There once was a man named Frank. As far as I can tell, if he wasn’t a founding member of my UCC church in Tennessee, he joined the church sometime between the late 1950’s and the late ‘60’s. He was racist. I don’t make this claim lightly. His racism was well known. Once, when a black family visited the church, which was and is predominantly white, he became so incensed that he stomped out of worship, went downstairs and cut off the lights during the middle of the service, and went home. He was so racist that turned the side of the building in which he ran his business into a giant billboard from which he could broadcast racist message after racist message, usually directing his rage at Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Highlander Center, a social justice training center where Dr. King and Rosa Parks had trained that was about 30 miles from the church.

      A man named John became the pastor of that congregation in the early 1980’s, a few decades after the worst of Frank’s public behavior. John was deeply shaped by anti-racism work and the Civil Rights Movement.  Where Frank felt as though his faith supported his contention that Black people deserved to be second class citizens, John's faith taught him that Black people were beloved by God.  I’m not sure how John managed to be Frank’s pastor. But, somehow, he did. One day, after church, Frank said, “Oh, the wildflowers must be beautiful right now.” And John said, “Well, Frank, let’s go look at them tomorrow.” Surprisingly, Frank agreed. 

     Something powerful bloomed as they walked along the path looking at flowers in the wilderness. Starting that day, very slowly, things began to change. Frank seemed to be having a change of heart once he had someone whom he respected and couldn’t push around who was willing to be in relationship with him and call out his racism. I’m not sure how Frank was ever going to make amends for all the hatefulness he put out in the world, but he seemed to try.  He ended up developing a program called Servant of All, one that is a bit like our Deacons Love Fund combined with a list of fix-it people who could be called to help around the house. Servant of All was meant to help all people, congregants and outsiders, who came to the church looking for help. And, I think that church has been trying to make amends, too, after being a place that didn’t seem to challenge this powerful man’s hatefulness for decades. John’s dedication to challenging Frank through Christian love was part of this amend-making. While Frank was long dead by the time I joined that church, John was still alive and an active member in his retirement. Whenever John talked about his relationship with Frank, he would always say, with deference to the Holy Spirit that was surely at work there, that Frank was his only conversion.
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     I believe a core part of Christian faith is being willing to challenge biases that our communities tell us are God-given that are really just human-made. Today’s reading from Acts is a story about the Holy Spirit directing a disciple to go against biases he was taught. In so doing, a beloved person was able to be welcomed to Jesus’ wide table.  Philip was the disciple. He was a leader among the Greek-speaking Jews who followed Jesus. He felt a particular calling to leave Jerusalem to preach the Gospel. It is interesting that he went to preach in Samaria when he left Jerusalem. As some of you may know, one would be hard-pressed to find many groups of people more reviled than the Samaritans in Scripture. Samaria would seem like the last place Philip would go. But, as I noted before, the Holy Spirit will often lead us to questioning what once seemed unquestionable. So Philip headed to Samaria and John and Peter followed him. Eventually, the Holy Spirit took Philip to the Ethiopian.

     For as strange as it would have been for Philip to be told that he was supposed to spend time with Samaritans, spending time with a Gentile eunuch would have been almost as difficult. Eunuchs were marginalized people in his culture. Though this eunuch appears to love the Jewish God, so much that he traveled to Jerusalem for Passover, eunuchs were expressly prevented from being a part of the covenantal community in Deut. 23.1. He would have never been allowed to convert to the religion that he appeared to find so meaningful because he was unable to fit into the social and religious roles that all men were expected to fill. According to scholars I have read, eunuchs, because of changes made to their body, usually without their consent, existed in an in-between gender role, not women and not men. This in-betweenness meant that they were not considered whole and therefore could not be considered to be part of God's holy people. The fact that most people who were made eunuchs were enslaved and their bodies changed against their will did not seem to matter. They were still excluded. So, even though this eunuch had high status in some ways (he was wealthy and had a trusted position in a foreign court), he would always be an outsider in the faith to which he aspired.

