Sabbath Day
Truly refreshing.
I have spent the entire day with Julian of Norwich and her Revelation of Love, truly, “one of the great works of medieval theology in any language by an author of either gender.” (Denys Turner)
I did re-read most of the Long Text, with glances at the commentary by Frederick Roden, but primarily spent my day working through Denys Turner’s new book, published by Yale, Julian of Norwich, Theologian. Highly reccommended for those who desire a challenge. It was an outstanding read by an author whose work on medieval hermeneutics (Eros and Allegory, The Darkness of God) I have valued.
Turner deftly shows how Julian attends to two stories (the story of sin that Love tells, and the story of sin that Sin tells, including Sin’s pervese story of Love) and how Julian’s meditation on Providence sets of all the sinews and tensions of her theological reflection to work. The chapter on “Prayer and Providence” succinctly shows how time and eternity, or providence and contingency, meet in the act of prayer; which is God’s act in us.
I am looking forward to sitting down with Julian’s “All is well…” in one hand and H. Richard Niebuhr’s “All is as it should be” in the other.
I am also looking forward to re-reading Barth and Hunsinger-on-Barth on the topic of double agency on the one hand, and Julian’s “God is the only doer” on the other.
For a couple of weeks I have been planning to let Julian thread her way through, indeed structure, my Lenten preaching (which coincides with Women’s History month). Apart from her famous description of God as Mother, Julian speaks, in her theology of Creation, of “God our Maker, Lover and Keeper.” I am thinking of calling the series “The Story that Love Tells,” with sermons called “God Makes You (Genesis 9),” “God Loves You (Romans 5)” and “God Keeps You (John 3)”. The final sermon (God Knows You) will, I hope, incorporate testimony by a church member about holding tightly to this story during a time of crisis (Jeremiah 31).
Blessings.
An Ash Wednesday Playlist
Far more than new year’s day with all of it’s new year’s resolutions, well intentioned and quickly forgotten, Ash Wednesday is a real invitation to begin again.
We begin again not by reasserting ourselves and our very best intentions, by willing to be better, stronger, thinner. We begin not with self but with God. We begin not with what we can do but with what God is already doing. We begin by locating our story within the larger story of God working-out-salvation among us. We begin by catching a glimpse of God’s growing Realm of Love, how if flows in a neverending stream, and finding ourselves caught up in the current.
I have a very eclectic “Lenten Playlist” on my iPod which has accompanied me now for several seasons of growth and change. I prepare for worship on Ash Wednesday by playing these tunes in the sanctuary and letting them carry me to emotional places of loss, desire, hope and despair. They contain cries of anger, desperate need, public vulnerability, tears, fears, and more tears.
I’ve got lots of chant and sacred music on my playlist, and the obligatory JC Superstar and Godspell. But I’ve also collected Bruce Cockburn, Lenny Kravitz, Sarah McLachlan, Tracy Chapman, Ani DiFranco, Norah Jones, Paul Swartz, Natalie Merchant, Mickey Hart, Charolotte Church, Peter Gabriel, Sinead O’Conner, and U2. (I’ve just really dated myself or at least demonstrated my unwillinglness to spend money on music lately.)
Each one of these songs help me see my story as part of God’s story.
I need some new songs. A friend just suggested Awake My Soul by Mumford and Sons, and another Dear God by Smokie Norful.
What would you put on a Lenten playlist?
Listen to Him
A sermon preached at the White Plains Presbyterian Church
on Transfiguration Sunday, February 19, 2012
Mark 8: 31 – 9: 9
Before Jesus went up the mountain in our text this morning, he was down on the ground. Down amid the people who lived in Caesarea Philippi, a city notorious for its architectural and artistic opulence, a tribute to the Roman Emperor and Imperial power. Caesars’s City.
