Sermon by Seminary Intern, Deklan Lewis

The last time I preached here, the topic was Jesus’ baptism. If you were here and you remember that far back, you’ll remember how I proposed that the point of this story was to show us that Jesus was more like us than perhaps we thought he was.

At Jesus’ baptism, the descending dove from heaven was there to affirm to Jesus who he was, God’s Beloved Son. In that story, we can also hear God saying those same things to us, that we are God’s beloved children and we are loved.

Today, we find ourselves back in that continued story. Right after his baptism, Jesus immediately went into the desert and spent 40 days fasting and praying. Have you ever fasted for 40 days? I tried it one time. I attended a charismatic, spirit-filled church more than 10 years ago, and they were big on fasting at least once a year. The pastor there would call the entire congregation to a fast, usually a really specific type of fast, referred to as the Daniel Fast, though it was considered to be a partial fast. Meaning that the person fasting focused on cutting certain food groups out, and they were allowed to eat others because it was called the Daniel Fast. It was considered to be the right kind of fast. It was for the super spiritual people to use this fast as more of a bragging right, or a way to make themselves look and feel more holy than others around them. They would make a big thing of preaching to others about it. They would overemphasize the stomach growls and the digestive issues that result from separating your diet into different groups.

This past week, on Ash Wednesday, we spent time in Isaiah 51, where God was angry at people who would fast for show and at the same time engage in dishonest business practices, abuse their servants, disregard the least among them, and fight with their neighbors. That was very much the culture of the church that I attended. Needless to say, fasting left a bad taste in my mouth. If only for that reason, I’m not gonna call you guys to fast, at least not in that way in our gospel reading.

In our Scripture reading today, Matthew 4:1-11, it said that Jesus fasted for 40 days, and at the end of that, the devil appeared to him, the audacity.

Can you imagine how hungry Jesus was? Remember, Jesus was fully human, so it’s not a stretch to say that he was probably hangry. I know that nobody here can relate to that, but just try to stay with me.

According to the passage, the fast was over, Jesus should have been able to leave the desert, walk into town, and grab himself a burger. But no, this guy shows up and starts his shenanigans. Hey, Jesus, are you hungry? I bet you are. Why not turn those stones into bread? But Jesus doesn’t bite. It isn’t pumpernickel that keeps me going. “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One” – Matthew 4:4.

Jesus isn’t saying that bread or pizza or ice cream or french fries are bad, or that we should all starve ourselves. What he is saying is that he’s not going to use his privilege as the son of God to satisfy his desire for food. He could have turned the stones into bread or anything he wanted, but why? What would that prove? Maybe the question is, what does not doing it prove?

Perhaps it proves that his relationship with God is what gives him life and the ability to keep going, even when his stomach growls louder than he can speak. The devil didn’t care that he was hungry. He wanted to make him question his identity, to doubt that God really loved him, to lean on his own abilities to satisfy himself, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. If the second and third temptations are more of the same, the devil takes him to the top of the building and tells him to jump. God will send angels to catch you. But Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy, don’t you dare test the Lord your God. Why would I cry wolf when there’s no wolf?

Jesus knew that God was protecting him. He didn’t need to run a full experiment to verify that promise. In a last-ditch effort to get Jesus to fold, the devil takes him to the top of a very high mountain and shows him all of the kingdoms of the world, and he says to him, “If You bow down and worship me, I will give You all these kingdoms” – Matthew 4:9. Jesus had had enough at this point. The devil had badly miscalculated, and now Jesus had beaten him. I know who my God is, and you definitely aren’t it. I will only ever worship the one true God, the devil left tail between his legs, defeated. He should have known better if Jesus didn’t fall for the first one.

When I was younger, I used to go to open mic nights and karaoke. If you hadn’t picked up on this yet. I love to sing, I love to play guitar, and I love doing those things for other people’s enjoyment.

Every time I would go out, somebody would inevitably ask me, “Why are you here? Why aren’t you on American Idol?” And I would often reply to them that I didn’t want to be famous. Fame can change people, and I didn’t want to be changed. I remember watching American Idol and noticing how, from the audition to the final performance, the contestants were completely changed. Their look, their sound, and their presence were all shaped and molded by the judges and coaches. A lot of the time, at least from my perspective, it was not for the better.

I felt that if I went on a show like that, I would be selling out. What I had not yet grasped at that point in my life was that I was actually doing that very thing every day. I was presenting to the world in a way that it had molded me and in the way that I thought was most acceptable. Meanwhile, I was hiding and denying who I really felt that I was inside. It was God’s love that broke through and changed me when I finally recognized and allowed myself to come out to myself and the world; no amount of stone sandwiches or rooftop flight experiments or crowns or kingdoms could make me give up my identity, the real me, my soul.

A few years ago, while I was at the beach with my adopted parents, I asked my dad, who is a retired United Methodist minister, if he would baptize me. I had been baptized as a teen, but I wanted to hear the name that I had chosen spoken as I was laid beneath the water. There was no dove, but I heard the same message that Jesus heard from God as I emerged from the salty Atlantic waters. Deklan J. Lewis knows that he is a beloved son of God, and he knows that the love of God is the only thing that truly sustains him.

This month is Black History Month, and we’ve been highlighting a piece of that history each week.

This week, I was looking over the notes that Pastor Kathryn had put together, and I came across this article on the White House Historical Association’s website. I was really surprised to actually find this article. It was amongst the slavery in the President’s neighborhood Initiative materials. This piece was about a woman named Ona Judge.

She was a slave owned by George Washington’s wife, Martha. The article details what is assumed about Ona’s life as Martha’s preferred lady’s maid, stating that she had some kind of status because she had nicer clothes and she got more than one pair of shoes per year. The article seems to assume that she might have been happy as Martha’s personal servant, but it also goes on to tell of Ona’s escape to freedom.

