Based on Luke 10:25-37
By Rev. Jamie Green Klopotoski
First Baptist Church, Gloucester, MA
Two
weeks ago, when I last had the privilege of preaching at this pulpit, my
message was about having the courage to speak up against all of the injustices in
our world. I was hoping we would be inspired to end our quiet acceptance and
complacency, and commit to the message of the Prophet Isaiah to be silent no
more.
Just
two days after that sermon, on Tuesday January 21st, the world witnessed an
extraordinarily brave example of speaking up, during the National Prayer Service
at the Washington National Cathedral as part of the Presidential Inauguration. The
person who spoke up was an Episcopal Bishop, Mariann Edgar Budde. She preached
a sermon about unity, saying this: “Unity is a way of being with one another
that encompasses and respects differences, that teaches us to hold multiple
perspectives and life experiences as valid and worthy of respect; that enables
us, in our communities and in the halls of power, to genuinely care for one
another even when we disagree. Unity at times, is sacrificial, in the way that
love is sacrificial, a giving of ourselves for the sake of another. Jesus of
Nazareth, in his Sermon on the Mount, tells us to love not only our neighbors,
but to love our enemies, and to pray for those who persecute us; to be
merciful, as our God is merciful, and to forgive others, as God forgives us.
Jesus went out of his way to welcome those whom his society deemed outcasts.”
She
went on to describe the three foundations of unity:
1.
honoring the
inherent dignity of every human being – which
means refusing to mock, discount, or demonize those with whom we differ,
choosing instead to respectfully debate across our differences, and whenever
possible, to seek common ground
2.
honesty - speaking the truth, even when–and
especially when–it costs us.
3.
humility – admitting that we have made mistakes and we
will continue to make mistakes.
She
ended her sermon with the soundbite that has been played across media outlets
the past two weeks. It was a direct plea to the President, who was seated in
the front row. She said directly to him: “In the name of our God, I ask you to
have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay,
lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent
families, who fear for their lives. And the people who pick our crops and clean
our office buildings; who labor in our poultry farms and meat-packing plants;
who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shift in
hospitals—they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the
vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes, and are good
neighbors. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities
whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. Help those who are
fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and
welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger,
for we were all once strangers in this land.”
My
immediate responses were Amen! and Wow! I couldn’t believe she was brave enough
to say all of that directly to the President. Would I have been brave enough to
do that if given the opportunity? I hope and pray to God that my answer would
be yes.
Bishop
Budde was asked on NPR’s All Things Considered what made her decide to make
this direct appeal to the President. She said, “We were gathering to pray for
the unity of the country after a divisive election season, and as I was
reflecting on it and talking to different people, I realized to be united as a
country with so much diversity, we need mercy. We need compassion. We need
empathy. And rather than just list that as a broad category, I decided to make
an appeal to the president. Because I was hoping to speak to him, and to
everyone who was listening to me speak to him - to help us remember that we
could be kinder. I decided to ask him as gently as I could to have mercy.”
Not
surprisingly the President did not take this message very well. He demanded an
apology from Bishop Budde for having the audacity to ask him to have mercy on
people in this land. And 21 members of the house of representatives introduced house
resolution 59, condemning Bishop Budde for asking the president to have mercy.
The bill states that she used her position inappropriately, promoting political
bias instead of advocating the full counsel of biblical teaching.
At
issue here, I think, is what is meant by the “full counsel of biblical teaching”.
Because in my opinion, the root of everything that Bishop Budde said can be
found in the bible. And to be fair, you don’t even need to read the whole bible
to get the message of Jesus that Budde was preaching. You really just have to
read 12 verses from the 10th chapter of the Gospel of Luke. The gospels of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all quote the Greatest Commandment as given by Jesus:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and
strength. This is the first and the greatest
commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” The whole of
the biblical message, the full counsel of biblical teaching, hinges on these
two commandments of love! But only Luke goes on to quote Jesus’ explanation of
who exactly our neighbor is.
Is
the outcast our neighbor?
Is
the foreigner our neighbor?
Is
the person who is very different from us our neighbor?
Is
the person who speaks a different language than us our neighbor?
The
answer is a resounding YES—they are all our neighbors. But in typical Jesus
speak, he doesn’t just say YES. He tells a parable – the parable of the Good
Samaritan.
Samaritans
were outcasts, foreigners, very different from Israelites. But it was the
Samaritan, a stranger, an enemy, who had mercy on the man injured on the road,
not the Priest or the Levite. Jesus asked, “Which of these three, do you think,
proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers? The one who
showed him mercy. The Samaritan. Go, and do likewise.” Love your neighbor as
yourself very clearly means love every single person in the entire world, every
single member of the human race, even strangers, even enemies.
Sadly,
the heart of Jesus’ message has been warped and misinterpreted and
misunderstood. Just this week, the Vice President said, “There is a Christian
concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then
you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then
after that, you prioritize the rest of the world.”