You see, we have come to a turning point in the gospel. Jesus has left the relative safety of rural Galilee where his ministry of providing faith based social services, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, casting out demons and including the excluded, has been widely received. Having healed and empowered the sickest and poorest people, Jesus now turns his face towards the center of Roman and religious power, Caesarea Philippi and Jerusalem, where the debts-payments and taxes of the people flow into the pockets of the occupiers and their collaborators, where he will meet rich young men who cannot follow him, religious leaders who cannot understand him, and roman officials and soldiers who understand him far to well. Caring for the poor is one thing, changing the world that makes them poor will be another. And Jesus knows that his ministry is about to cross into unacceptable territory. So he turns to his disciples who confirm their faith in his messianic leadership. And he doesn’t mince words. In chapter 8 he lets his followers know, “I will suffer for this. I will be betrayed and turned over to the authorities, and I will die. Take up your cross and follow me”
Whoa! Hold it. Up till now the disciples have been making a difference, even enjoying Jesus’ presence as he announced “good news” in community after community. But what is this talk about crosses? “If you would be my disciple, take up your cross?” Take up the reigning instrument of Roman political execution, and follow him? Follow him in the same way that condemned criminals, bearing the cross beam across their backs followed their Roman executioners to the place where they would be killed? This sounds like someone bent on martyrdom, not the expected Messiah. “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” One wonders if the crowd, so enamored with his healings and teachings to this point, began to thin a bit.
Emphasizing how unexpected and confusing this teaching was, Mark says that six days later Jesus and his friends went up the mountain. On can assume those six days were spent stewing, and debating, and badgering Jesus about this teaching. So what to do. Well in the tradition of all great leaders and prophets, when the going gets tough, the tough head up the mountain.
So up the mountain they go, taking their struggles with them. And Mark says, “And he was transfigured before them.”
Now, whenever we read the bible, we should pay attention to the setting. Location and scenery in bible stories is as important as the characters. Mark’s gospel is short and fast paced, with minimal detail and character development. But if you pay attention to the clues you are given, they suggest the entire sweep of Hebrew history, unfolding in this life of Jesus and among his friends.
What do I mean by paying attention to scenery. Take the beginning of Mark’s gospel, the Baptist John crying out in the wilderness, baptizing in the Jordan river. The wilderness, place of testing and trial, of trouble and complaining, place of wandering for 40 years, land through which the exiles marched to Babylon. The Jordan river crossed by Joshua and his army as they entered the promised land, the same Jordan river, to which the Temple priests would march out to re-enact the triumphal entry of the Hebrew people into the land flowing with milk and honey, the Jordan river which separated the Hebrew world from the gentile world, the Jordan river.
Or take the sea: the primordial chaos which was tamed by God during creation. The sea over which the Philistines had come to conquer and occupy Palestine, the sea, across which Roman soldiers came and food and taxes left. The sea, crossed by Moses, calmed by Jesus. This is what I mean by reading the scenery.
But perhaps the most important scenery is the mountains. It was on Mt. Sinai that Moses spoke with God, received the Ten Commandments, spoke the covenant with Israel. It was on the mountain Joshua organized the people into units and tribes, appointing overseers to govern the people. It is on Mt. Zion, elevated plain that lifted Jerusalem above it s neighbors and gave it a military advantage, that Jerusalem, David’s city, resides. It was to Mt. Horeb that Elijah the prophet fled when his victory over Baal’s prophets brought down on him the wrath of Queen Jezebel. And it was in the crags of that same mountain that Elijah heard God’s voice, not in the great wind, not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in the still silence, a voice saying “Go back down, return to Damascus, be my prophet.” It was from the mount that Jesus taught his disciples, It was on the mount that he organized the people into units for feeding, And it is up the mountain that Jesus goes in our story today. If the wilderness represents , a liminal place – a threshold straddling worlds or meanings, mountains express the unequivocal presence of God, the place of authority and teaching, and the renewal of the holy covenant.
We have a tendency to call wonderful experiences mountain top experiences; times when God’s presence is made known to us. We feel high. A mission trip to Kenya or Nicaragua can be a mountain top experience. Or maybe summer camp at Holmes. Or certain worship or prayer meetings when we feel transported into God’s presence. They are times when we see life’s priorities fall into place, and our story finds it place in God’s story, and we know we are part of something larger than ourselves.
But the critical turning point in this story is when the voice of God echoes out of the cloud saying, “This is my son, My chosen one, Listen to him.” There my point again, turn and look, listen, pay attention. The voice of God calls us up the mountain only to send us back down again, to the ministry, the mission, the trials and suffering. God sends the disciples back down the mountain to Jesus’ teaching about the cross “Listen to him” says the Divine. The point is not just to listen to any old thing, but to listen to what Jesus has been trying to say about the deep cost of following him. The paradox of the transfiguration is that it points us away from the transfiguring event itself and back to the way of the cross. It does not permit escapism or a life of spiritual highs. It demands a religion that is our life, not our lifestyle.
