Pentecost is the birthday of the Church. According to Luke, on the Festival of Pentecost, fifty days after Easter, the Holy Spirit descended upon the first followers of Jesus. The church was sent to be Christ’s body in the world.  As we celebrate today, on this joyful day, it is also an opportunity to consider our call to be God’s people in the world.  

Apparently, over these years I’ve become famous/infamous among you for my midwest stories. Fine, in these last days, I repent. Today’s sermon: LA Stories!   My call to be Christian was definitively shaped here in Los Angeles.

Act 1

In the Spring of 1992 I had just moved to Los Angeles.   I was a database programmer and systems analyst, working in an Orange County office, while living in Redondo Beach.  Yes, my LA experience was about traffic and the 405 from the start. On one terrible day that spring it was much, much worse.  Following the acquittal of four white police officers who had beaten a black man, Rodney King, the city erupted in anger.  That day, I drove home early because a curfew was being imposed on much of the county that evening.  A populace like Los Angeles only functions when everyone doesn’t try to do the same thing at the same time.  On that day we did. All people were gathered in one place as I “drove” inch by inch on the 405.  National Guard vehicles zoomed down the shoulders of what was otherwise a ten lane parking lot.  I had plenty of time to behold a city in flames, dark clouds billowing over south central Los Angles.   

I was a classic rock fan in those days.  Jim Lad was a local radio personality.  He tried to help keep the peace that afternoon by playing music of his generation.  John Lennon, "Let it Be."  That moment is seared into my memory. “I want to make a difference,” I thought to myself, or maybe it was the Spirit who thought it into me.  Maybe it was just the Beetles, but that moment was one step in my call to ordained ministry, my part in this diverse tapestry of people called church.  This is who we are all called to be as church: the people God, gathered by Christ, sent by the Spirit to make a difference in a hurting world.  

Act 2

In those days I was attending a Presbyterian church close by.  In hindsight, it was more white Evangelical than Presbyterian — now don’t get sassy, we have plenty of Methodist churches just like that too.  One post-riot effort was a city wide volunteer cleanup. Rodney King himself, put the best words to it, pleading with the city: “Can’t we all just get along?” Several weeks later, late to the game, my church managed to try. 

By then, most of the work was done, but we did locate a yet untouched lot, hauled ourselves into a sixteen passenger church van, and moved some burnt wood and rubbish around for a couple hours.  Then, of course, we circled up and prayed. We prayed visibly and loudly.  The lot was well chosen for that, right off a major intersection. Yes, we were Christians, the holy apostolic church making a difference, out of our pews, outside of our zip code, pushed beyond our comfort zones.  We had checked off all the church  “you should be doing” boxes you could want.   I believe our leader was a student at Fuller Seminary.  Conservative or liberal it wouldn’t have mattered.  We are fed the same stuff.   Yes, there we were, the church circled up in the Spirit, gathered around our living Lord.  Or were we?

I was mortified. To this day I take Jesus’ teaching in Matthew to heart that outside of our places of worship, we should pray in private to avoid the temptation of prideful faith.  Yet, it was more than that, there was something in that moment deeply wrong.  I didn’t have words or understanding yet for what that wrong was.

Exegesis/Opening the Scriptures (1)

In our tradition, there is no better analysis of what goes wrong in our humanity than the opening chapters of the book of Genesis.  These ancient texts are not stories about how things came to be; they are stories about how things always are.  We are created in the image of God and given astonishing freedom and dignity, each and every one of us is sacred.  Yet, there is this warning: “Sin is always lurking at your door and you must master it.”

With God given freedom, so God commands responsibility. Adam and Eve fail the test of personal responsibility: neither admit responsibility for what they’ve done. The result is the experience of shame, which was not God’s intention for us.  Then there is Cain.  Cain kills his brother, Abel.  He fails the test of moral responsibility:  “Am I my brother’s keeper?”  The answer is of course, yes, yes you are.  

Next, the story of Noah and the great flood. The earth is a violent mess. We’ll start over, God says. Noah is given grace enough to save his family and as many creatures of the earth as he can.  But Noah takes his grace and fails the test of collective responsibility. He doesn’t help rebuild society when the flood is over. He’s saved his kin so he unloads the Ark, thanks his God, and plants a vineyard, apparently living out his latter days as a drunkard.   