After learning that she was about to be given to another member of the family as a wedding gift, Ona ran away. Later in her life, she shared in an interview, “I was determined never to be her slave.”

I can imagine that, as an enslaved person, personal identity is a complicated struggle. In Ona’s story, we can see her declaring what her identity would not be. Ona lived the rest of her life in freedom. Married, had children, and actually shared her experience in slavery with several newspapers.

Ona could not have done what she did without a strong conviction in her heart. In the same way, Jesus could not have resisted the temptations of the devil or any of the other incredibly difficult things that he did in his life without knowing who he was and who God said he was.

So who are you? Who are you not?

What would you do for a Klondike? Would you turn an iceberg into ice cream? Seriously, what are your non-negotiables? What are the things that you’re not willing to compromise on, and how will you stand up for those things in this season?

I wanted to share a song with you guys, because that’s what I do, that speaks to this idea of knowing who you are and standing firm in your identity. It’s become somewhat of an anthem in the LGBTQ+ community, but I think it really applies to just about everybody.

I am not a stranger to the dark
“Hide away, ” they say
“‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts”
I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars
“Run away, ” they say
“No one’ll love you as you are”

But I won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me

Another round of bullets hits my skin
Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in
We are bursting through the barricades and
Reaching for the sun (we are warriors)
Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)

I won’t let them break me down to dust
I know that there’s a place for us
For we are glorious

When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I’m meant to be, this is me
Look out ’cause here I come
And I’m marching on to the beat I drum
I’m not scared to be seen
I make no apologies; this is me

In a time where many people want to make who I am and who a lot of my friends are illegal, we have choices to make.

Do I change my name back to the name that was originally on my birth certificate? Do I change the gender marker on my ID? Do I change the way I dress? Do I grow my hair out so that I’m less of a target to gain access to safer spaces in the current climate? Or do I save my soul and stay true to who I am? Would life be easier and less scary? Probably in a lot of ways, the answer is yes.

Maybe it would be easier for you to go to a different church that doesn’t ask you to stick your neck out for the oppressed. Maybe it would be easier if you kept your thoughts and feelings about ICE raids from your neighbors, your coworkers, and your family, but what would you stand to lose? What would you gain if you didn’t compromise?

I encourage you to hold these questions and the questions that are inevitably going to be prompted by these questions in your hearts this week, meditate on them, and press in. See where you’re really standing at the moment. As we move forward, press pause, listen, and know who you are.

May it be so. Amen.

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 I think for most of my life, Lent was about giving something up.

Back in the day, the Catholic church told folks that we needed to give up meat on Fridays and eat fish, and that was great for the fishing industry. Actually, it is a healthier option, and it’s better for the planet. More recently, I hear people talk about giving up chocolate, wine, or some other special thing that they prefer. Maybe it’s desserts or something like that.

I want us to look at this a little differently this year. I am going to ask you to give up something, but I’m hoping that what you’ll choose to give up is the noise or the busyness. Maybe if you’re one of those people who are very busy and do not have a lot of downtime, choose more music than news.

Let’s tone down the rhetoric by just choosing a different option. This year, we’re asking you to slow down.

I’m calling it, “Press Pause & Listen”. Press pause on whatever noise is around you. Press pause on that. Churning chaos that seems to surround our lives right now. We all need a little bit of a break, and what I want you to think about is what are the priorities in your life? What really is most important to you? Is it family? Is it your faith? Friends, money, our neighbors?

Then, in these moments when you pause, I want you to think about how you spend your time. What do you spend the most time doing? Are you focused on the things that matter to you the most, and if not, what could you do differently? That’s something to think about this season.

In our Scripture today, Isaiah 58:1-11, God speaks through Isaiah, calling to the people.

Mainly to the people who had all the things they needed, and he says your fasts are meaningless because you’re not giving anything up. You’re still focused on yourself. You’re not looking at the needs of others.

I think that’s the other part of the listen. When you’re pausing and listening, I hope that you’ll listen for the still small voice of God within you. The voice of your better angel, and I hope you will stop and listen to those around you. That’s where conversations are gonna come in. Our scriptures for Lent have a lot of conversation, people asking questions of Jesus.

I’m gonna invite us to explore some questions, and I’m gonna invite you to sit and think about some of those questions to share with one another, because the way we build community is by knowing the people around us, and we do that by listening better. So often when we get in a conversation, we think about what we wanna say, and we’re not paying attention to what is being said, or maybe the feelings and emotions that are being shared in that moment.

But if we have to do that, we have to notice others, so that we can have compassion and we can understand others better. Right now, we need to have a better understanding. For a lot of us, it’s not easy, and it’s really hard. I’m not gonna sugarcoat this. It’s hard to hear someone say something that is enough to make your blood boil, but what does the Lord require of us?

I usually quote Micah 6:8, “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Isaiah actually has a little bit of a different answer. Actually, it’s not different as much as it defines what justice and mercy and walking humbly with God look like in this scripture from Isaiah,

“Remove the chains of injustice! Undo the ropes of the yoke!
Let those who are oppressed go free, and break every yoke you encounter!
your bread with those who are hungry,
And shelter homeless poor people!
Clothe those who are naked,
and don’t hide from the needs of your own flesh and blood!“

It is about looking at the other. It’s not about saying, “What do I need?”, it’s about saying my neighbor doesn’t have food. Or I haven’t seen my neighbor come out of the house in a while. I wonder if they’re okay, and it can be as easy as picking up the phone. It can be as simple as just expressing care.

Are you all right? Is there anything I can do for you? They may say no, and that’s okay. You can ask other questions, more open questions. What’s happening in your life? What’s on your heart or your mind?

We are to love our neighbors and ourselves. That’s the command we’re gonna get again on Maundy Thursday. It’s the new command.