The transfiguration of Jesus invites us to be transfigured, to be transformed as Jesus was, not by ascending to the top of a mountain and feeling mystical, but by conforming our lives to his, by attending to the needs of the suffering, by welcoming the poor, by touching the untouchable, by feeding the hungry and sheltering those who are without homes. By loving, with dignity and confidence, even those who intend us harm. But it also means following Jesus when he sets his face toward Jerusalem, challenging the larger systems that make people poor and rob them of dignity. For example, there is something we must address when the average U.S. worker’s salary ($49,445) could pay for 10 months of health insurance, 5 months of college tuition, and buy 10 percent of an average home, while on the other hand, the average Fortune 500 CEO’s salary ($11.4 million) could pay for 300 years of health insurance, 200 years of college tuition and buy 34.5 new homes.
So the bottom line is, God is endorsing Jesus ministry no matter how difficult it may be, and no matter how challenging it may be, and no matter how confusing is may be, especially for those who are comfortably religious. Not only is Jesus person/appearance transfigured, but so are the disciple’s expectations. Transfiguration is simply that moment which comes from outside our experience which confirms our experience. Transfiguration Sunday is both a demand and a promise.
Prayer
Remind us always, O God, that you are not merely a “mountain top experience.” We know that as soon as Jesus came down from experiencing your presence on the mountain, he made that experience real by healing a child, transforming a life. Help us know, O God, that our experience of you must lead to transformed lives – our own lives and the lives of other people, the life of our society. Keep us from taking your presence for granted, and forgive us if we have remained untransformed by your presence.
Sabbath Day
1. Slept in.
2. Read.
3. Lunch with Noelle.
4. Read.
5. Picked up August from school and helped him build a skyscraper.
6. Dinner and bedtime for little one.
7. Read.
8. Read.
9. Bed.
Joy That Knows Its Journey
A sermon preached at the White Plains Presbyterian Church
on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, February 12, 2012
By Sarah Henkel, Parish Associate
2 Kings 5: 1-14 Psalm 30
I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up,
and did not let my foes rejoice over me.
O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,
and you have healed me.
O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol,
restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.
Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones,
and give thanks to his holy name.
For his anger is but for a moment;
his favour is for a lifetime.
Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.
As for me, I said in my prosperity,
‘I shall never be moved.’
By your favour, O Lord,
you had established me as a strong mountain;
you hid your face;
I was dismayed.
To you, O Lord, I cried,
and to the Lord I made supplication:
‘What profit is there in my death,
if I go down to the Pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it tell of your faithfulness?
Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me!
O Lord, be my helper!’
You have turned my mourning into dancing;
you have taken off my sackcloth
and clothed me with joy,
so that my soul may praise you and not be silent.
O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.
Psalm 30 celebrates a healing that has taken place. It is the recounting of an individual who felt they were so far gone – in the realm of the dead or the pits of Sheol – that no return was possible. But God in grace drew her up from the pit. This psalm is a song of gratitude, praise, and, above all, joy. The Psalmist says, “Weeping lasts for the evening but joy comes with the morning.” “Wailing turns to dancing and the garments of mourning are turned to joy.” This is joy that knows its journey. It is joy that springs from the experience of health and healing but also from deep within the experience of pain. God’s mark on the psalmist’s life is not only in the newfound health but also in God’s presence in the pits of Sheol. If the psalmist was delivered from that frightening place it’s only because God met him there in the realm of the dead. God met me there in the dungeon AND God brought me here into a spacious place and so, the Psalmist proclaims, my heart will sing and not be silent.