Freedom, grace, and the drama of human responsibility: do we have enough now to decipher my problem with the church?  Let’s try something easier first. The pandemic question: “Why should I wear a mask? I'm free to do what I want.” A second is like it:  “Why should I get vaccinated?”   Well, because we are called to personal responsibility, we are one another’s keeper, and we have collective responsibility to our church, to our society, and to our world to rebuild and tend to the health of the planet.  So yes, remarkably helpful; but my happy post-riot Jesus prayer circle passed all those tests too, at least superficially.   Now what? 

The Bible predicts another kind of human behavior in a tower called Babel.  Given the opportunity — meaning: power — we seek to create a universal culture in place of a universal God.  We have a tendency to gather all people into one “city” or one language and impose our way of being on others.  At the top of the great ziggurat of ancient Babylon was a chamber to be occupied by God.  When humanity gives birth to an “ism,” we build a tower of culture, put one particular image of ourselves at the top and rank all those lower as lesser. Colonial racism puts the white male at the top; rationalism puts secular reason at the top; fundamentalism puts certainty at the top; gendered homophobia puts reproductive sex at the top.  We impose a uniformity of the powerful on God’s given diversity.  And every once in a while God comes down, laughs, and throws the whole thing to the ground, which is exactly where we are supposed to be, because that’s where our God, our universal God walks in the cool of the evening breeze, hidden beneath the particularity of each and every human soul.  
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Now, I think we may have some traction for my church quandary.  The church, when it’s people are of the majority, has a tendency to imagine a universal savior as someone not unlike themselves.  That church, however liberal or progressive it imagines itself to be, can never dismantle racism or any ‘ism, because they are part of the problem.  My church, gathered that day in south central Los Angeles, however well meaning, was circling an image of Jesus who was our cultural ideal: white, straight, masculine, strong, self made, emotionally objective yet compassionate — and if a gospel had been discovered that secretly revealed our Lord had a quiet loving wife at home, two and half kids and played the guitar on youth retreats, there would have been little objection.  This is of course, NOT who Jesus was or is.   We can’t put our own image there.  That spot it already taken.   Jesus was a first century Jew — not a Christian  — a Jew of ancient Palestine who spoke Aramaic, grew up and died in poverty and was absolutely nothing like me or you. 

The church, empowered by the Spirit, is called to be the people gathered around the broken and risen body of that particular Jesus. And if we truly become that Christ’s church rather than my culture’s church, who might we become?  We might just behold the world and the church as it truly is: an astonishing, kaleidoscopic multiplicity of life and beauty, languages and cultures.  We might in fact be able to make a difference in this glorious, yet hurting creation.
 
Act 3

When I first moved to Los Angles there was an altar to the universal Christian America to which I paid homage at least twice a month. In my Midwestern English the word is: “the mall.”  It was amazing to me that here in Southern California you could buy any product at any time, as soon as it was available.  In Torrance there was a mall that had at one point become the largest in the country.  It had been two malls, actually. The tower builders realized they could join the two together by building across Carson boulevard.  So joined, it was massive. There were even two of many stores. Hungry for a Cinnabon?  No problem, there is one in each wing.   The shirt you want isn’t in your size?  Try the second Macy’s, just past the middle food court.

It was also a culture in deep decay. The building was all cinder block, concrete, 1970’s ugly. No natural light.  A whole wing of the structure was closing, slowly, store by store.  Now, this isn’t a perfect metaphor so don’t press it too far, but that whole building has now been remodeled.  Light everywhere, skylights, multi-ethnic food courts, and bathed in that light one can behold the true beauty of Southern California, the multiplicity of faces and languages, the diversity of its people. 

I wonder if our American Christianity could be so transformed, by returning our real, particular Jesus to the center. In the Spirit of that Christ and our universal God, our gathering would be a celebration of human dignity in the light of all of our differences.  One day I remember I tried to count all the people there, more languages in one place than I had heard my entire life.  There were Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Pontus and Asia, Egypt and Arabia and visitors from Rome, more than a few from Iowa,  Illinois and Ohio, a couple of Oklahomans, Jews and proselytes, and one frightened white boy from Missouri … and today, joining them, are four new Christians, each unique and beautiful as God made them. What a people Pentecost will make of us!  Let us together make a difference for the good in this hurting world.   And to God alone will be the glory, now and forever.  Amen.