This week, I’m inviting you to Pause & Listen. We all have ears to hear and a voice to speak, to offer compassion. We can also listen to one another to help each other better understand.

May it be so. Amen.

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 With it being Transfiguration Sunday, I wanted to give you sort of an overview of where we are and where we’re headed.

The liturgical calendar is really a beautiful piece, and I love this graphic of it because it makes it a circle, which is what our calendar really is. Every February 14th comes around, and it’s always Valentine’s Day. Christmas comes around, and it’s always December 25th. Other holidays do move, but we don’t think of time as circular. We make a timeline. We don’t make time a circle or spiral.

Between the end of November and December, Advent begins. Starting with the first Sunday in Advent, we begin looking for the light. There’s this promise that the light is coming, that hope is coming, and so we start looking for the light.

On Christmas Eve, the light arrives and we share it. That’s why we have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve, that’s where that comes from. That beautiful ritual that we have every Christmas Eve that we love so much, it comes out of this idea of the light having now arrived in the world, and so we share it, and this light continues to grow.

At Epiphany, outsiders, the Magi, show up and attest to the light and bring gifts. In Luke’s gospel, it says the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. Next is his baptism. Jesus hears us often, we make it out as if everybody, as if the crowds hear it, but the crowds don’t react. I just read a thing about how it really says that it spoke to him, that Jesus hears “this is my beloved, my son in whom I am well pleased“– Matthew 3:17. Jesus hears that he has his own affirmation and begins his ministry, and through it, he is inviting people to the light. Last week, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” – Matthew 5:14.

Until this point, this is the biggest light point, and it’s not a coincidence. That the light arrives as our seasonal calendar has its darkest night. That’s not a coincidence. Now that there is more light in our season, the light begins to expose our shadows & our darkness, and this next season that we begin on Wednesday, Lent, is when we start to see the darkness in the people in scripture, but we also are invited to see the darkness and our ability for evil.

That brings us to the end of the Easter season, it’s almost June, and we’re almost going into our longest day. It’s all lined out, and today is about having a bigger vision. That’s what Jesus was giving the disciples, and I wanted you to have a bigger vision of how the liturgical calendar is lined out.

Here we are, Peter, James, and John go up to the mountain. They have this moment. They wanna build shelters.

The Festival of Sukkot is a Jewish festival where they build. Jesus says It’s not about that. That’s not what we’re doing here, but they hear this time, God speaks to them and not just Jesus, and says, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him” – Luke 9:35. That’s the piece that is specifically for us, listen to him.

If we haven’t gotten it by this time, when we see him gleaming, we have a cloud, and we have a voice and everything, if we haven’t figured out that this is somebody special, not only are we supposed to recognize that he is the son of God, but we are to listen to him, And what is Jesus’ command to the disciples? “But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid” – Matthew 17:7. That’s the commandment, to get up. Jesus says to the disciples, get up, we have work to do. We aren’t staying here on the mountain. It’s not about staying in that mountain moment, but we have to come down from the mountain because there’s work to do. Do not be afraid. It might be scary, but it’ll be okay. Do not be afraid because God’s in this. God’s got this. Do not be afraid. Trust God. Over and over again, we get reminded to trust in God.

This February, we are also looking at African American history I’m trying to pull out specific people who live out Jesus’ commandment.

I wonder if Dr. Alvin Poissant, in his work, had to remind himself many times to get up and do not be afraid. Dr. Alvin Poissant was born in East Harlem as the seventh of eight children. As a child, he had rheumatic fever that put him in the hospital for a long time. When he was in high school, his mother died of cervical cancer.

He had the advantage of going to a primarily white high school, and from there, he was able to get into Brown. He had a bachelor’s degree from Brown. He went to Cornell Medical College and got his MD in 1960, when he was the only black student in his class. Then he went to UCLA, where he did a residency in psychiatry and got a master’s degree in psychopharmacology.

Then he went to Jackson, Mississippi, and there he helped to provide medical care for civil rights workers and helped desegregate hospitals and healthcare facilities. In ’67, he moved to Boston and was directing a psychiatry program in a low-income housing development for Tufts University Medical School.

Eventually he was recruited by Harvard Medical College, and he started as an associate dean of a student affairs and he became a professor of Psych. Psych psychiatry. If I get the all the right syllables, I’ll do it right. In his time at Harvard, he sponsored, which, which was, he was a prof.

He was at Harvard Medical School for 50 years, and he was the voice of diversity. His voice and his work were about improving the public understanding of black children and families, mental health and suicide, school violence, and substance abuse. He wrote and spoke about the importance of nonviolent parenting and advocated for positive imagery of minorities in the media. He also worked to increase diversity in medicine and reduce health disparities by bringing more members of underserved populations into the medical field.

Unfortunately, Dr. Poissant died last February, but I pulled this information from the Harvard Medical School website. Has a huge write-up on his life and work. He was certainly revered and loved. I found this quote by Shirley Chisholm, and I think it fits what he did.

“You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas”

Unfortunately, we are living in a time when Dr. Poissant’s life’s work is being erased. I mean, he represented diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s what he worked for within the medical field and specifically at Harvard. We’re living in a time where all of the ways that we understand who we are as a country are called into question, and we have to decide who we are. The future that we want to leave for the children and our grandchildren. Like Peter, James, and John, we are invited into the vision of what could be and permitted to be active in accomplishing God’s vision of justice.

Like the disciples, we are being asked to have the courage, not to be afraid in the face of intimidation, cruelty, and hatred. Like them, we are being asked to be willing to follow, get up, and not be afraid.

