Greenwood Forest Sermons

A Generous Sower

The great theologian and mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., Howard Thurman, used to tell a story about his grandmother, Nancy Ambrose. Nancy was born a slave and lived on a plantation in Madison, FL until the Civil War. Howard and his family cared for her as she aged, and it was always Howard’s chore to read the Bible to her. Even though she couldn’t read or write, she knew her Bible well and requested specific readings from young Howard: sometimes the psalms, sometimes Isaiah, oftentimes the Gospels. However, with the exception of the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, she never requested the Pauline epistles. When Howard came back to visit her on summer break during college, he finally asked her: “Grandma, why do you never ask me to read to you from Paul’s letters?” Her answer had a lasting impact on him. She said: “In the days of slavery, our master Old man McGhee would bring in a white minister occasionally to hold services for the slaves. McGhee would never allow a Black minister to preach to the slaves. But the white minister always picked something from Paul’s letters as his text. Three or four times a year he preached on “Slaves be obedient to them that are your masters…as unto Christ.” He would go on to explain how it was God’s will that we were slaves, and that if we were good and happy, God would bless us. I promised my Maker that if freedom ever came, I would never read that part of the Bible again.” It is for good reason that people with their backs against the wall have often rejected dominant interpretations of the writings of Paul. As we have been talking about the last three weeks, Christians have misused and abused Paul’s words in Romans and elsewhere to support toxic theologies of every variety. Evangelicalism has used Paul to forward a surface-level and individualistic type of faith that isolates and shames certain people, and shifts attention away from systemic problems. Nationalist religion has used Paul to suggest that all governments, no matter how unjust, are God-ordained and that civil disobedience against unjust laws and systems is outside of God’s will. Patriarchal religion has used Paul to suppress the God-given gifts of women in life and ministry. Homophobic religion has used its misreadings of Paul to exclude and harm LGBTQ people. Slaveholder religion has used Paul to justify and undergird the great evils of chattel slavery and white supremacy in this country. But here we are today, listening to words from Paul that seem to spit in the face of all those who would appropriate him in order to maintain bondage and oppression. This Paul is caught up in the liberation that God intends, not just for people, but for the whole of creation. This Paul is a freedom-fighter who, in solidarity with nature itself, longs as a woman in labor for God’s justice and love to pervade our world. Americans love to talk about “freedom” and this is the weekend when our freedom fetish is on full display. You probably heard or saw the word hundreds of times over the past few days, from advertisements, to clothing, to political speeches, to music. It seems to have unmatched rhetorical power for people in this country—simply shout the word freedom on the street or in a crowded room and people are liable to begin cheering spontaneously. Freedom has become such a cliché in America that there are parody songs and internet memes that satirize our freedom fetish, but many Americans don’t understand these things as satire (how do you satirize a satire?). My favorite example of Americans taking the freedom thing too far happened WAY back in 2003 (which factoring in the length of 2020 was 50 years ago). When France refused to support the proposed invasion of Iraq, the illustrious US House of Representatives changed french fries and french toast to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” on all three House cafeteria menus. Riding the post-9/11 wave of patriotic fervor, restaurants all across America followed suit, scrapping all references to French fries in the name of freedom. The name “freedom fries” began to fall out of favor as support for the war in Iraq plummeted but the House menus kept freedom fries and freedom toast until 2006, when leadership changed. This is an admittedly ridiculous example but it raises a serious question: what do these Americans mean when they cheer for “freedom?” Is it the same kind of freedom that Paul is talking about when he exuberantly proclaims that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God?” The meaning of freedom has always been deeply contested in this country. From the very beginning there was an irreconcilable contradiction between the high-minded rhetoric of the founding fathers regarding the God-given right to “liberty” and their refusal to extend that liberty to all God’s children. BBIPOC have long raised their voices to alert America to its great contradictions, and to bear witness to an alternative freedom that is possible. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce said “If the white man wants to live in peace with the Indian he can live in peace. There need be no trouble. Treat all people equally. Give them the same laws. Give them all an even chance to live and grow.” When called upon to speak at an Independence Day celebration in 1852, Frederick Douglass said, "Why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions!...But, such is not the state of the case. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." In 1935, Langton Hughes likewise wrote, “O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free… O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, One of the powerful voices of the Black Freedom Movement, Fannie Lou Hamer, bore witness to the contradiction of American freedom at the 1964 Democratic National Convention. After recounting how she was arrested for organizing voter registration drives in Mississippi and then beaten and sexually abused in jail by the police, she said “I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hook, because our lives are threatened daily, in America?” The unresolved contradictions of America’s past are on full display in our current moment as well. In the first week of May, as several states were discussing plans to re-open their economies, Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be An Antiracist wrote a gripping piece for the Atlantic called “We Are Still Living and Dying in the Slaveholders’ Republic.”[1] In the piece, Kendi describes the two fundamental understandings of freedom that have always been in tension in American social and political life, and shows how these different understandings of freedom, which led to secession and the Civil War, are also on display in the COVID-19 pandemic. Kendi says “Slaveholders desired a state that wholly secured their individual freedom to enslave, not to mention their freedom to disenfranchise, to exploit, to impoverish, to demean, and to silence and kill the demeaned. The freedom to. The freedom to harm. Which is to say, in coronavirus terms, the freedom to infect. Slaveholders disavowed a state that secured any form of communal freedom—the freedom of the community from slavery, from disenfranchisement, from exploitation, from poverty, from all the demeaning and silencing and killing. The freedom from. The freedom from harm. Which is to say, in coronavirus terms, the freedom from infection.  The slaveholder’s freedom to seceded from Lincoln’s “house divided against itself”—divided between the freedom to and from. Americans went to war. Americans are still waging this same war, now over COVID-19. There is a war between those fighting to open America back up for the sake of individual freedom, and those fighting to keep America closed for the sake of community freedom. A civil war over the very meaning, the very utility of freedom.” So what kind of freedom does Paul mean when he says “the freedom of the glory of the children of God?” There is a clue in verse 12. Paul says “So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh—for if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.” The freedom that characterizes the glory of those who have been adopted into God’s family is life in the Spirit, as opposed to life according to the “flesh.” The meaning of the word “flesh” is key. Western Christians often hear that word and think that it references particularly carnal sins, or think that Paul has something against bodies. But that’s not what “flesh” means. Flesh and body are actually different words in Greek so Paul says body when he means body. No, what Paul means by living according to the flesh is living according to one’s own desires, serving one’s own belly as Paul says in Romans 16:18, or what St. Augustine called living incurvatus in se—living curved in on oneself. The concept is more akin to a posture of selfishness than some kind of licentious sin. The Common English Bible translation makes this very clear by translating the Greek word as selfishness instead of flesh, knowing that the latter is often misunderstood. Listen to the first half of Chapter 8 up through the beginning of our passage for today from the CEB translation: “The law of the Spirit in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death…People whose lives are based on selfishness think about selfish things, but people whose lives are based on the Spirit think about things that are related to the Spirit. The attitude that comes from selfishness leads to death, but the attitude that comes from the Spirit leads to life and peace…People who are self-centered aren’t able to please God. But you