(1) See Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Genesis the Book of Beginnings, and Dignity of Difference: How to avoid the Clash of Civilizations;  Willie James Jenkins, After Whiteness: and Education in Belonging. 

In a broken and fearful world. the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace. In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives, even as we watch for God’s new heaven and new earth, praying, “Come, Lord Jesus!”   (From Brief Statement of Faith, PCUSA)

Those elegant words are a section from the PCUSA’s Brief Statement of Faith, written in 1983 when the two largest Presbyterian denominations at the time united. I had the privilege of studying that text with the late Dr. Jack Stotts who had served as President of two Presbyterian seminaries and was moderator of the committee formed to write that text.  The phrase “To hear the voices of peoples long silenced,” held a particularly important place in his memory.  As he began to recount the story, the voice of the then long retired, deeply esteemed theologian began to crack.  The unexpected emotion startled  us to full attention.  

Dr. Stotts recounted a moment in the final stages of the committee’s work.  A Native American representative, who had been silent throughout the long deliberative process, asked to speak.  With firm, but quiet dignity he said, “The way you have conducted your work has silenced my voice.“ It was clearly a moment of deep personal regret in Dr. Stott’s telling.   In other words, the very process, the pattern and cultural norms, the committee had used to do the work had defeated its intent: to be an inclusive statement of faith in a moment of unity.  Unaware of the other, the dominant culture failed to hear that there were others present.  That was the origin of the phrase in the completed text: in a fearful and broken world, the Spirit gives us courage to “hear the voices of peoples long silenced.” 

We have experienced a cultural moment, where black lives, marginalized by the dominant culture, have risen to speak.   At the same time, I have also heard white Christians, who have had a passion for racial and social justice for decades lament the fact that in spite of so much felt work, a great deal has not changed.  This is a large social/political question, of course, but this is also a United Methodist question.  It is a personal question.  Two years ago our Annual Conference celebrated a Queer Lives Matter, moment, if you will.  I had the privilege of speaking.  I was surprised, however, in that moment at other voices,  black, Native American, LatinX, women, Asian and Pacific Island peoples, who also plead to be heard in our work toward equality.   I should not have been surprised.  That has given me pause these last months.  There is so much left undone in spite of decades of work.  Why?  My guess, is that same issue exists within each and every church, and just perhaps, within each and every person.  

I am convinced that there are underlying ways of working and thinking, that if left unexamined, will continue to silence the voices of people yet to be heard.  My piece last week on binary thinking, comes from this line of questioning.  Binary thinking easily silences a voice, simply because we disagree in part.  We even dehumanize one another on the way to convincing ourselves we are right.  It is a problem raging in our politics in the moment. However, I’m going to just leave the question with you today.  What ways of thinking and working are present in our way of being that defeat the good we intend even in the midst of our doing of justice and kindness?

— Peace, Pastor Mark

Image: History of Los Angeles, detail of one section
Artist unidentified, early 21st century

In the wake of this week's tragic violence, I returned to a moment in Exodus we passed over Sunday.  I had not thought through it carefully before.  In one of the countless ironies of the Bible, God’s deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh's cruelty begins with the heroic efforts of women.  The Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah let the children live. The Hebrew mother of Moses and Pharaoh’s daughter behold a child and do what is right.  Each do what is right, in their moment, unaware of the far reaching impact of their actions. Small acts of goodness decisively bend the arc of human history toward justice.  In that there is much hope. That is a good reading of the text; however, it is Pharaoh’s daughter that gives me pause.
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I typically note these details and move on, leaving Pharaoh’s daughter behind; but her presence has always felt to me as a  piece that didn’t quite fit.  Egypt is the enemy;  Israel becomes our focus now.  We will cheer God’s victory as the Egyptian army falls, horse and rider, into the sea.  I didn’t look into a deeper meaning until this week; a Jewish commentator I read, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, opened my eyes to the subtly of the text.  If you insert the real names of hated powers into this story, she is Hitler’s daughter, Stalin’s child, bin Laden’s beloved.  We are then confronted with the truth that any despised people we name is capable of goodness too.  Certainly the Egyptians are not all evil,  even the court of Pharaoh.  It is a difficult revelation; now we will need to morn Pharaoh’s army when they are drowned. The scripture in this detail: a heroine in the wrong place, calls us to confront our binary, all or nothing thinking.