Paula M. Cooey, a feminist theologian, writes that “joy is distinctively generous.”[i] It drives the self outward in relation to others. Or as the Haitian author, Edwidge Danticat writes, “With a lone person, there is not just triumph in the survival story, there is triumph in the telling of it. There is a joy at having survived, a sense of disbelief that you survived at all and that you have a new life.”[ii] I recently experienced the generosity of joy here at White Plains Presbyterian. I think of the joyful e-mail I received from Norma on the prayer list saying that a prayer had been answered – God is Good, she wrote, makes me want to read Psalm 103 over and over again. The White Plains prayer warriors prayed through the weeping in the evening all the way to the joy that came with the morning, which points to the second point Cooey makes about joy. “Joy works as a strategy for survival that has profound, subversive possibilities – joy aids the survival of a people of faith and subverts the unjust and oppressive systems and structures that dominate human life today.”[iii] Joy moves us out toward one another and the systems that isolate, that divide, that assign worth to some and not to others, all those systems start to shake. If joy breaks through then the powers of death do not have the last word.
Today as the continuation of our celebrations of Black History Month we journey through some of the music and prayers of the Caribbean – West Indies, a region that makes up over 7,000 islands, islets, and cays. As Leslie shared, the Psalms were often sung in worship in Jamaica and many of the island nations that make up the Caribbean. We just sang Psalm 100, a song of thanksgiving, the lyrics were simply the words of the Psalm, the refrain, which the children helped us sing was Hallelujah. After choir rehearsal on Wednesday I went home singing that Psalm – carrying it with me as I did things around the house. That is the power of song – the words go deeper down and you find that you are able to recite and repeat the words in your own voice. The joy of the psalm becomes embodied in you.
The chanting and singing of Psalms in the Caribbean was introduced through the Anglican and Methodist traditions, most likely around the time that John Calvin was working writing about the importance of the Psalter and psalm-singing. The chanting of Psalms was also part and parcel of the Christianity preached to the enslaved peoples of the Caribbean by the colonizing forces. Dr. Michael Miller of the United Church of Jamaica writes of the Christianizing forces in the Caribbean, “The Society responsible for the propagation of the Christian faith in Barbados sought to influence the local planters to allow evangelisation by indicating that the converted slave would be less rebellious and more industrious. We learn, however, of the complaint of Barbadian planters that the Christianity meant to soften the converts was instead causing unrest among them. Somehow the slaves’ understanding of what they had gotten into was very different from the planters’ intentions. I will resist the temptation to speculate about the slaves understanding of the theological significance of staging an uprising on Easter morning of 1816 in Barbados, and Christmas week of 1831 in Jamaica.”[iv]
The Christian Scriptures and also the practice of chanting psalms may have been offered with the intent to control but the Word of God is powerful and free…the psalms sung in the Caribbean took on their own syncopation and new meaning, they were sung in new keys, and the joy expressed took on a different tenor as those who sang and chanted passed through the death forces of colonialism, the struggle for liberation, and the bittersweet joy of freedom.
Joy that knows its journey. Today’s Psalm begins in the voice of an individual but has far reaching implications for the community of faith and beyond. This Psalm was used to celebrate the healing of one and also to celebrate the rededication of the Temple, the place of worship. Why choose this Psalm for the rededication of the Temple? To reorient the kind of joy that we lift up in worship. Not empty words of praise to mask the complexity and pain of life together here on earth but joy that was born out of pain and now speaks to challenge the powers of death at work in the world. The psalmist bargains with God – if you let me return to dust, who will be here to praise and proclaim your power over what sought to kill me? David Pleins says of the Psalms of Thanksgiving, “The ability to give thanks is a radically humanizing endeavor, by which we refuse to let the triumphs of evil destroy our capacity to see God at work in our torn world.”[v]
In my work as cross-cultural network coordinator for Hudson River Presbytery, I have traveled to visit many churches, sat down with pastors and congregants, and met with a network of people who want to continue the conversation about how we reach out to one another and those in our community across differences of race, ethnicity, physical ability, age, class, etc. The stories shared in these meetings and gatherings call to mind the movement of Psalm 30 – walking through the pain of how we have silenced or pushed aside our differences, wrestling with how to move forward, and then glimpsing and celebrating the joy that comes from the journey. This journey looks different for every congregation… but often joy is found in a movement outward to share the liberation and justice of God with the community outside the church doors. Joy in our worship becomes then not only the expression of praise for individual healings from illness but also praise for the systems of death crumbling outside our doors – new jobs for the unemployed, housing for the homeless, or Trader Joe’s finally signing on to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ Fair Food Agreement. This is our joy to share if we walk through the struggle together.
Take in the Psalms, take in the journey of the joy in Psalm 30, chant and sing it until the walls echo with our joy. Our God has conquered even death – how can we keep from singing?