aren’t self-centered. Instead you are in the Spirit, if in fact God’s Spirit lives in you…So then, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation (we are debtors), but it isn’t an obligation to ourselves to live our lives on the basis of selfishness. If you live on the basis of selfishness you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the actions of the body, you will live.” The freedom that Paul says is the glory of the children of God, the freedom for which all creation groans, is life beyond selfishness. We will truly be free, we will truly live, when we embrace our obligation to God and to each other. Here in the “land of the free,” many who think they are free are actually enslaved by their own selfishness. Many have made idols of their own bellies, caring more about their personal desires and autonomy than about God’s command to love one’s neighbor. As we have seen in recent weeks, plenty of our neighbors can’t bring themselves to suffer even the slightest inconvenience in order to ensure the health and wellbeing of the community, all in the name of their individual “freedom.” But this is not freedom. This is enslavement to sin and death all the while thinking you are free. Biblical freedom on the other hand, is the opposite of the unfettered autonomy and individualism that Americans seem to prize so dearly. It is the freedom to be bound to each other in Christ. The freedom that brother Paul is describing is freedom from sin and hatred and death that comes by Spirit-filled obligation to the beloved community made possible by Christ. Our communities are in labor pains right now. With all of creation, they are groaning for freedom from infection, freedom from lack of affordable healthcare, freedom from lack of affordable housing, freedom from food insecurity, freedom from poverty, freedom from patriarchy, freedom from homophobia, freedom from white supremacy, freedom from violence and brutality. Our world is longing for the freedom that only comes when we recognize that God has adopted us all as children. At this moment, in this already-but-not-yet, in-between time, there is much pain and suffering as we groan for freedom. Paul speaks a word to those who are suffering in the struggle for liberation: the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is about to be revealed to us. The new birth of freedom is coming. God’s will is liberation for all God’s children—and God gets what God wants in the end. There are people led by the Spirit of God all around us who are acting as midwives for liberation and justice and love. We can be midwives of God’s freedom and justice and love too. [One year ago today, 40 of us were in Alabama on the Freedom Ride, learning from the saints of the Civil Rights Movement what it means to be midwives of God’s liberation. We have been on the road since then and 50 people are now continuing their midwife training in our antiracist reading groups which will inform our antiracist action in the world. But we must not stop—the journey to liberation is not about any one experience or choice but about the daily, the hourly, striving to be led by the Spirit into more of the life God wants for you and the world.] So today, as every day, we face a choice: are we children of God or are we children of Washington and Jefferson? Do we call out to God as “Abba! Father!” or do we trace our lineage to the so-called founding fathers? Are we led by the Spirit or are we led by the “Commander in Chief?” Do we place our hope in our adoption into God’s family, or do we place our hope in our citizenship as Americans? Is the Lord our God or are our own bellies our God? This Independence Day weekend, I pray that we will develop a new imagination for the world as it should be. I pray that we will learn to hope in a world that is not rooted in what has been possible in the past, in what we can see right now, but in what we have not yet seen but know is possible with God—that world for which all of creation groans, the world where the first fruits of solidarity and liberation and justice and love become a plentiful harvest for all. I pray that we will embrace a new (but very old) conception of freedom—a freedom that is not about the flesh’s desire for toxic individuality but which frees us so that we might be bound to each other in mutual affirmation and just relationship. That’s the freedom that I long for, that I hope for. It is just around the corner if we are ready to receive it. But we must make our stand with the Spirit of God on the side of the liberation for which all creation groans. As the freedom songs say “Which side are you on, friend, which side are you on?” cause “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom’s coming and it won’t be long!”   [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/what-freedom-means-trump/611083/