Binary thinking begins innocently, it is common to us all; it is deeply rooted in our mammalian ancestors’ instinct for stranger danger in the wilderness.  Yet, in our humanity, no people, or family, no single person in their beginning is all good or all evil.  This binary thinking or dualism is one of the false patterns which undergirds human prejudice; dehumanizing the other, it ends in violence.  Dismantling the scourge of racism requires thinking more carefully about the way we think. This is a challenging task, indeed.

In her book, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, Robin J. D’Angelo helps identify, brings to light, social structures and patterns that undergird systemic racism.   She devotes Chapter Five to the good/bad binary.  Our tendency is to not accept that good people participate in a racist structure. At least our culture has bent enough toward justice that most of us agree that to be racist is bad.  A good person could not be racist. Therefore if we perceive ourselves as good, confronting the systemic racism that we participate in is a deep disruption of identity.  In self defense we become reactive, sometimes aggressively, and refuse to see. This is a helpful observation, particularly when D’Angelo asserts that we must look to identify the “underlying systems of meaning” that support our self-justifications.  The chapter, however, leaves the matter there.  I would suggest this kind of thinking is not simply about racism, it is everywhere among us. This is only one of a number of patterns that must be disrupted.  To dismantle racism we must dismantle the false, binary pattern which so easily dehumanizes the other.

To dismantle racism requires looking very deeply at a pattern that we replicate innocently everyday.  We ask ourselves why has so little changed in our work toward racism and social justice? Why does prejudice, systemic or personal, persist?  My theory is that we don’t dig deeply enough, or personally enough.  The behavior can be as present in a church meeting as is it is in our reaction to the news.  We underestimate, as Wesley would say, our capacity for self deception.  For example, how often have you discounted the totality of a speaker or author or preacher, because of an offensive personality trait or a fact misplaced, a style of writing that we think not to our taste?   Perhaps you haven’t, but I certainly have.  It takes a great deal of discipline to halt in that moment of flat binary rejection and say: I may not agree with that, but I may yet learn from her.  The person before us is a child of God who has a claim on my actions.  I really do believe it involves a change that profound.  Can we behold the other and see the good in one different from ourselves without flatly dismissing them?  What good can come from Nazareth?  ... quite a lot as it turns out.

In the aftermath of September 11th 2001, it became common to speak of that era in binary language, it was Muslim extremism versus the free democratic west.  In her study of Hindu and Muslim tensions in India — The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future, Martha Nausbam, brings the matter closer to home.“The real clash of civilizations” is not “out there,” between admirable Western and Muslim zealots.   It is here within each person, as we oscillate between self-protective aggression and the ability to live in the world with others.”  “Our task is to see in difference, a nation’s richness rather than its purity.”

We have come a long way now from Pharaoh’s daughter, but my suggestion is that before we dismiss anyone, any person or opinion different from our selves, we pause and recognize the clash within ourselves.  Let us pause and remember her.   Pause, behold the child before us.  Pause, in the moment of binary thinking and recognize that person cannot be all bad. Given our capacity for self deception it is quite unlikely that I am entirely in the right.   That doesn’t make me or you any less worthy of the love already given by the source of all. That pause does in fact have the power to change the world.  Let us observe it and teach it to our children.   Now, on with the story. This week Exodus 3:1-15.

-- Pastor Mark Sturgess

Nausbaum as cited in Walter Brueggemann, Tenacious Solidarity: Biblical Provocations on Race, Reliiogn, Climate and the Economy, p 172. Nausbaum's book is a fascinating study on its own as well.  Recommended reading.

“He has told you, oh mortal, what is good: what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”  Micah 6:8

What is good.   The heart of my work is to equip you with the interpretive tools you need to live your faith in a complex world.  Living our faith is always challenging.  These last months, especially so. The pandemic wilderness has laid bare our deepest wounds as persons and as a society.  In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death we see a country rife with racism, bitter partisanship and violence; we have also seen an extraordinary capacity for what is good.  