We are the children of light. That doesn’t mean that we’re always good. We have the same amount of potential to be good as to be evil. It is within us all. We have to be focused on being good, we have to be focused on doing the loving thing, on loving our God, loving our neighbor, whomever they may be, and loving ourselves as we are, as the people God created us to be. With all of our gifts, foibles, goodness, and weaknesses. We’ve got all those things,

We have to figure out how we can use our voices now to stand for love. What we cannot be is silent. We will not be silent because that means being complicit. If we don’t challenge voices that are hurting others, they think we agree. We can’t let them think that because they want to control us, too.

We cannot be silent when they want to send ICE agents to our voting places this November. We cannot be silent about it. That is intimidation, and it is illegal, and we need to say that loud and clear. We have to say it is not okay to disappear people. We won’t have that. That’s not the way our country operates. You don’t get grabbed off the street and sent to a camp. I heard them called concentration camps because the definition of a concentration camp is a place where there is a concentration of people being held before they’re sent somewhere else. We have them in this country. We’ve done it before. It wasn’t right before, and it’s not right now.

We cannot be silent about the need for checks and balances within our government. They don’t get to choose what’s moral. That’s our job. Jesus tells us what is right. What does the Lord require of you to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? That is moral.

So get up and do not be afraid. Let us stand for love.

May it be so. Amen.

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A Talk with Rev. Kuhn (Black Text) and Rev. Edward Bailey (Blue Text)

Last week, I talked about how in this season of Epiphany, the scriptures are all trying to tell us about who Jesus is.

Although obviously, Isaiah 58:8-12 is trying to tell us about God’s expectations and what God’s vision for us is, we believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus’s words, although they’re very much directed to us again, still point out what is important to Jesus. They’re talking about what Jesus’s priorities are, and what I hear in both of these scriptures is the need for justice.

Isaiah, who is a major Jewish prophet whom we listen to, reminds us about feeding the hungry and caring for those who are sick. It’s all the justice pieces that we hear Jesus repeat later in the gospels. This particular piece reminded us that if we stop arguing among ourselves, we will stop the infighting and pay attention to the needs of those around us. Then we’ll see the needs. We’ll see the hungry person, and we’ll see the person who is mourning, and we’ll see the person who needs clothing or a ride or maybe just a person to listen to them. We can do that because when we do justice, God helps the light of Christ within us to shine.

I saw it written as a sacred quid pro quo. If we do justice, God will bless us. But we have to do our part first, and that means we can’t just be sitting around here thinking we’re great. That’s what the scribes and Pharisees were doing. They had the list of the law. The laws still apply, but they had the list of the law and they thought, as long as we do this, we’re good. But then they had their own ways of applying it and deciding who was in and who was out. That’s not justice.

I think even worse was that the Sadducees and the Pharisees had actually co-opted themselves. They no longer worked for the people of God.

They were working for their own position. When Jesus came on the scene, he was for the people, and I think too often people don’t realize the Jewish people, as well as the other folk in that area, were oppressed by the Romans. They didn’t have their own rights. They didn’t have their own justice system, and they actually were conquered. When Jesus was talking to the people, he was talking on behalf of an oppressed people, not on people who are well off, well-connected, who are rich and famous, but he was speaking for those who had no voice for themselves.

As a matter of fact, I said to somebody upset with me, they said, “Reverend Bailey, you always speak in politics.” I asked him the question, what happened to John the Baptist? Why was he beheaded? Because he took on a justice issue, and too often the church doesn’t take on justice issues. We talk sweetly and nicely. That’s why nobody burns our churches down. So if you really believe the world is against you, the world will be against you.

But we have been so co-opted. That they don’t have any fear of the church or the word of God, because we are just like them. We forget that Jesus started a movement, not a church, a movement. That’s why people were hanged, people were crucified, people were killed, because he had a movement. We can barely move today. That’s not because of our age. We just don’t move.

So when you read these scriptures, they’re counterculture. They’re not for what we normally think that we ought to be. But God didn’t start an organization because he needed another organization for people to sit around and feel good about themselves. He created us to be a light in this world, so we’re supposed to make a difference.

I just recognized this morning that he said that light is supposed to be in the house. “People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” – Matthew 5:15. You know, we don’t even show the light in the house. So if you can’t show it in the church, how do you show it outside? How do people see it? The light is supposed to be in the house.

And not only have they co-opted, but the rest of the church is silent. Yes. So, uh, you know, they called a silent majority. That’s the good folk. The people who got the gospel wrong, speaking loudly, and you don’t hear the folk who actually believe that Jesus came to save sinners. Some think that the way they look makes them righteous. Even if you have been convicted of 34 felonies, it doesn’t matter, you know, it doesn’t matter. Politics is more important than morality. When people co-opt themselves and become the church of the state. You don’t teach the gospel. You teach hate, division, and those kinds of things. Jesus came to bring people together and to help us provide for this life so we can go into the next life. I don’t think most of those folk care or are concerned about the next life.

I have one judge that I have to live for. So it doesn’t matter what other people say about me; what does the Lord say? And that’s what this gospel is all about. What is he gonna say to me on that last day? I don’t know about you, but I’m 76, so I’m concerned about that. What is God going to say to me about the life that I’ve lived? Doesn’t matter what other people have done, what’s He gonna say to me? I want to know what God is going to have to say about me, and he’s not gonna ask me about you.

I hear people claiming that they know the will of God and, and that God is blessing them because they have power and influence and money.

But as you said, Rev, that’s not who Jesus came to talk to. That’s not who Jesus brought together. That’s not who Jesus was focused on. Jesus was focused on the people who didn’t have and who were being left out by their state or by the empire that ruled their lives.

So when we are in this time and see that people are being marginalized, their voices. I mean, oh my goodness, people are being kidnapped and disappearing. I just heard of a 10-year-old boy who went to school and did not come home. I can’t make sense of that. That’s not what this gospel says. That’s not what the gospel of Jesus is about.