     Thank God that Philip took the Ethiopian's faith seriously, treating him as a whole person asking honest questions about God. And, Thank God that the unnamed Ethiopian, likely accustomed to rejection due to his status outside expected gender norms, accepted Philip's offer to teach him.  Despite everything that stood between them, the Holy Spirit pushed Philip to put aside what he had learned about who could be a part of God’s kindom and allowed him to see a person excited to know more about God who was sitting right in front of him. Because Philip listened to the Holy Spirit, the Ethiopian learned not only the Good News of Jesus Christ, but also encountered a disciple who was a living embodiment of the power of the Holy Spirit to overturn all of the prejudices that we have learned that keep us from fully knowing God's love and fully loving our neighbors as Christ demanded.

     Now, I realize that Frank and John's story and Philip and the Ethiopian's story are not exact parallels. The first is a story of one Christian who was working to dismantle the racism he had been taught then going on to push a Christian who fully embraced racism to change his ways. The second is the story of a Christian who, in overcoming his own biases, was able to welcome someone whom many considered to be an outsider into the Body of Christ. However, I do think that both of these stories show us something about how following Jesus means risking going against all that you have been taught in order to make the Body of Christ more just and loving and reshape the world into God kindom of Love and Justice.

     Who here has watched the news over the last few weeks and thought: We can’t keep living like this. Something has got to change. Maybe you’ve even thought: “Oh, this is horrible and, yet, nothing is going to change.” I hope these two stories can show you what can happen when an inspired Christian is clear about what the loving and just action is and just does it, not because they know they will succeed, but because they know it’s right to try. I’m not sure that John really thought he could get through to Frank, but he knew that it was right to try. He couldn’t let his racism go unchallenged. And, Philip... who knows if Philip could have once seen himself preaching in Samaria to someone who was excluded from his religious community, despite his great faith. And, yet, the Holy Spirit led him there. So, he spoke and he shared his faith. And, the Ethiopian’s life was changed by that generosity.

     There is a persistence that is a part of Christian faith in both of these stories. And, now is a time for a persistent, insistent faith. Because some people are counting on us being so disillusioned that we don’t fight for what we know is right... a world where people can grocery shop and worship and go to school without the threat of gun violence... a world where medically vulnerable people aren’t ignored in public health responses... a world where gender-non-conforming people aren’t treated like more of a danger to children than weapons of war... a world where a few wealthy people can’t buy the attention of politicians, leaving regular people without the support they need to survive. Scripture shows us again and again what the kindom of God looks like. And, it looks like the Ethiopian seeing some water and asking what is stopping him from being baptized in that very moment and Philip realizing that nothing should. So, what is stopping us from doing what is right? Nothing should. The Holy Spirit is leading us right now. May we make the choice to follow.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Coleman Baker- https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2445
Mitzi J. Smith https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1235
Richard Jensen https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=307

Also, our pastoral intern Sarah and I worked on this list of worship and policy resources in the wake of another mass shooting, as well as resources for talking to kids about traumatic events: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oPI8kcYfPOCjc2jQviCTWZ0OLmJicdUp1aBkyt3pdik/edit?usp=sharing
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     ​The Bible begins in darkness. Genesis 1:1-2 says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” Notice how busy God is in the darkness. The theologian Catherine Keller, in her book On the Mystery, argues that what is often translated as “formless void” is better translated as “waste and wild.” And, she says that the darkness can be understood to be hovering, pulsating, over the deep chaos.

     Genesis tells us that God breaths over this deep, dark abyss and that depth... dark as rich soil... dark as good coffee... dark as the woods around my house last night before the storm... was full of potential. In her sermon “Embracing the Light and Darkness in the Age of Black Lives Matter,” Dr. Wil Gafneys says, “We are afraid of the dark but God is not. Darkness is a creative space to God.” God works in this fertile chaos and draws out creation... first light and then water and the sky and the land and then plants, stars, planets, all creatures that swim, slither, run, and fly... and finally, us... humanity. But, before there was anything else, there was wild deep and darkness and God. God was there, working in the dark.