I know that most of us, either in social media or personal conversation, have witnessed a debate play out whether or not affirming Black Lives Matter is an offense to the fact all lives matter.   I think I can be helpful to you in this.  Biblically this is nonsense.  If in their distress we cannot affirm unequivocally to black Americans that Black Lives Matter, period, there is little hope for a kind of justice where all lives matter, equally.  This truth is embedded in the narratives of Scripture itself.  A failure to do this deep work within our faith will result in shallow action and reaction, not systemic change.  So, bear with me.  This will take more words than a tweet, but it will be a quicker read than Plato’s Republic.  I promise. 

Justice.  Racism as we know it is not addressed in scripture.  Racism is a much later  development of the colonialist empires of Christian Europe from the 15th century onward.  Perhaps, the deeply rooted resentment between ancient Jews and Samaritans is close enough an example in kind.  When one of Jesus’ fellow Jews asks what he needed to do to be in good stead with God, Jesus responds,“What do our scriptures say?”  His answer is a good one. The heart of Torah is love of God and neighbor.  There is little debate on that, then and now.  That is the right answer.  Anyone with sense, though, knows that neighbor love is the tricky bit, depending on who your neighbor is.  

Seeking to get himself off that hook, our questioner pushes further: “Who then is my neighbor?”  In response, Jesus tells him a story about the apparent victim of a robbery left to die on the side of a dangerous road —  this was a common ruse for an ambush in that place.  Two faithful Jews pass him by — the point being, that any one of us under those conditions might have done the same and be justified. The hero, of course, is a Samaritan. The hated Samaritan is the one with the courage and empathetic heart to help the man who turns out to be very real and suffering.  Now, go and do likewise.  End of parable.   In context the parable is pushed even further, for by the end of the gospel itself, Jesus is the one laying brutalized on the side of a cross, suffocated beneath the knee of Roman justice.

The parable of the Good Samaritan is one of the most famous texts in our tradition. Out of familiarity, we often miss the bite of it.  John Wesley did not.  Here is Wesley’s note on the parable for his methodists:  “Go and do thou in like manner—Let us go and do likewise, regarding every [person] as our neighbor who needs our assistance. Let us renounce that bigotry ... which would contract our hearts, into an insensibility for all the human race, but a small number whose sentiments and practice are so much our own, that our love to them is but self-love reflected.” 

Our tendency, when left to our own devices, is to shrink our neighborhoods to the people most like ourselves. This is bigotry.  Again, from Wesley, “And this commandment we have from ... both God and Christ; that he who [loves] God, love(s) ... Every one ... purely because he is the child and bears the image of God. Bigotry is properly the want of this pure and universal love. A bigot only loves those who embrace his opinions ... he loves them for that, and not for Christ’s sake.”  So there you have it: All lives matter.

Each and every life is sacred.  This is, of course, the very first affirmation in the Bible: God created all humanity in God’s image.  “And God said that it was exceedingly good.”  As dramatically affirmed in the Bible's opening credits (Genesis 1-11), equality of all in God’s sight is a fact never in jeopardy in Scripture.   We are created to live freely without shame; we are to live in harmony as stewards of an astonishing diverse and fruitful world; we are forbidden from using that freedom to harm others.   We are due equal treatment under this law. This is justice.  However, the first eleven chapters of Genesis are also archetypical stories about how badly we get this wrong.  As it has been said, the point of these stories isn’t that they happened once a long time ago, it is that they happen all the time.   

Oh Mortal.  Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (Covenant and Conversation: Genesis) has helped me see these texts as a sophisticated drama about the failure of human responsibility in God's all- lives-matter world.  Adam and Eve fail the test of personal responsibility: neither take responsibility for what they’ve done.  The result is the experience of shame.  Cain, kills his brother, Abel.  He fails the test of moral responsibility:  “Am I my brother’s keeper.”  The answer of course is yes you are.  