But the sad thing is, one thing about being retired is that I have a chance to catch up on things that I just had no understanding of. Watching Fox News or MSNBC, they don’t tell everything. I got a chance to listen to some of these podcasts. There’s this thing about policemen and what they’ve been doing. This is not new, where people with a badge have been snatching folk off the street, and doing all kinds of illegal things to folk. It’s not new, and it’s been going on for a while, and you know, people don’t even talk about it. How many women have disappeared in Lancaster County that we don’t talk about? It’s not in the news. Women who are being beaten and abused at home are not in the news. Yet they want to show us some person somewhere else that we can vilify. We wanna show them, but we don’t talk about what’s happening in our own neighborhoods. You need to check the statistics and find out how many young women are being disappeared. We are seeing how the Today Show’s host, Savannah Guthrie’s mother, has been taken; it’s not new, and, amazingly, nobody has talked about it.

We think that crime only happens in certain places. But it’s right where we are. Every time I hear somebody say, “Well, that doesn’t happen here.” Well, it just happened. So it must happen here. We as a people are being stubborn by thinking there’s a difference because of where you live. There is no safe place where there are sinners. Where there are people who will hurt you. Especially us older folk, some of us raised some criminals in our own houses who did not become criminals until we got old, and they wanted what we had. Getting old is scary because you don’t have the strength you had, and now you find out there are people out there who would take what you have. How many of you get calls from people who act like they’re your family, and they’re in trouble, and they want money?

What are we gonna leave behind? That’s what I worry about for my grandchild. Is this the America that I want my grandchild to be raised in? The answer is NO!

I don’t want him to have to worry about walking down the street and being charged with a crime just because of the color of his skin or the clothes that he’s wearing or the way he’s walking. I don’t want that. I don’t want people running with masks, coming into my neighborhood, and terrorizing us.

As a black man, I had the Ku Klux Klan doing that, coming into this community with hoods on, so you couldn’t recognize them. Why? If you are a part of the government, I ought to be able to see who you are. I wanna know who you are. My taxes pay for you. Can you imagine having an employee who comes to work with a mask on? Why are we allowing that? And if we seniors don’t say something, if we are quiet, nothing’s gonna happen unless you and I say something, and that’s letting your light so shine.

May it be so. Amen.

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 We are well into the season of Epiphany, and the season of Epiphany is about revealing who Jesus is.

Since his conception, we’ve been getting signals. This is Matthew’s year, so the angel came, and we heard the story of the angel coming to Joseph and telling Joseph that this baby would be Emmanuel, God with us. Then at his birth, the angels declared, this is our savior, the Messiah, the Lord, and then the magi showed up. They came bearing gifts for this newborn king, this new ruler, this person who would become a shepherd of his people. At his baptism the Holy Spirit came down and declared, this is my beloved, my son.

Since then, we heard John declare who he was and point to him. “He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” – John 1:27. Then we saw how he chose the people to follow him. All he said was, follow me.

Now, we come to the Beatitudes, and I think that we like to approach these as what they tell us about who we are to be, because we have an insatiable desire to be self-absorbed. We love ourselves, so it has to be about us, right? But what does it tell us about who Jesus was? And this may be a different road to get to the same place. But that’s the road I wanna take you on today. Because it’s supposed to reveal something about Jesus.

So who is Jesus? What does this tell us about Jesus?

Well, if we look really carefully. I tried to do a deep dive. I’ve had five weeks to prepare this sermon, not one, five. I don’t usually have that much time, but I did, so I did a deep dive on this, and this sermon contains all of these words that do not appear anywhere else. The words that are translated meek, hungering, merciful, pure peacemakers, having been persecuted, they shall be insulted. Those words aren’t anywhere else. It’s the only time they show up. Well, a couple of them show up in Luke’s Beatitudes, too. Other than that, they’re not in the Bible. So what does that say?

What that says to me is that these words and Jesus are unique, and it means that those first people, remember I told you that you are like those first people hearing it. Those people, I can imagine, said, What did he just say? Did he say what I think he just said? Because these weren’t words that were used all the time. They would have been shocked to hear these words because other people who stood up and professed to know things wanted to talk about power and control. That’s the empire, they’re about telling you what you can do, what you can’t do, and how you’re gonna do it. But that’s not what this says.

The second thing I noticed was this offered hope, both in the short term and the long term. Our scripture says “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.“– Matthew 5:5, and they shall inherit the earth today and in the future. It’s both.

If we had read the verses right before this, they talk about how all the people were bringing their sick and infirm friends and relatives and themselves to Jesus because he was healing them. He was providing hope in the moment. Life was changing with him, and he was giving them this. Here’s your big word for the day: eschatological future hope that in the end they will be with God. They’ll be the ones in the kingdom of heaven.

The third thing it tells us is who Jesus cared about. He didn’t talk about the empire. That was the big thing about Jesus. That’s why Judas is scared. I’m frustrated with him when we get to Holy Week because he didn’t challenge Rome the way they wanted him to. Instead, he came to the people. He was there for the people who needed the help and the healing. This tells us that it wasn’t about the influencers of his time, but those who had been forgotten, ignored, and left behind. That’s who Jesus cared about. So, like I said, maybe a different road to the same destination.

That’s who we are to care about. Not necessarily who we are to be, but it’s who we are to care about. Who are the people in our community who are struggling right now, who are afraid? Terrified, even? He cared about those who wanted a different life, even if they didn’t know how to get there. There was hope in what he said, that this life that they had wasn’t the life that God had intended for them. That was good news. That is the good news, my friends, that this life that we live is not the way God intended for us to live. Even today, 2000 years later, we haven’t gotten it right yet. We still have much to learn.

This month is also the month that the inclusive church team wants us to focus on black history. So, I’m gonna try to do that.

