ. Otherwise, Dustin likes hiking, playing frisbee, hanging out with an amazing woman named Jessie and pretending to know how to sing.

Preaching Video: Marriage Equality and Christ's Liberating Love

I realized yesterday I never posted this video of my sermon from a couple Sundays back, preached at Saint Peter's Church where I serve as Vicar on June 30th, 2013.  It's primarily on an appointed reading for the day, Galatians 5: 1, 13 -25, and the recent federal recognition of marriage equality.  Would love some feedback.

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin currently serves as Vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Galatians 5 Sermon: Liberating Love vs. Hate and Intolerance

Hey friends! What follows is a sermon draft I just came up with for tomorrow at Saint Peter's Church where I serve as Vicar. It's primarily on an appointed reading for the day, Galatians 5: 1, 13 -25, and the recent federal recognition of marriage equality. Definitely needs some changes before tomorrow so I'd love to hear what you think.
 
If you’re a rabble-rousing sinner like me, if you’re someone known to get a bit rowdy, or someone that well… has a bit of flavor in any number of ways, and thanks be to God we have a bunch of those folks here at Saint Peter’s, part of today’s first reading from Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians probably didn’t sound like very good news at all… part of it might have bummed you out, angered you or even scared the heck out of ya. I’m specifically speaking about the part where Saint Paul condemns that nice long list of “desires of the flesh.” Desires of the flesh… for many folks such talk conjures up images of hate, images of judgment… images of times when our friends, our families and our own selves have gotten the message to feel inadequate or unwelcome because of who we are. And all too often, such messages of hate, such messages of judgment have come from the mouths of our fellow Christians.

Desires of the flesh… Perhaps you’ve had to sit and comfort a daughter or friend who’s made the difficult decision to exercise her God-given right to choose and then had to confront voices calling her a whore and fornicator on the way to a family planning center. Perhaps you or a loved one have had to deal with accusations of impurity or carousing because for any number of very legitimate reasons you live with a long-term committed partner before marriage. I know many of us were angered this past week when in the midst of celebrating the news of the federal recognition of marriage equality, as the tolling bells of advancing justice were ringing out loud across our country, our joy was interrupted by all sorts of people… politicians, pundits, and pastors especially, accusing the Supreme Court of going against the word of God.

At times, we can we respond to such messages of hate and judgment by shrugging it off or perhaps like Nancy Pelosi did this past week, we can easily reply, “Who cares.” But sometimes, we can’t, sometimes it’s not so easy… sometimes these messages, whether coming from our fellow Christians or from other polished and seemingly perfect individuals simply cut too deep. As Christians, they strike us at the core of who we know ourselves to be through faith as broken yet beautiful children of God. And that’s just for us Christians… for the increasing number of our sisters and brothers either born outside an organized faith community or painfully separated from one, such messages can hurt even more and certainly dissuade them from ever stepping foot inside a church, hearing the good news and knowing the joy of community in Christ.

So, what shall we do, what shall we say in this time and place, in a specific historical and cultural situation calling us to respond to hate and intolerance that is so frequently propagated in the name of God? First, I believe, we have to take stock of where we are as a society. Not even an hour after the Supreme Court released it’s ruling on the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, CNN brought Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council on air to give a “Christian perspective on the news.” Now, when you have the president of an anti-gay hate group representing the views of a diverse faith like Christianity to millions, it must be recognized that we have a long way to go. At the same time, we must also take stock of ourselves, our own biases and weaknesses, and create space to ask the difficult questions about how to name hate for what it is while still fully affirming those who propagate hate are just as much children of God as we are.

Next, we should celebrate our successes… in the past couple years we’ve seen a diverse group of folks from famous athletes to Jay-Z to even the President of the United States specifically cite their faith as a reason to affirm the rights of everyone across the rich diversity that is the gender spectrum in our world. And this past week, as marriage equality became federally recognized across our land, to cite the poetic summation of Martin Luther King, the long arc of the moral universe took a most powerful bend towards justice. That is absolutely amazing news, its absolutely amazing news folks… and as many of us gather to celebrate our freedom as Americans later this week, let us hold in our hearts that many of our sisters and brothers are more free now than ever before, and our whole society is the better for it.

But finally, the most important thing to keep in mind is that its not really about what you, or me or any other person for that matter is really doing to confront the forces of hate and intolerance at all… its about what Christ is doing… its about what Christ is doing in this time, in this place, in this city, and in this world… and that my sisters and brothers, is amazingly good news. For we know the compassionate work of God in Christ is not an act of intolerance, its not an act of judgment, but rather is an act of liberation, of freedom from all the powers of sin, of death and hate that may oppress us, and thus, an act of love. If one looks at Saint Paul’s Letter to the Galatians as a whole rather than just cherry picking that list of desires of the flesh, one realizes that in six short chapters it proclaims a message of Christ’s liberating love in the most profound of ways. You see, Paul wrote his letter in a cultural context much like our own…

Despite Paul’s earlier attempt to proclaim the liberating good news of God’s work in Christ, the Galatians had turned to a different “gospel,” to those who preached that following a strict interpretation of Mosaic Law was a necessary part of being a Christian, rather than living into the Spirit of God’s covenant with Israel as a gift. Paul boldly proclaims to the Galatians, “No folks… trying to get on God’s good side by following such a legalistic sense of piety doesn’t bring life… it kills you and it kills community! If you think you can score some brownie points with God by acting all polished and perfect… then what’s the point of God’s liberating work in Jesus at all? That path just leads to an inflated ego and a subsequent trampling on the hearts of others who we deem less pious.” Then, my sisters and brothers, Paul exclaims to the Galatians and to us as in this time, in this place, in this city, “By rising over the best attempt of those in power to stop His message of liberating love, by rising over the powers of sin and hate and death, Christ frees you from a need to be perfect, Christ frees you from yourself, Christ frees you and all people, into the hope of restored community with God and with one another.” Sure, sin is a very real thing, and Saint Paul lists those “sins of the flesh,” although perhaps we could update them… I don’t see sorcery being one of our major issues as of late, because neither he nor God wants us to hurt others or ourselves. Absolutely. But in the end, Saint Paul’s message, a saving message of God’s liberating love in Christ is that you don’t need to fit your own or anyone else’s definition of perfection. Rather folks, be your wonderful, broken yet beautiful selves. Do good things, make the world a better place, celebrate and share the good news of Christ’s liberating love throughout the world, but don’t do it out of a need to be perfect... Do it out of love for God and love for each other. Amen.

Dustin currently serves as Vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in Manhattan, having recently completed his second year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.