Next, the story of Noah and the flood.  It is commonly misread.  The first experience of human identity is tribalism (Sacks).  We love those who are related to us, of our kind, but we fear and ultimately are violent toward the stranger.  The earth is a violent mess.  We’ll start over, God says.  With one faithful tribe.  Noah is given grace enough to save his family and as many creatures of the earth as he can.  But Noah fails the test of collective responsibility.  He doesn’t help remake society when the flood is over.   He unloads the Ark, thanks his God, and plants a vineyard for himself, apparently living out his latter days as a drunkard.

Finally, the last act in this drama of responsibility: humanity discovers the power of  technology and common purpose (Genesis 11:1-9).  All humanity gathers into one place and one language.  We think the solution is to be one people of a single identity, uniform, the same.  There will be no limit to what we can do. Come let us make a name for ourselves, and build a tower into the heavens, lest we be scattered over the earth.  Sacks points out that the only other place in scripture that the formula “Come let us ... verb, or" occurs at the beginning of Exodus.  Pharaoh sees that the people of Israel are numerous enough to be a threat, he says, “Come let us deal with them or they will become”  This is a text about tribalism’s opposite: empire.  Neither leads humanity to Justice, just the opposite.  Here we fail the responsibility of mortal humility. Empires live with the idea of universal justice too. They bend all into this universal image, mistaking it for God’s image.  

Now, thank you for sticking with me this far, because here is the reward for close reading: this is how racism begins.  Christian Europeans imagined any one whose skin color or culture was different than their own was less than; they enslaved native peoples or killed them in order to tame the world to their common purpose.  And until we take responsibility for our own actions, for the moral responsibility that comes with freedom, for the collective responsibility that comes with grace, in humble recognition of the beauty of God's diverse creation, we will continue to do the same.  Sin lurks at our door, we must master it.

So then Justice, all lives matter, equally.  This is not in dispute.   However, it is not enough, not sufficient to make human life humane.   And here the curtain rises on the grand narrative of the Bible.  The whole of the rest, the entire scope and tenor of it,  is the story of a God of Justice who teaches the world to love kindness in order to save it, one chosen people, one beloved person, one act of kindness at a time.  God enters into our suffering and calls us to love.

Love Kindness.  The defining characteristic of God in scripture is not justice, although God is just.  God is above all things, in the Old Testament and New, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love (in Hebrew: hesed; variously in Greek, but Christians commonly speak of this loving as agape).  

Of course, in a just society ALL lives matter, but that is not enough as we have seen. To Justice, the Bible appends the call to love kindness.   It is a great mystery, but our faith is witness to a God who steps into creation to suffer this loving with us, for us (Emmanuel).  This loving isn't emotional, though it begins in empathy with the suffering.  It is an action, an act of kindness toward the stranger or friend for no other reason than they are in need and loved by God and worthy of being loved (as are each and every one of us).  From Abraham to Jesus, God loves the world toward justice.  All lives matter, but when black lives cry out for justice, our hearts must be called to that other essential capacity which is loving kindness.  Hearing another's cry, beholding another's need and acting selflessly to comfort them: this isn't justice, because it is in the moment not universal it is particular, preferential, it is honoring the blessed uniqueness and infinite value of the person before us.  

The Bible understands that humans in power will always attempt to create a justice favorable to themselves; it is why we are commanded to this other thing, the thing which Jesus and Paul finally imagine is the only quality of life worth living. Jesus enfleshed this loving in our living. When the afflicted cry out, we are called to love: to say first to black Americans, Black Lives Matter, without qualification. It is this act alone that has the power to mend the world.  If one cannot do that, we can never find our way to Justice. This is the wisdom of the Bible. This is where God walks.  That is what is in the book our President held in his hand before St. John's Church.

 Walking Humbly.  In the 1960's, Stephen Carter was an 11 year old black boy who moved into a white neighborhood in Washington.   When he and his brothers sat on their front porch after moving in, those white neighbors who walked by didn’t smile or give any sign of welcome or acknowledgement.  Stephen became afraid that all the terrible stories he heard about blacks living among whites were true. Then a remarkable thing happened; well actually, one kind thing. Their white neighbor across the street, came home, noticed them, smiled and went inside.  She came out some time later with a plate of cheese and jelly sandwiches and crossed the street to welcome them. That moment, he wrote changed his life. Her name was Sara Kestbaum.  She was Jewish.  She knew her scriptures.  She knew what was good.  