Today, I wanna talk to you about someone who I think lived the way Jesus wants us to live, and who cared about others, who cared about her people as a black American. Who cared about the suffering of others. Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper in the early sixties, and she decided that she had every right to vote as everybody else, and so she went to register. She was beaten and imprisoned in terrificly horrible ways. She paid with her body for that. She was not killed, but she paid with her body

Then she continued the struggle. She co-founded in 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and she went to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. I don’t know how many of you remember that. I was too young to remember that, but I read all about it. I’m gonna read more of this because I wanna make sure I get my facts straight.

She went there demanding integrated nominating committees and delegate committees. Her plea was so compelling, and frightened President Lyndon Johnson so much that he did a press conference. So that she wasn’t on the live tv, but her speech for those who heard it could not be quenched, and it was televised later. In 1968, her vision of racial equality in the delegation became real. Took some time, but became real. She also created the Freedom Farm Cooperative that helped other black farmers have a piece of property. As part of the cooperative, they got a piece of property, and they got a place to live. They got pigs to learn how to breed, raise, butcher, and sell, and become independent.

She was a force to be reckoned with, and you know what she’s most known for? She’s most known for her quote, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s how we remember her. I’m glad to learn the rest. I’m glad I went looking for the rest of her story.

I put the picture of communion there because I knew it was communion Sunday. For me, it was the idea of the breaking of the bread, and the cup poured out for us that this is where we get to live our lives to do the hard work, because hard work is here. It’s not coming, it’s here.

We admit that we are all marred, scarred, and imperfect because we’re human. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know. I need help. Those are four statements that we need to use and own because we are living in a time when we cannot be silent, while those who are poor in spirit, mourning, and meek or those who are hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers are becoming victims of hatred and violence, and we can’t just go along anymore.

So I also created cards for you that are on the high top with each of our congressmen’s names and telephone numbers. They need to hear from you. You need to tell them what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling about what you see in this country.

We need to figure out as a collective what we have to offer. One of the lessons that we got from the clergy in Minnesota was that we need to prepare before they arrive. We need to talk about what assets we have. What assets can our congregation give?

Is it that we can hold a large gathering and bring a lot of people together? We have space for a lot of people to gather. That may be our piece. There’s a prayer vigil that’s gonna start at Lancaster Friends, and maybe we wanna host one of those. Maybe we wanna send additional funds to the churches downtown. I’m thinking about St. John’s Episcopal because I know they do so much with the immigrant community in Lancaster. What is our peace to do? That’s something for us to, to really sit with and discern, but this is a time when we cannot be silent anymore. The white church cannot be silent now.

Next week I have invited Reverend Edward Bailey, who is retired, and he’s coming to have a conversation with us next week, because we’re gonna talk about. What do white people need to know about the black community in Lancaster? Because we don’t have the answers. We need to be listening, but this table makes all the difference. When we receive the bread and the cup, it gives us the strength, the comfort, the determination, the chutzpah, even to do what we didn’t think we could do.

We know that we couldn’t hang on that cross. We couldn’t pour out our blood, and we probably have a hard time or should drink the cup of forgiveness because we have not forgiven ourselves, let alone anyone else, but that is our challenge.

We come here and we gather because we need Jesus Christ. We need each other. And right now we need to be the beloved community.

May it be so. Amen.

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Sermon by Rev. Beth Thompson

One of the things that I love about our two scriptures is that they fit so well together, Psalm 27:1,4-8 and Matthew 4:12-23.

Matthew specifically reminds us that Jesus doesn’t wait for a perfect moment to call people. He doesn’t wait till our schedules are clear. Everything’s settled. He calls people while they’re working. Their hands are wet, they’re full. The nets are wet, and the boats are still tied to the shore. It seems to happen right in the middle of life. This is something I learned in a very personal, embodied way many times, but specifically many years ago when my wife and I moved to Maine, COVID restrictions had lightened.

At that time, I had just graduated from seminary, seeing what it truly means to be a leader in a moment of trauma and confusion. I had done all the work, the reading, the listening. I learned the language, the scriptures, the theology, and what I uncovered for myself was not the tidy belief system that I had suspected my education would end in. I expected clarity.

What I discovered instead was that by following Jesus’s word and following the light, my faith spread everywhere. It breached across categories and labels and crossed traditions. It refused to stay contained, and while that faith felt honest and alive for me, it was not always affirmed. It was often questioned by others, feared by others, and eventually, I questioned myself. That left me with the question I didn’t expect to be asking at graduation. When I stepped on that path to seminary, I guaranteed God that I would follow what was put in front of me. I did. I followed all the paths, probably too many, but I was feeling confused. Am I worthy to speak of the divine’s love if my path and my belief doesn’t fit cleanly in a box or a set way? Am I worthy to lead a community?

That question of worthiness, that quiet sense of lack, became one of my greatest hurdles. It held me back from speaking what was in my heart, from trusting what I felt to be true about God, about faith, about Jesus. I knew the move to Maine was gonna be a good thing. It was the right thing, right? The act of love and support from my wife and her calling, as she had just supported me through seminary. I understood that as a willingness to follow and to trust. Trusting can sometimes be stepping into something unknown, but knowing that doesn’t always mean that you know it in your heart. It doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be easy.

I remember driving into Bangalore for the first time. It was beautiful. The skies were blue, the trees were huge. I have never seen nature like that. I thought I did, being in Pennsylvania for all my life, but nope. And yet my stomach dropped. I felt it. It was a moment like when a rollercoaster is just about to go down. It’s not like panic or fear, but more that deep, unmistakable feeling that something inside is saying, this might not go quite the way you expect.

We often talk about following the light, following our call, and we talk about it like it’s going to be comforting, and sometimes it is, but light exposes in Psalm 27.

The question is, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” That’s not a declaration of uncertainty, but more of a prayer spoken in the presence of fear. The light of God doesn’t just reassure us. It reveals what we’ve learned to live around.