     In another sermon called “Conspire with the Spirit,” Dr. Gafney notes that throughout scripture, God is shown abiding in the darkness. In Exodus 20:21, Moses approaches the mountain where God is said to be. It is all sound and fury, smoke and lighting and trumpet and thunder. The people stay at a distance, but Moses approaches God in the Thick Darkness. That same thick darkness is also described in Deuteronomy 4:11. Second Samuel 22: 12 and Psalm 18:11 describe God making darkness a canopy around Godself. 1 Kings 8:12 and 2nd Chronicles 6:1 each describe God as dwelling in thick darkness. The text in Dr. Gafney’s list that probably most poetically describes the holiness of the dark is Isaiah 45: 3, God’s word to Cyrus: “I will give you the treasures of the darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the Lord, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.” While some parts of the Bible use darkness and light to contrast distance from God and nearness to God, it is clear that there is a vibrant biblical tradition of God being in the shadows and the deep and heights and the dark.

     So, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to read that there is something holy and healing about a shadow here in Acts 5. Now, I’ll admit that I think the signs and wonders here are more likely intended to mirror the signs and wonders of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Acts is the sequel to Luke, after all, and shows us how Christ’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, lived on through the Apostles. Just as Jesus healed people, so will the Apostles. In a story that mirrors in many ways the story of people lowering their friend down through a roof so that Jesus may heal him in Luke 5 and the story of the bleeding woman who sought healing by touching the hem of Jesus’ garment in Luke 8, here in Acts 5, we are told that people were bringing the sick to lay on cots and mats in the street near where Peter was preaching, so that if he walked by them, and his shadow cast over them, like God’s breath cast over the deep, that they would be healed.

     You might read this as a sign of the sheer desperation of the ill. The stories from Luke certainly seem to be the acts of those desperate for healing. How sick must you be and how greatly might you be suffering to look for healing in a shadow? I appreciate that these people are never described as somehow pathetic or foolish for going to such measures, though their need is obvious. If healing and wholeness are so close, obviously you will draw near, as Moses did to the Thick Darkness of Sinai. You might find treasures in the shadows and God in the shade offered by Peter’s moving form, as he goes about preaching and teaching and healing on behalf of the Risen Christ.

     Now, I’m not saying that the shadow of Peter is exactly like the Luminous Darkness of God. Peter was not God though the Holy Spirit was with him. But, I do wonder if the people who hoped to even be touched by his shadow, if not his healing hands, had some spark of memory of their mysterious God who drew light and life out of the abyss and direction and care from the deep.  They might not understand how the shadow might help but they are willing to seek out its holy potential. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

     Anyone who tells you that goodness and holiness are only found in the light, in whiteness, in that which is clear and easy to understand has missed this message of the Bible, that God abides in the dark.... that life can be born from the deep and the wild... that the shadows can bring healing and that God is bigger and more mysterious than our tidy and often incorrect orderings of the world can contain. The white supremacist who murdered 10 people in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo yesterday... he thought goodness could only live in whiteness and in tidy, racist social categories. He destroyed lives because he had more faith in whiteness than in God, who abides with us in both the light and the dark. May we who know the God who abides in the thick darkness, the Christ of the Empty Tomb, and the Holy Spirit who flows even through the densest of shadows never follow down his same path. And, may we work with the Holy Spirit, as our forebears the Apostles did, for a world where all may be made well.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Wil Gafney, "Fifth Sunday of Easter" Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2022)
Also, these two sermons of Dr. Gafney's:

• Embracing the Light and the Darkness is the Age of Black Lives Matter: https://www.wilgafney.com/2015/12/27/embracing-the-light-the-darkness-in-the-age-of-black-lives-matter/
• Conspire with the Spirit: https://www.wilgafney.com/2018/01/07/conspire-with-the-spirit/

Catherine Keller, On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008)

     Tell me if you recognize these song lyrics:
      Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
      He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
      He have loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
     His truth is marching on
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     As many of you have said, it’s the Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by Julia Ward Howe in 1862. Howe, a poet, abolitionist, and suffragist, actually spent quite a lot of time just down the road in Gardiner, Maine, and one of her daughter’s eventually moved there. During the Civil War, Howe had worked for the US Sanitary Commission, an organization that encouraged more sanitary conditions at field hospitals and for soldiers. After witnessing the destruction of that war instigated by slavers, both during battle and the on-going suffering veterans and people who lost family members and friends after the war, she grew leery of war, in general. It was too easy for powerful people to risk other’s lives for their own petty gain.