Freedom’s Coming and It Won’t Be Long

The Evil Close at Hand

Unless the Heart Catch Fire

Are We There Yet?

The Objects of our Worship

A Faith Worth Dying For

Life Finds A Way

Wounded Healers

Where One is Gathered

The Weirdest Parade Ever

Why Weren’t You Here?

Who Sinned?

How can you ask a drink of me?

Peace to you in the name of Jesus, who when tempted to drink from the cup of dominion...chose instead the cup of salvation…when tempted to dine at the banquet of power…fasted in the wilderness of humility.  Be our brother and guide today, Jesus. Let’s pray. Well, I would imagine we’ve seen enough Jesus inspired film productions to conjure up a few images after hearing the story of Jesus being tempted, more like manipulated and abused, in the wilderness.   Satan…sporting a black Armani suit…a subtle set of horns…ominous sunglasses… Jesus…in a white religious garment, at this point tattered and worn, he’s sleepless, emaciated, dirt and tears caking his face…  And in this series of temptations, this person, whom God, has just bellowed forth as “my Son, the Beloved, in whom I’m well-pleased” as Jesus takes a holy plunge into the Jordan River. This Jesus, gets pushed to the limit... In case it didn’t pop out to you immediately, an Old Testament reference, Psalm 91, has nestled itself right in a New Testament story, Luke 4.  A poetically rich, empowering, uplifting Psalm uttered in a moment with Jesus.  As a student of the Scripture, I love a good testamental crossover like this one.  They make this big thing called the Bible feel like it has tentacles and strings…which link it together…in mysterious ways… But this one doesn’t feel so beautiful or empowering or uplifting. It feels…well…evil.  Can we take another glance?  Hear these words from Psalm 91.  “For he [i.e., God], will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.  On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.” Amen.  That’s a word.  That’s a word for you.  That’s a word for the church.  That’s a word for spirits that often feel as though they are dangling above death’s pit… a mere thread away from annihilation and despair. Fear not.  Angel’s very hands will lock themselves under your shoulders…and bear you up.  I mean, that’ll preach. But will it preach if Satan preaches it to you?  Will it preach if someone reads it to you with the intention of dismantling what you know to be true about yourself and about God?   I guess that begs a few more questions, huh.  Who is Satan?  And why does Jesus resist the Psalm Satan quotes?   Ok.  Let’s start here.  Who is Satan?  Well, lucky for me, we have communion this Sunday, so I suspect that means I’m allowed a shorter sermon, yes?  Some call him the advocate…the insinuator…the challenger.  The trial lawyer who pushes God’s buttons.  Who asks the important questions…but then…turns those questions inside out until we can’t remember what the point was in the first place.  Or better yet, Satan personifies the choice we all carry within us…the choice to be powerful…to believe that our own strength is enough to sustain us and make us immortal.  Or better yet, Satan is the best second guesser there is…in the universe and in each of us…the second guess that tells us that depending on God…really might mean…depending on ourselves instead. That’s a lot of definitions.  Which leads me to believe that it might not be too easy to define Satan…though I think some of us in an effort to delineate good and evil are prone to do.  I’d rather not today.     Because personifying the voice of evil makes it too easy for us to quiet and ignore its grip on us.  Maybe that voice has placed us at temple pinnacles far too long…recited Scripture to us…and told us what to be and how to act…all in the name of God…  Maybe that voice…turns out to be a whole lot of voices…within us and around us. Satan, in this moment…is the power that seeks to draw Jesus away from himself.  To pull Jesus into another reality…one that no longer calls him Beloved…but twists him into a Master of his own Domain. So why is Jesus resisting the Psalm?  I mean, it is an encouraging one. It’s a beautiful one. It’s a sustaining one.  And as he’s standing at the temple’s high-point, I suppose it’s an appropriate one.  It’s good to know that God will catch you if you fall.   Unless of course, God’s never asked you to fall in the first place.   It is understood that Hebrew temple practices called for priests and liturgists to chant the Psalms outside the temple.  They chanted them in order to remind the people of the God they worshipped.  Songs, words wedded to rhythms, have a way of teaching us and forming us, don’t they?  So…Satan is Jesus’ priest here…his liturgist.  And he’s chanting God’s love-song.  One of protection and safety and security.  He is calling Jesus into the collective memory of the community…and telling him… Remember this Psalm?  Isn’t it beautiful?  Isn’t it TRUE and GOOD and RIGHT?  Don’t you think this is true about God?” And in this moment, like a flash of light, we get a glimpse of God’s own identity crisis in the person of Jesus.  Am I Love?  Or am I Power?  Am I Vulnerability or am I Might? Will people know that I’m God’s Beloved based on the Mighty, Powerful things I do? So, if we can free ourselves a bit from worrying too much about personifying Satan, about making this character the landfill where we dump evil like this week’s trash, maybe we can see what this moment in Jesus’ life says about God and about us.  