© 2012 Sarah Henkel
White Plains Presbyterian Church
[i] Cooey, Paula M. “That Every Child Who Wants Might Learn to Dance.” Cross Currents (Summer 1998): n. pag. Web. 10 Feb 2012.
[ii] Aubry, Erin J. “Raising Cane: A Conversation with Edwidge Danticat.” L.A. Weekly (1998): n. pag. Web. 10 Feb 2012.
[iii] Cooey, n. pag. Web.
[iv] Miller, Michael. “Impulses in Caribbean Theology.” CWMission (1999): n. pag. Web. 8 Feb 2012.
Poetry feeds the Soul
This is stuff that feeds the soul: the scripture, the liturgy, and the poetic/prophetic imagination. As I am sinking into Tomas Transtromer, 2011 Nobel Prize Winner, I find myself living with short phrases:
… The people are sleeping:
some can sleep peacefully, others have drawn features
as if training for eternity.
or
He struggled to make himself free
from a slumbering green picture,
to come at last to the shore
and be one with his own shadow.
I am captured, and wasted, this evening by a poem from 1962 called “A WINTER NIGHT.” We have had very little snow, but lots of wind, this year. Living in a new home (not yet our own and still holding its secrets), through our second winter, with a five year old who has already experienced Huricane Irene and devastated trees, this poem made the concerns that can be as large as my life (comforting my child) seem both tiny and all encompassed in the light of an eternity that has a claim on my eternal now.
I also cannot forget that in scripture, the Holy Spirit can sometimes appear as a mighty wind and storm, shaking the foundations of our lives: “When you blow through your people on the rush of a wind.” Ah, Lent is coming – the time of great change.
.
The storm puts its mouth to the house
and blows to produce a note.
I sleep uneasily, turn, with shut eyes
read the storm’s text.
.
But the child’s eyes are large in the dark
and for the child the storm howls.
Both are fond of lamps that swing.
Both are halfway toward speech.
.
The storm has childish hands and wings.
The Caravan bolts toward Lapland.
And the house feels its own constellation of nails
holding the walls together.
.
The night is calm over our floor
(where all expired footsteps
rest like sunk leaves in a pond)
but outside the night is wild.
.
Over the world goes a graver storm.
It sets its mouth to our soul
and blows to produce a note. We dread
the storm will blow us empty.
.
First published in the collection The Half-Finished Heaven, and appearing now in The Great Enigma: new collected poems, which represents all of Transtromer’s published poetry.
Sabbath Day
No rest today.
But tomorrow begins four days of vacation. Woo hoo!
The Higher Life
Poetry calls us to a higher life,
but what’s low is just as eloquent …
Poetry summons us to life, to courage
in the face of the growing shadow.
- from Houston, 6 P.M., by Adam Zagajewski, a Polish Poet
Critical Connections
A sermon preached at the White Plains Presbyterian Church
on the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 5, 2012
CRITICAL CONNECTIONS:
Covenanting for Justice in the Economy and the Earth
Mark 1: 32-39
It was a typical first century home: one large room, divided into upper and lower portions by a single step. The lower part of the room was for stabling the animals each evening – which was how families not only kept their animals safe from predators and thieves, but how they heated their home on chilly nights. A sleeping cow is a warm beast. This part of the home would have been cleaned each morning (for obvious reasons) and covered with fresh straw. The mangers for feeding would have been filled as well. The upper portion of the room contained the fire for cooking, the utensils for eating, the storage of everything else the family owned, and was used for meals, worship, and even sleeping. Some homes had a second story room which could be reached by a ladder.
The brothers Simon and Andrew, along with Simon’s wife – and Andrew’s, if he had one – slept upstairs because Simon’s mother-in-law did not climb the ladder anymore. She slept on a mat near the fire, which helped with the chills. She had a fever, which was why she had not attended the meeting of the synagogue earlier that evening when Jesus demonstrated with such authority that unclean spirits, the powers that possess and oppress, have no place in God’s Kingdom.