     In 1870, she shared what would become known as The Mother’s Day Proclamation for Peace. This proclamation, and her organizing of peace actions and demonstrations in New York, would serve as one part of the foundation for our current holiday of Mother’s Day, though, in her lifetime, she was not able to successfully develop the Mother’s Day for Peace into a national holiday.  Here is the text of her proclamation:

MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION
Boston, 1870
Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies.
Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage,
for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says:  Disarm, Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
nor violence vindicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
at the summons of war,
let women now leave all that may be left of home
for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means
whereby the great human family can live in peace,
each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask
that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality,
may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient,
and at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
to promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
the amicable settlement of international questions,
the great and general interests of peace.
~ Julia Ward Howe

     While I do not think that women, as some essential part of our being, are just magically more peaceful and less capable of violence, I have been thinking about Mrs. Howe’s proclamation this week. What would it mean to listen to the wisdom of the ones who have been tasked with both the physical risk, often life-threatening, of bearing children into the world as well as, in so many cases, the bulk of the responsibility in nurturing them into adulthood? How do we reckon with the aftermath of violence, even violence that seems justified, and the ways that trauma ripples out, like flood waves or earthquakes, completely changing lives?

     Howe’s proclamation is at once a realistic assessment of the pain of state violence and the need for collective mourning, while also demonstrating a kind of absurd level of hopefulness in the power of everyday people of good will to work together for peace. This congress of international women who will meet to wage peace? Impossible. It could never happen. It is good to remember that it’s the Easter season, though. And, people thought that Resurrection was impossible, too. Perhaps our faith is rooted in working towards the faithful impossible.

     I started this sermon by mentioned one song about war, The Battle Hymn of the Republic. Our Psalm, today, is also a song written in response to war and state violence. This Psalm describes God as a stronghold for the oppressed. Stronghold here means something like a fortress or force you can count on for support and salvation. In his commentary on this text, John Kselman says this image of God, as “righteous judge and defender of the oppressed” is very common in Psalms. I’d add that it’s common across the Bible all the way into Jesus’ life and ministry.

     The Psalmist doesn’t spend any time questioning the validity of state violence, but does describe the horrors of war, sometimes with a level of glee towards the suffering of enemies that I can’t really stomach. But, here in the middle of the Psalm, is this assertion that God stands with those who suffer at the hands of enemies of the nation in which they live... that God stands with the regular people whose lives are made worse by the call to war of their leaders. God does not forget the cry of the afflicted. God is the one who lifts the suffering up from the gates of death. And, those who have been saved will rejoice at the gates of God’s city, the fortified walls of Jerusalem.
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     Julia Ward Howe called for an audacious congress of women to work for peace. The Psalmist sings praises for God at the city gates in the wake of a terrible war. What is the hopeful and impossible seeming future you are dreaming of? Is it a world where all people have what advocate organization SisterSong calls “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities?” Is it a world where transgender kids have the support they need to grow into the lives they are called to live, whole and healthy and beloved? Knowing that God is your stronghold, what impossible future can you see beyond the gates of death that are looming? What songs will you sing to God as you work with the Holy Spirit for the impossible? May you find the song of praise that can guide you in this holy work of the faithful impossible.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Information about Julia Ward Howe and the Mother's Day Proclamation:

• https://peacealliance.org/history-of-mothers-day-as-a-day-of-peace-julia-ward-howe/
• https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/mothers-day-for-peace/
• https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/julia-ward-howe

Sistersong: https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice
John S. Kselman, "Psalms," The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994).

      ​What does it mean to live in the world when you know that Resurrection is real? That is part of what Paul addresses in his letters to churches. As we progress into the Easter season, that is still a question to which we must attend. How do we live in the world in a way that is shaped by our belief that Resurrection is real? Paul, in this letter to the church in Rome, argues that being Christian means grounding ourselves and our actions in love.