This is true in the scripture too. We celebrate the wise men for finding Jesus, but we rarely speak about their journey. They follow the light, the long nights, the uncertainty, the thresholds they crossed, the wise men followed the light the whole time before they even knew where it was leading them. Their journey wasn’t simple, and I’m sure it wasn’t glamorous; it was real, it was human, and it reminds us that following God’s light or following God’s call rarely begins with clarity. It begins with our trust in our faith.

In Maine, that same light revealed something in me. Although I called myself Christian, my experience of God had always felt wider than that Christian label. Interfaith theology wasn’t new to my heart, but naming it felt risky. Confining God to one definition felt too small. And alongside that knowing, I discovered a quiet, inherited distrust of others. Ironic because I’m another who distrust didn’t stop there. It turned inward, and I started to distrust myself. And that’s not a place you wanna be, especially when you’re trying to walk a path in faith. I questioned whether my way of believing, loving, and listening was even worthy of being offered.

That’s what light does. It doesn’t shame us. It just shows us.

But here’s the other thing that I learned about following. Not every threshold feels like Bangor. Some feel like relief, some like an exhale, some like recognition. I feel that when I walk through the doors of Church of the Apostles, even five years later, a place where I am met, not asked to prove or perform, where faith can be curious and honest, where difference is a gift and not a threat, that too is holy ground.

Following Jesus does not always lead us into discomfort. Sometimes it leads us into places that help us breathe again, and sometimes both. When Jesus says, follow me, he doesn’t promise ease or certainty. He promises God’s presence.

We’re invited to trust that the ground beneath us is already holy. Whether challenging or comforting, unfamiliar or deeply known, it’s holy. Most of God’s invitations aren’t dynamic. They come quietly and daily through small turns, through embodied knowing. Through moments that you could easily ignore, especially when you’re busy. The question is rarely whether God is calling, but whether we are listening? Listening for the light that reveals truth, listening for the ground, asking to be trusted, listening for invitations that help us grow, and those that help us rest.

The light of Christ doesn’t always comfort, but it always reveals. When we are honest, we often discover that the holy ground has been holding us all along.

May it be so. Amen.

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Sermon by Rev. Tracey Marx

 Our winter theme is “Look for the Light.”

We’ve been thinking about how we can see light in the darkness, how we can look for light in the darkness, even when it’s difficult. How can we not be overwhelmed by the darkness that sometimes can feel very overwhelming?

Our gospel reading for today is an unusual one, John 1:29-39. We don’t often turn to this passage because it’s only found in the gospel of John. In the other gospels, we read of Jesus being baptized by John in the Jordan River. But in this gospel, we don’t get that particular story. We only get this one, which is John the Baptist’s witness to the baptism, his witness to who Jesus is.

Well, the main purpose of this passage is pretty clear. It’s repeated several times, and it is this, John is pointing to Jesus. He’s pointing attention toward Jesus. He’s pointing away from himself and to Jesus, saying, He’s the one. I’m not the one. This is a story that takes place over three days. On day one, just the day prior, just a few verses before our passage, the religious leaders had been asking John, who are you? Are you the Messiah? Are you Elijah? Are you Moses? There was yearning expectation for one of these figures to return, and they wanted to know, are you the one? Are you the one we’ve been waiting for? Are you the one we’ve been hoping for? And John says no to each of these questions, and then, quoting the prophet, Isaiah says, “I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,'” -John 1:23.

On day two in our passage, John again is definitively clarifying that he is not the one. He literally points to Jesus, who’s walking by, and John says, he’s the one. He’s the one I’ve been telling you about. He’s the one I’ve been preparing you for and telling you to prepare yourselves for.

Then, on day three, John again points to Jesus, who is again walking by. This time, two of John’s disciples change allegiance right then and there. They stop following John, and they start to follow Jesus. John the Baptist did have followers, disciples, quite a few of them. He was the leader of a movement. He had his own ministry. He preached repentance and the ritual cleansing in water for one’s sins. When John explains the relationship between Jesus and Himself, he says, I myself didn’t know him, which might be hard to understand because according to Luke, they were distant cousins, but the word know can be translated as recognize him. John says, I didn’t recognize who he was until the day of the baptism. And then he has this complicated statement, which is almost like a prepositional riddle, where he says, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” – John 1:30.

At John the Baptist’s invitation and prompting, two of his disciples changed allegiance to follow Jesus. We’re told later in the passage that one of those disciples was Andrew, the fisherman, the brother of Simon Peter, and the other disciple is not named. And it’s the question that Jesus asks Andrew and the unnamed disciple that I’d like us to focus on today.

In John 1:38, we read, “When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?”

In the original Greek, the verb look is ζητέω (zeteo), which is translated to seek. He is asking them, what are you seeking? In the NIV, the translation is, what do you want? It’s a good question, isn’t it?

Because this question that Jesus asks his brand new followers gets to the very heart of our faith journey, the very heart of what it is that God might be calling us to or away from. What God might be wanting us to hear or to pay attention to.

Let me ask you this question this morning, and I’d like to ask it in three slightly different ways. The first is simply, what do you want? It’s still January. It’s still the beginning of a new year. It’s still a good time for looking deeply into our hearts and minds and answering the question. Not to create a resolution that might be hard to stick to, but to consider our identity. Now, when we ask this question, we might have to be careful because sometimes the first thing that comes to mind, what we really want is for someone else to change, someone else to be different, or we want circumstances to change, or we want outcomes to be exactly the way that we want them to be when we don’t have that kind of control.

So, asking this question as a spiritual question really focuses our attention on what we want within ourselves. Maybe when we first consider this question, we might answer on a more surface level. Maybe we wanna go on a trip, learn a new skill, explore a new hobby, fix something in our home, declutter our living space, spend more time with family, rekindle a friendship, or eat in a healthier way/be active. But when we dig deeper, there might be an unmet need that we are trying to address by those wants.