As the young men entered the house, they were still talking excitedly about the way Jesus had commanded the spirit to be silent – and it had; to come out – and it did. James, John and Jesus tumbled in behind Simon and Andrew. And there on the floor was Simon’s mother-in-law, lying feverish on her mat beside the fire. It was the evening of the Sabbath, she had a home suddenly filled with guests, and she was unable to rise and offer even a minimum of hospitality. In the first century, the Sabbath was to end with a service of Havdalah, celebrating God’s creation of the world and anticipating the full re-creation of life in the time to come. But she could not prepare the food, light the candles; say the prayers that were required. What shame she must have known.
Jesus simply took her by the hand, lifted her up, and the fever left. And she began to serve them. God’s kingdom had come to the house of Simon and Andrew.
And all Capernaum brought their sick, and those possessed, to this house. They gathered around the door, and Jesus came out – to cure and cast out – to restore the health of the community, to demonstrate God’s new creation – which is God’s Kingdom. Or in the Greek: God’s basilea, which we might get a better feel for what Jesus is describing if we used basilea’s other translation: God’s Empire.
Stop and close your eyes for a moment. Reflect on the words “Kingdom of God.” Now try “Empire of God.” It has a different feel doesn’t it? You get the sense that this is an all-encompassing realm, ruled over by God. Now in Jesus’ day, the empire everyone knew was the Roman Empire. Rome dominated Palestine through military conquest, mass crucifixion, and extreme taxation. So imagine the impact of Jesus, a poor man living there announcing that God’s empire is dawning in the midst of Caesar’s empire right now. It was a massively political statement; seditious, in fact. And it was electrifying! And expansive! But also, perhaps, it felt impossible or, at best, unlikely.
Now if we were not looking for it, we might miss the danger of this moment. It would have been very easy, in fact it might have been expected, that Simon would hang up a sign over that door announcing Jesus’ residence. And Andrew would produce the first century version of the slick pamphlet announcing “God’s Kingdom has come to our home: Come and See. Bring your sick, your fevered, your possessed and oppressed. Come experience God’s intention for your life.” You see, Jesus could have, like so many other first century healers, become the village healer, bringing honor to this village, bringing pilgrims from other villages, bringing tourists and income to a poor people. He could have made of Capernaum, this tiny fishing village, the locus – of God’s Empire.
For just a moment, Jesus’ proclamation of God’s dawning empire message was in danger of becoming parochial – of or pertaining to only to that small locale.
Could the White Plains Presbyterian Church be in danger of becoming parochial in our belief and practice? Well, we are a Presbyterian Church with strong roots in the Reformed faith which descends from the sixteenth century reformations in Europe. Confessional banners representing this tradition hang on our walls, from Basel, Heidelberg, Edinburgh, London, Barmen and Portland, Oregon. This is an almost 300 year old congregation, with origins among the early Dutch and English settlers of New York, Connecticut, and Westchester County. Some of our members still have Dutch and English names. The great great grandfather of one of our members tracked down and caught the spy who was leaking valuable information to Benedict Arnold during the war of independence. Clearly, WPPC has a strong eye on its past! But we are also an intentionally multicultural congregation that is inter-racial, inter-national, inter-generational (and therefore inter-esting), with members from more than a twenty non-European countries and at least as many different theological and church traditions. We also look to other pasts and to God’s future.
February is widely celebrated as Black History Month. This year, during our observance of Black History Month we are featuring music and liturgy from Africa and the West Indies; from which members of our congregation come. We begin today in West Africa, with prayers from Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, and Senegal. Next week will be the West Indies. On the third week Central and East Africa. On the final Sunday of the month, which is also the first Sunday of Lent, we will worship with resources from the Reformed Churches of South Africa. On that same day we will also begin our five week Lenten Study of the Belhar Confession of Faith which grew out of the experience of South African churches.
Now, there is real danger that in featuring such liturgical resources we may treat cultures as fetishes – spices to enhance our local worship. If we merely sprinkle prayers and songs here and there without listening to the voices of those speaking to our US church from those communities and considering our connection to them, our worship will be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. We need to hear their appeals to us so that we can better understand what God is calling us to be and do right here in White Plains.
It is a very old view of human societies that thinks of cultures as distinct entities, closed off from one another, able to be celebrated or critiqued as wholes. But such a view is deeply flawed. - no culture exists apart from the influence of others – It is also increasingly true, as Cheikh Hamidou Kane has written that ”We have not had the same past, but – unquestionably – we shall have the same future”. The facts of colonialism and the complicity of western missionaries in this entire history, especially in Africa and the Caribbean, demand more of us today.