In
my favorite social media comment I think I’ve ever read, Jesuit priest, Father
James Martin, responded, “Actually no.” He goes on to explain, “This misses the
entire point of Jesus's Parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus's fundamental
message is that *everyone* is your neighbor. It is not about helping just your
family or those closest to you. It's specifically about helping those who seem
different, foreign, or other. They are all our "neighbors." In fact,
Jesus was often critical of those who would put family first. For Jesus, ties
to God were more important than family ties. And responsibilities to family
clearly took second place to the demands of discipleship. But Jesus's deeper
point in the Parable of the Good Samaritan can only be understood from the
point of view of the beaten man: our ultimate salvation depends, as it did for
that man, upon those whom we consider to be the ’stranger.’”
Oohf.
It is such a powerful, radical, difficult message. Our salvation depends upon
the stranger. Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for God. Following
Jesus, being a Christian, is not meant to be easy. Kingdom work is hard work. Part
of the reason it is so hard is that it is threatening to the people in power to
include ALL people, to give rights to ALL people, to give a voice to ALL
people, to welcome ALL people. This fear is not new. People with power have
always been threatened by a message of nonviolence and love and inclusion for
all, because more equality, more inclusion, and more diversity, means less
power, less control, and less money for those at the top.
King
Herod killed ALL the baby boys in Bethlehem because he feared the prophecies
that the baby Jesus would take over his kingdom. Pontius Pilate had Jesus
crucified because he feared Jesus would become the new king of the Jews. They
were afraid of Jesus. They were afraid of his messages of love and nonviolence.
They were afraid of their power being taken away and given to the masses. So
rights get taken away, voices are silenced, and people are killed.
We
are experiencing yet again a world where power is threatened so rights are
denied. There have been a slew of executive orders seeking to promote hatred
and bigotry, to limit equality, to demonize diversity, and to prevent inclusion
of all people.
Thanks
to John Hicks, I learned about a pastor named Rev. Dr. Caleb Lines who, like
Bishop Budde, is not afraid to speak up. In one of his most recent sermons, he
said, “You can issue as many executive orders as you want, but God has already
issued an executive order and God’s executive order is this: that you belong
here, as you are, that you are welcome here as you are, and that who we answer
to is God. Whenever we come together in our full diversity, we reflect God’s
divine image. Equity is about ensuring that we all have enough. Everyone is
seen as equal, we are all included. There is a place at the table for all of
us.”
I
believe in diversity. I believe in equity. I believe in inclusion. I believe
every single human being is a child of God and deserves to be treated as a
child of God. So l find myself wonderful, “How will I get through the next four
years?”
Thankfully,
one of my favorite Christian writers, Anne Lamott, recently answered the
question:
“First,
[the advice of] my Jesuit friend Father Tom Weston –‘We do what’s possible.’ We
are kind to ourselves. We take care of the poor. We get hungry kids fed. We
pick up litter.
Second,
I tell them what Susan B. Anthony’s grandniece said. Also named Susan B.
Anthony, she told her therapy clients that in very hard times, we remember to
remember. Remember that the light always returns. Remember earlier dark nights
of the soul, for ourselves, our families and our nation, when we fell in holes
way too deep to ever get out of. Remember the Greensboro sit-ins and the march
from Selma to Montgomery, the 2017 Women’s March, the coronavirus vaccine.
Remember how in the desert, you’ll find dubious patches of pale green, maybe a
random desert lily and, impossibly, baby leaves. Along with half of America, I
have been feeling doomed, exhausted and quiet. But if we stay alert, we’ll
notice that the stark desert is dotted with growing things. [Hope] is
everywhere you look. It is in the witness and courage of the [Bishop] Budde. It
is in the bags of groceries we keep taking to food pantries. It looks like
generosity, like compassion. It looks like the profound caring for victims of
the fires, and providing refuge for immigrants and resisting the idea that they
are dangerous or unwanted, and reaching out to queer nieces, siblings, and
strangers and helping resist the notion that their identities are unworthy, let
alone illegal. It looks like a bake sale, and our volunteer support for public
schools and libraries.”
I want to add: it looks like using people’s
preferred names and pronouns. It looks like saying thank you to gas station
clerks. It looks like letting someone cut in front of you in traffic. It looks
like returning your grocery cart to the carousel. It looks like choosing
kindness, and having mercy. Each small action we take for good is like one more
leaf in the desert, one more drop of water in a drought, one more particle of
light in the darkness. May our leaves grow to forests, our water droplets form
an ocean, our light particles shine like the sun.
I’d
like to end my sermon with the prayerful words of Bishop Budde. Please join me
in a spirit of prayer:
“O God, you made us in your own image and
redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole
human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts;
break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work
through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth.
May God grant us the strength and courage to
honor the dignity of every human being, speak the truth to one another in love,
and walk humbly with each other and our God, for the good of all the people in
this nation and the world. Amen”
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