The second way of asking this question is simply to add the word really. What do you really want underneath what you might say at first? Maybe your answer might change and deepen. Maybe we want to belong. Maybe we want connection & a community. Maybe we want reassurance that we’re doing okay. Maybe we want to make a difference. Maybe we want to know that our lives matter. I think it can be really helpful to qualify the question one further time by remembering who is asking it. Because we’re not just asking ourselves the question. We remember that it is God who is asking the question of us.

Then the question changes slightly, and this is the third way of asking it. What do we really need from God? Then our answers change again. They distill down into what’s most important in the very core of us, where it’s just us and God. I need to feel God’s love. I need a sense that He is right here with me and with those I love. Bringing light into the darkness, bringing enough light so that it can shine deeply into what’s difficult and what needs to be addressed, and allow us to look straight at it and not be afraid. Or, I need God’s reassurance. I need His encouragement, or I need to find rest. I need to find rest in God. I need peace.

Sometimes, our answers can be further distilled down to something very simple and very central. When God asks, what do you really need? We might just answer. I need you.

John the Baptist is well known to most of us.

We might remember that in the gospel of Luke, we’re told that as a baby, he leaped in his mother Elizabeth’s womb. When her cousin Mary, who was newly with child, came to stay for an extended time, we might remember that his father Zechariah was silenced by the angel Gabriel for his disbelief that he and his wife, in their older ages, would bear a child.

We might remember that Elizabeth and Zechariah were told that their child was special and that his lips should never touch alcohol because he would be filled with the Holy Spirit. We likely remember that as an adult, he ate locusts and honey and lived in the wilderness. He wore camel hair and a leather belt. He was an aesthetic, turning away from the comforts of the world in order to be closer to God. Some scholars think that John was part of the Essene community at Qumran, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the oldest known manuscripts of the Hebrew scriptures. In fact, there was a tradition of ritual washing for spiritual cleansing that existed at Qumran, a practice which might have been the forerunner of baptism.

We might remember that John the Baptist came to a very tragic end as he spoke out against the immoral behavior of Herod the Tetrarch, and that his death is actually one of the more disturbing scenes in the gospels. Anyone who has seen the musical Godspell knows that John the Baptist belts out the very first song, Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord.

What’s less well known to us is that John the Baptist is the only one in the Bible who refers to Jesus as the Lamb of God. The phrase Lamb of God is very liturgical in Latin. It’s Agnes Day. Agnes, meaning lamb, and day, meaning of God. We use it in our communion, liturgy, Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Lamb of God, have mercy on us and grant us your peace. So in the Bible, you might be surprised to find that this phrase only appears twice, and both of those times are right here in this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus is referred to as a lamb in other places. But the specific phrase, lamb of God is only found here, and it’s found in the context of John the Baptist pointing away from himself and to Jesus.

He’s saying it’s Jesus. Here is the lamb of God. There are so many other phrases that John could have used. Here is a charismatic speaker who’s drawing crowds that are eager to hear what he has to say. Here’s a man who tells thought-provoking stories that help us to think about who God really is. Here’s a healer who allows the power of God to work within him so that he can do miraculous things, but he uses this phrase, lamb of God. There’s very likely an intention to call to mind the sacrifice of Jesus. With this phrase, lamb of God, we are reminded that Jesus gave his life for our forgiveness.

It’s a foreshadowing the end of the gospel story right here in the beginning, right here in Chapter one. We are invited and encouraged by the author of this gospel, whose name is also called John, to read the entire story. Through the lens of its conclusion, here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Here he is just beginning his ministry. Here, he is just beginning to have others choose to follow him. Here he is just beginning to gently invite those followers to look inward and to ask themselves this question, a question of discipleship, a question that gets to the very heart of our faith. If you follow me, as you follow me, as you continually redefine your life to follow me, what are you looking for?

After Jesus asks these new followers the question, what are you looking for? They don’t answer him exactly, but in a way, they do. They say, rabbi, where are you staying? They call him Rabbi (teacher), which in itself is a statement of allegiance, letting him know that he will be their teacher and they will be his followers, and then they ask this very practical question, where are you staying? They want to know, and it’s understandable where they’ll be staying. Maybe, if there’s gonna be something to eat, who else might be there? They wanna know what it’s all gonna look like. Jesus, in typical Jesus fashion, doesn’t tell them what it’s going to look like. Instead, he invites them to come and find out for themselves by saying, come and see.

This quintessential invitation reminds us that discipleship involves a lifetime of following, of paying attention, of being open to what happens next.

I’d like to invite us to consider this question today, right now, but also maybe later today or this week, maybe as you journal or just have some quiet time. Maybe as you have a conversation with a trusted friend. Maybe when you’re by yourself, and it’s just you and God. What are you looking for? What is it that you need from God? What is a need that you have that only God can fill?

As the French philosopher Pascal said in the 17th century, so poetically, “there is a God-shaped emptiness in the heart of every person that only God can fill”.

Maybe the phrase, lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world can help us to further and even more deeply answer this question with honesty and vulnerability. What is it that we need from God? Maybe it’s a reminder of God’s grace & of God’s mercy. Maybe it’s a reassurance that no matter what happened in the past, no matter what, you are forgiven and you get that chance to start again. You get that chance to be seen as a person who’s not defined by their past or by their past mistakes, but by their relationship to the one who continually invites us to follow and to be faithful.

Maybe it’s a prompt to forgive someone else, to reconcile, or to stretch out your circle of inclusion. What is it that we really need from God as a church, as a community here in Lancaster, as a nation, as human beings, and worldwide? What do we really need from God? I invite us to open ourselves to those questions. To live with those questions, and as you do, may you look for the light this day, this winter, this new year, and always the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Have mercy on us and grant us your peace.

May it be so. Amen.

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