[PAUSE]
As evening passed into morning, Jesus got up earlier than rest and went off to pray. We hear that the disciples, when learning he had left the house, “hunted for him.” It’s the same word one would use to hunt down a wild animal that had threatened one’s flock or ones home, or to search out a lost and vulnerable sheep. They were frantic, desperate to find him and bring him back. “Everyone is searching for you,” they tell him, as one would tell a wayward child.”Don’t scare us like that.”
But Jesus counters that he must go on. He had been praying, discerning, listening to God, and so now informs his disciples what he had heard: “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also, for that is what I came out to do.” Jesus, with his disciples, brings the message of the God’s empire to other communities, each of which must make it real in their own locale, but all of which are simultaneously called to understand themselves as part of God’s larger empire.
Jesus must GO ON : to the rest of Galilee, but also beyond – to Judah, Samaria, Tyre & Sidon
Jesus must GO ON : to people who were Jewish and to people who weren’t
Jesus must GO ON : to women and children as well as men
Jesus must GO ON : to talk with people who were powerful and people who were not
Jesus must GO ON : and, through his disciples, he does go on to the ends of the earth
And he still goes on. And wherever he goes, all are called to understand themselves not only as recipients of life abundant, but as related to one another in God’s growing empire, with covenant responsibility to one another – not simply to their own kin, neighborhood or social rank. Jesus goes on to every community, not only for the sake of that community but for the sake of God’s Sovereign Empire. We too are called to go where Jesus goes.
As we prepare to gather at our Lord’s Table, we remember the larger community into which God has called even us. We remember that, around the world, sisters and brothers are also gathering around this same table.
So this fifth Sunday after Epiphany, on our first Sunday on Black History Month, as we gather at the Table, we must ask: “Beyond music and liturgy, what do African churches have to say to us?”
In 1994 African Alliance of Reformed Churches called upon the entire Reformed movement to wrestle with the economic injustices and ecological devastations which are the result of the systemic exclusion of Africa and African people from the world economy. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), to which both they and we, as Presbyterians, belong, responded. The World Alliance of Reformed Churches, now called the World Communion of Reformed Churches, is the third largest Christian body in the world, next to the Roman Catholic and Orthodox. In 2004, this body’s General Council, meeting Accra, Ghana, (West Africa) issued the Accra Confession. (Are any of you are familiar with it?) The Accra Confession calls for a new covenant for justice that recognizes that economic justice and environmental care are not simply issues to be addressed by the church, but that they go to the very heart of our confession of faith. “How can we say that we believe that Jesus Christ is lord over all life and not stand against all that denies the promise of fullness of life to the world?”
The Accra confession itself will be available through our church website (under the “Study” tab) and through my blog. But the delegates to that General Council also wrote a pastoral letter which, they hoped, would be read in every reformed church around the world. I want to honor that request this morning. Here is an excerpt from that letter which describes the delegates’ process of reflection and engagement that led to the writing of the confession.
Our most moving and memorable moments came from our visit to Elmina and Cape Coast, two “castles” on the Coast of Ghana that held those who had been captured into slavery, as they suffered in dungeons waiting for slave ships that would take them to unknown lands and destinies. Over brutal centuries, 15 million African slaves were transported to the Americas, and millions more were captured and died. On this trade in humans as commodities, wealth in Europe was built. Through their labour, sweat, suffering, intelligence and creativity, the wealth of the Americas was developed.
At the Elmina Castle, the Dutch merchants, soldiers, and Governor lived on the upper level, while the slaves were held in captivity one level below. We entered a room used as a church, with words from Psalm 132 on a sign still hanging above the door (“For the Lord has chosen Zion…”). And we imagined Reformed Christians worshipping their God while directly below them, right under their feet, those being sold into slavery languished in the chains and horror of those dungeons. For more than two centuries in that place this went on.
In angry bewilderment we thought, “How could their faith be so divided from life? How could they separate their spiritual experience from the torturous physical suffering directly beneath their feet? How could their faith be so blind?”
Some of us are descended from those slave traders and slave owners, and others of us are descendants of those who were enslaved. We shared responses of tears, silence, anger, and lamentation. Those who are Reformed Christians have always declared God’s sovereignty over all life and all the earth. So how could these forbears of Reformed faith deny so blatantly what they believed so clearly?