     In an introduction to this letter that he wrote for the New Interpreter’s Bible. Neil Elliott notes that Paul hadn’t actually yet met the Christians to whom he was writing. The work that we now call the book of Romans was not a letter to encourage people he had known and worshiped with. This is a letter to Christians whom he did not know but whom he hoped to convince to support his ministry. It seems like he really wanted to “present his case,” so to speak. This letter ends up being what is likely the most complete articulation of his understanding of his mission and of what it means to follow Christ out of all of his letters that have survived to the current day. When Paul was trying to get some people, who didn’t know him to support his mission, he decided to tell them, very clearly, what he believed. And, what he believed was “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

     I preached on Romans a little while ago and noted that there might have been some tension in the congregation that Paul was addressing. Elliott, in his commentary, noted that Jewish people, including those who would understand them as followers of Jesus, had only recently been allowed to return to the city. There seems to be some conflict between those who were ethnically Jewish and those who were Gentile, even though they all followed Jesus. Because there lingered an anti-Judaism within the Roman elite and among Roman citizens, Paul wanted to make sure that that kind of ethnic and religious prejudice was not a part of their Christian community. Few things would be less loving than harassing an ethnic minority that the government had chosen to target. Unfortunately, Christians continue, to this day, to forget this lesson of Romans.

     I always think it’s interesting to read how Paul reads other biblical texts. He was a Pharisee and knew Jewish scripture and religious law like the back of his hand. Once he had his conversion experience and began to follow Jesus, he began to read those scriptures and practices through the lens of his new faith in Christ. Our reading for today includes some of his commentary on that scripture and practice as a way to affirm the on-going influence of Jewish religious law on early Christian churches. He assumes this church, even with a large Gentile population, knows parts of Jewish traditions, particularly things that were central to Jesus’ own teaching. And love was both the foundation of Jewish law and Jesus’ mission.

     Paul, like Jesus himself, sees love as foundational to what we know as the Ten Commandments: “Any other commandments are summed up in this word, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” And, when you are trying to develop a life shaped by how you follow Christ, these scriptures, grounded in love, can help you learn how to shape your life with Christ. Following this ethic of love will give your life a God-contour. In his poetic commentary on this text, Dr. Israel Kamudzandu says “love is the grand ground on which everything grows and flourishes.” He goes on to say, “While hate and oppression dehumanize others, love, if well done and exercised, will give birth to a new world order, one in which healthy love can be nursed, grow, and flourish.” If we return to the question at the beginning of the sermon, how do you live like the resurrection is real? You love, as Jesus loved.

     It can be very easy to say “love your neighbor,” though people seem to struggle with what love actually means. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people justify saying some pretty heinous homophobic things by arguing that it would not be loving for them to be kind to someone who’s gender or relationship they don’t think is appropriate. They might compare it to yelling at someone to stop them from, say, touching a hot stove. I will tell you right now: homophobia is not loving, no matter what kind of intent is behind it. And, yet, people will say they are doing it out of love. This love thing is complicated, isn’t it?

     Jesus gives some pretty clear instruction about what is loving. He told a story once about a man who, despite risks to his safety and a disruption in his routine, helps a stranger who has been beaten. He also spoke of God judging the nations by how much they demonstrated love by feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, by welcoming the stranger, by offering clothes and medical care to those who need it, by tending to those imprisoned. He also told a couple stories about lost people and lost sheep being sought after and welcomed when they returned home. If you want to know how to love, those seem like some places to start.

     In his commentary on this text, Dr. Kamudzandu says, “The church is indeed a place where persons can be organized, socialized, and mobilized to effectively love others.” This is one of my favorite descriptions of church that I’ve seen recently. I love the idea of church as a place where we practice love inside the walls so that we may practice love beyond these walls. This is why we gather and pray and sing together... to remind each other of God’s love and to share that love with the world. It is where we can talk with one another about what loving action actually is and offer amends and forgiveness when we fail to love. Love can be our lifestyle... that’s how Dr. Kamudzandu describes it: Love as a lifestyle. I pray that you can feel God’s love today and that you may see a way to practice that love in the world beyond these doors. If Resurrection is anything, it is love. May that love arise anew in you today and every day.

Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Wil Gafney, "Third Sunday of Easter," Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church, Year W (New York: Church Publishing Incorporated, 2022)
Israel Kamudzandu: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23/commentary-on-romans-138-14
Neil Elliott, "Romans," The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1994)