As an adult, writing decades later, Stephen Carter said, “Nothing in contemporary secular conversation calls us to give up anything truly valuable for anybody else … Only religion offers a sacred language of sacrifice-selflessness-awe that enables believers to treat their fellow citizens as fellow passengers.   But even if religion is the engine of civility, it has too few serious practitioners, which is why those who are truly moved by it to love their fellow human beings are so special.  I learned that truth in 1966, and, to this day, I can close my eyes and feel my tongue on the smooth, slick sweetness of the cream cheese and jelly sandwiches that I gobbled on that summer afternoon when I discovered how a single act of genuine and unassuming civility can change a life for ever.” (1)

What more has the Lord asked of you, O mortal, but to do justice, to love kindness and walk humbly with your God.  

(1)  Stephen Carter, Civility (New York: Basic Books, 1999), pp 61-63, as cited in by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World (London: Shocken Books, 2005).  Cited above, for the analysis of Genesis 1-11, Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible, Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Jerusalem: Maggid Books, 2009), pp 49-63).

Genesis 37 - 45 (sel.) God’s faithfulness is hidden in the mystery of providence

Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers … 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.[a] 4 But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. 

[a Traditional rendering (compare Gk): a coat of many colors; Meaning of Heb uncertain]

12 Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13 And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” 14 So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.  …. So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan. 18 They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. 19 They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20 Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” 21 But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22 Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. 23 So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleevesb that he wore; 24 and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it. 25 Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. 26 Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27 Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. 28 When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt. 

Many years later, Jospeh has found favor in the court of the Pharaoh of Egypt and is governor of the land.  In a time of famine his brothers (not knowing it is Joseph) have gone to Egypt seeking help.  After much drama they are reunited …

4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. 5 And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. 9 Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. 10 You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have.

Romans 8:18-28  God’s faithfulness is ever-present hope in the midst of suffering

18 I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.  26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirits intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

One of the things I learned as a musician is that one begins by imitating the masters.   The following sermon has evolved over the years as such an example.  The late Fred Craddock was one of the most acclaimed American preachers of the 20th century.  This sermon takes its form and inspiration from one of his sermons.

 We don’t study the bible only to look into the witness of the past for truth; we study the bible to look through it into our present with new vision. I hope that is what you hear me trying to do each week. It is not easy.  The ways of God are not obvious.

 I confess, as well, that I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason, especially bad things. I wouldn't begin to suggest that this pandemic is the work of God.  I don’t believe that Bible says that either; but the Bible does suggest God has more of a hand in encouraging our lives than we know.  Some of you are better readers of your bible and your lives than I.   I have heard stories, moving stories of coincidences  that you connect to God’s unseen hand: random happenings that led you to this church or to that fateful first date.  Just a coincidence?  Of course.  

It was just a coincidence that a caravan of merchants passed by at the moment Joseph’s brothers were working out how to kill him.  Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob.  Dad had given him a fancy coat with long sleeves, unsuitable for real work.  The coat of many colors is an older translation — sometimes ancient Hebrew itself is ambiguous; the point is that this isn’t a coat for field work.  Jacob was that annoying favorite son who passed along every bad thing his brothers did on to dad.   He was the informant in the family.   After some debate his brothers decided to be done with it and tossed him in a pit; but, at just that moment, a caravan of traders passed by on their way to Egypt.  “Let’s at least get some money out of this.” A coincidence?  Sure it was.  

In the moment, the text doesn’t mention God at all.   This is interesting.  To this point the Bible has not been embarrassed about God talk.   In the beginning God said and it was so.  The command to Adam and Eve was unambiguous, “Don’t eat that!” To Abraham and Sarah, “Go!” and they went.  The Joseph story is different.  It is realistic.  We don’t hear God talking to us like that today.  If we do it is a whispered hope, easily mistaken for something else.  The story of Joseph is one long sustained piece of writing, filled with coincidences, where the word God is rarely spoken.  Yet the entire future of ancient promises hang by a thread at every turn.