And what it says about our Lenten journey, our journey in the wilderness, our journey towards Belovedness. See, Satan uses the sacred text…the stories and songs we base our lives on…and in an effort to re-orient Jesus away from the intimacy he has discovered with God…sings to him words that are true in a moment that is altogether false.  Let me say that one more time. Satan uses the sacred text…the stories and songs we base our lives on…and in an effort to re-orient Jesus away from the intimacy he has discovered with God…sings to him words that are true in a moment that is altogether false.  Let me clarify something important here, though.  It isn’t the Psalm that’s the problem.  The Psalm is true…it is good…it is beautiful.  It’s the intentions that beckon the Psalm in this instance, it’s the manipulation of the words in the face of someone’s sheer vulnerability, it’s the use of it to rip Jesus away from the intimate work God was doing with him in the wildnerness. But Jesus saw this. He smelled it a mile away.  And while his belly ached with insecurity and this Psalm could have filled him up again, he knew that it would not last long enough. For Jesus, on his way into a 40day fast as the story begins, was full of the Holy Spirit. And so, Jesus refused Satan’s Song to him. Jesus would not be fooled by Satan’s solid exegesis, Biblical prowess, or narcissistic authority. Have you ever been fooled this way?  Have you ever used the Bible against yourself?   Has anyone ever done that to you?   Even with what seems to be…the best intentions.   Even when they are doing nothing more than “telling you the good gospel truth.”  Let me tell you, as a woman married to a woman who is also pastor seeking to follow Jesus all the while wedged inside the Christian Church in America, I bet you can guess what my answer to that question is. Uh, maybe once or twice now in my life, someone has used Scripture this way against my body, my life, my story. And they’ve done at some of the most vulnerable moments of my life. And I know that I’m far from the only one. For those of you at this weekend’s retreat, think about the conversation we had on manifest destiny, on the idea that it was God’s will for the American landscape to stretch from east to west, no matter who was “in the way.” There were Scriptures that built that argument, too. Joshua 24:13. I gave you land on which to had not labored, and cities which you had not built. Genesis 1:26-28. Be fruitful and multiply and full the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing.  Can you sense the crisis here for Jesus? The identity crisis here.   What does this book say about me? What does this God say about me?  And Jesus…with the force of his Belovedness behind him, proclaims… “I’m not putting God to the test like that.  I’m not gonna poke God’s sides just to see what might happen.  God’s already told me who I am.  And a bungee jump off the temple isn’t going to confirm that any further.  I am Beloved.” And Jesus does his own Bible-quoting in response. He says back to Satan,  “It is said, Do not put the Lord God to the test,” a reference from the good old book of Deuteronomy. And like two good Rabbis, Jesus and Satan are engaged in a textual dialogue, both using Scripture, and both for different reasons.  The significant thing to note is that Jesus’ interpretation points him back to and not away from his relationship with God. Jesus resisted his tempter’s chant…because…he carried a song much deeper than Satan’s interpretation of scripture could give him. Jesus resisted the tempter’s chant because he carried the whisper of the Creator…the tune of the Sustainer…the melody of the Redeemer. Jesus was able to call this argument what it was. Not just agreeing to disagree, or simple differences of opinion. Jesus knew that this argument was about his Life. See evil, at its core, is a distortion of truth. And even if the words are true, when their context is untrue, when their context is violent, when their context diminishes human thriving, then they are evil.  Jesus exposes this reality, and frees us to be obedient, not to those who challenge our Belovedness, but to God who ensures it. So, I say this with all the humility I can muster up. If someone, even if their words carry Biblical heft, says them to you with the intention of throwing you off the temple, tempting you to believe you need to do something spectacular to prove God’s love for you, that who are you already, even the you that’s hungry in the wilderness doesn’t quite cut it for God…  Don’t you dare listen to them. Say to them, with all the love you can muster…Get behind me, Satan!  You do not know who I am.  You do not know what I have been made for.  You do not know and I cannot convince you on my own.   Because real power is not in your Scripture reference. It is in God’s calling.   When Satan chants your Psalm, trust that God will see you through it and that you’ll have the Power and Grace to sing back something old, something new, something borrowed, maybe something with a little blues… And before you know it, even smack dab in the wilderness, you’ll hear the song erupting within you…. “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells Me so…” Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you. Yes, Jesus loves you. The Bible tells you so.

When Satan Chants Your Psalm

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