Yet, as we listened to the voices today from our global fellowship, we discovered the mortal danger of repeating the same sin of those whose blindness we decried. For today’s world is divided between those who worship in comfortable contentment and those enslaved by the world’s economic injustice and ecological destruction who still suffer and die.
We are part of a “global fellowship;” we cannot stop our ears to the questions and call of our sisters and brothers. This letter and the confession invite us to careful consideration of how our lives and choices impact other members of God’s family. The Accra Confession, calls for a new covenant for justice in the economy and the earth among Christian bodies. We must make the God’s empire a reality in our own locale, but we dare not make it parochial. Rather we live “from” this place toward our sisters and brothers. We reflect critically upon our faith and practice together as a part of a global fellowship. And through that we strive to discern what it means to lives justly in this place, in relation to our neighbors near and far, with our different pasts but a shared future.
This much we discovered for certain in Accra: more than ever, faithful mission today requires our connection – really it demands bonds of belonging – between one another as churches. The challenges we now face in proclaiming the Good News will simply overwhelm us if we confront them as individual churches alone.
As we come to the table today, it is a new covenant of justice, in Jesus Christ, that we affirm. It is a new covenant of justice in Jesus Christ, that we receive to live out. It is a new covenant of justice, in Jesus Christ, that entwines us as sisters and brothers together in a global fellowship. May our worship and our work be one, announcing God’s new way.
Black History Month at WPPC
Come worship with us in February in observance of Black History Month.
During the next four weeks the White Plains Presbyterian Church will draw liturgy and music from four different regions from which members of our congregation come: West Africa, the West Indies, Central/East Africa and South Africa. Our bulletin will be graced with the art of Janet McKenzie, with her kind permission.
WEST AFRICA
On February 4 we will worship with words and music from West Africa: Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria and Alexandia. OK, Alexandria is not really “West” Africa, but St. Basil’s fourth century liturgy will be used as we gather for the Lord’s Supper. We will sing an African-American spiritual as we receive the fruit of the field and vine in the presence of our Lord.
We will also receive the challenge issued by the 2004 General Council of the World Council of Reformed Churches meeting in Accra, Ghana. The Accra Confession invites us to a new Covenant of Justice in the Economy and the Earth. Wilhelmina Anyidoho will be our worship leader. Sedinam Anyidoho will provide special music.
WEST INDIES / ISLANDS / CARRIBEAN
On February 11 the sermon will be delivered by Sarah Henkel, our new parish associate and the Cross-Cultural Ministry Coordinator for the Hudson River Presbytery. Leslie Mardenborough will be our worship leader. We will learn a form of singing the psalms remembered from the islands. Music and prayers from the West Indies: Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, more.
CENTRAL / EAST AFRICA
On February 18, Central/East Africa, we will be enriched by the presence of Alice Pala-Englert, recently returned from her mission in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We will also say farewell to long time church member Ruth Heubel. Following worship we will hold our annual Mardi Gras celebration in the Church House. The meal is pot-luck. All are welcome. (Visiting? Don’t worry about the food – just come and enjoy the fellowship).
SOUTH AFRICA
The final Sunday of February is also the first Sunday of Lent. Our worship leader will be Clerk of Session Deirdre Lewin, and our worship celebration will draw from the rich resources of South African churches. Following worship all are invited to join us for the first of our five weeks Lenten Education Series on the Belhar Confession of Faith. The Belhar Confession emerged from the experience of the Dutch Reformed Church under Grand Apartheid. We end our month of worship with powerful words from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
SPIRITUALITY AND ART
Artist Janet McKenzie has kindly given us permission to use several images of her paintings as our bulletin covers during February. Worshippers and readers of this blog will want to check out more of McKenzie’s work on her website www.janetmckenzie.com.
PRAYER
In 2011 our Black History Month observance drew upon the African American tradition, particularly Conversations With God: Two Centuries of Prayers by African Americans, edited by James Melvin Washington. This year, we have utilized, among other resources, An African Prayerbook, edited by Desmond Tutu, and the songs from the forthcoming Presbyterian Hymnal (which will be available for order in July)
I hope to see you / meet you in worship.
Grace and Peace