There are other coincidences in the bible.  I heard Fred Craddock preach on this once.  He gave the example of Rufus and Alexander’s father, Simon of Cyrene.   Simon of Cyrene just happened to be in Jerusalem on a certain Passover.  He was crossing along the side of the road at the very moment a Galilean on the way to be executed fell beneath the weight of the cross he was carrying.   A solider looked to the side, saw Simon, and pulled him out of the crowd to carry Jesus’ cross to Golgotha.   A coincidence? Of course it was.

Stranger things have happened without calling them an act of God.  They happen all the time. When I was in seminary, a couple of times a year I would drive from Austin Texas to Kansas City to visit my family.  It was a long day’s drive: up the middle of Oklahoma; hang a right at Oklahoma City; over to the lower corner of Missouri; then up to I-70.  (On the map the shortest way from Texas to Missouri looks to be through Arkansas — take my word for it, there is no short-cut through Arkansas).  At the six hour mark or so, I pulled into McDonalds — a famous McDonalds as far as Oklahomans are concerned — Double arches over the interstate.  The largest McDonalds in the world they brag.

As I unbuckled and opened the door, another car pulled to the left beside me.  I thought the car looked familiar.  The man getting out of the car looked even more familiar.  He looked at me in the same odd way I was looking at him.  It was my brother!  We had pulled into the same McDonalds, at precisely the same moment, into the exact same spot in a gigantic parking lot in the middle of Oklahoma.   He was returning from a business trip.  Was that a coincidence? Of course it was! 

On his next trip my brother stopped there again and bought two souvenir shot glasses and gave one to me for Christmas.   Neither of us have played the lottery since. We figure that we spent all our luck on that moment.  It was only an unlikely occurrence to me until a far more significant moment several years later.  It was an extremely difficult time, filled with feelings of personal failure and regret.   I was packing.  On the back of a forgotten shelf I discovered one dusty souvenir glass from the largest McDonalds in the world.  You see, in that moment, that glass and that event became a symbol of something else: family, an unexpected blessing, the hidden grace of God made visible as surely as I write this today.  A coincidence?  Sure. 

If you are patient with me, for just a moment, I will try to say it differently.  It was a coincidence that God intended for the good. Joseph will say something similar after the long sequence of events in Genesis plays out.  I paraphrase: “Even though you intended me harm, God intended it for the good in order to preserve a numerous people.”  Whoever wrote the final version of the Joseph tale was wiser about life than I am.  Some scholars think that the text belongs to a generation of enlightened faithful for whom the God talk of their ancestors was embarrassing.  The author answers with a story that is modest in God talk, but pregnant with hope.

 Joseph spoke more than he knew. The twelve of them and their wives, will multiply into the people we call Israel, and from their lineage will come Joseph and Mary, and the one we call Jesus, whose cross Simon of Cyrene was enlisted to carry along the way.  From that old heavy cross and Christ’s broken life, forgiveness and love will flow into our history and set in motion a cascade of random occurrences that extend to this very day to you reading or hearing these words.

If you spend a little time at it, I am sure that you can point to some random circumstance in your life that might also be seen as grace, the faithfulness of God.  It’s about looking at your life differently.  Yes, our lives do evolve out of cascades of random events, but these occurrences might also be the work of whatever it is that we gesture at with the word God.  I’m not above saying both are true, well let me just say it.   Both are true.   To the old debate about free will or predestination.  I say yes. Serendipities are happy, random coincidences, but they may also be the work of God when they shape our lives toward the good.

I was on vacation, back in my 20’s and my roommates picked out a new apartment without me.  I was angry; I wasn’t happy about it, but we moved.  At the time I was a fine Presbyterian, but the big Methodist church across the street had good music and it was close.  Dr. David Wilson was choir director at that church.  He invited me to sing in a community chorus he conducted in Long Beach.  Every Tuesday, for years, long before I thought of being a preacher, let alone a Methodist, I rehearsed in the Los Altos lounge.  A room we will shortly rededicate as Heritage Hall.  Serendipity.   

I bet you have a story too.  You found Los Altos on the Internet and decided to give us a try. You were going through a difficult season in life and friend invited you. You moved into town and had the wrong time for the first church you tried, and found the next service at Los Altos. One for mother's day: a friend invited you to a dance one night and along the way you met someone with whom you would spend your life with.   Now, was that really just a coincidence?

-- Pastor Mark Sturgess
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