Who Are You??

 Today is my birthday! I had the tremendous joy of going back to St. Philip Lutheran where I did my internship in 2017-2018. It was mostly an online event but sometimes if you see me in person ask me about all the things that came about because I was back in that building. I had no idea how it would go, but I couldn't have asked for a better birthday event. 

There were two services with the same message, but of course they weren't EXACTLY the same. So below you will find the text of where the message started, and recordings of each of the two services so you can hear what I actually says. Yet another set of riches for the birthday - being able to share all the things!

Here are the texts that formed the basis of the service:

Isaiah 51:1-6

Psalm 138

Romans 12:1-8

Matthew 16:13-20

I got to deliver this message twice, in two services.

Here is the recording of the 9:00 am service with (some super happy) more contemporary music. 

Here is the recording of the 11:00 am service with (some stunningly gorgeous) more traditional music.

And here is the text that was the jumping off for both services:

Holy Spirit, lead us and draw us to show the world who we really are.  Amen

Play the first 30 seconds of this clip please.

WHO ARE YOU??

Today is my birthday! 57 years ago today my mother was hot and hugely pregnant. She lived in a home in Central Texas with no air conditioning and was about to give birth to me – her 10 pound baby. The doctor had been so convinced that I was coming on July 4 weekend that he cancelled a vacation trip (ah, the days of small town doctors!) but my grandma said it would be August 28… and it appeared that I was proving my grandma correct.

Do you suppose my mother wondered what all that meant? Wondered who I would be someday?

7 years ago I was two days away from starting my first day of seminary. So much had happened and my life had been torn apart in so many ways. My central questions was “Who am I?” I didn’t even know anymore.

And here I am today, running a food pantry, reaching out to the community around me, and trying to figure out what exactly it means to be a mission developer in a time of pandemic. It certainly doesn’t fit what the working definition of the word “pastor” that most people carry with them. The call is strong and compelling, though, and I know I am doing what God has created and prepared for me to do. But still I ask….

Who am I? Who have I become? Who am I yet becoming?

Those are timely thoughts, and not only because of my birthday.

Today’s lectionary lesson from Isaiah comes in the section of Isaiah known as “Second Isaiah.” It includes the Servant Songs that seem to point to who Jesus will be. The Israelites had been in captivity but God had never stopped loving them, and the hopefulness that comes from that constant love shows up in the verses:

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord.

Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.

Then many verses about how God will continue to love and care for God’s people, culminating in

My salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never end.

God is saying

     Don’t forget who you are – WHOSE you are!

      Don’t forget how much I have always loved you - even in captivity

      All that I have given you

      All that you thought you deserved

      That you had grown to trust more than you trusted me.

God is saying 

Don’t forget that you can really count on my undying love for you,

Regardless of circumstance.

YOU ARE MINE, says God.  

My beloved favorites.

Then we turn to the Gospel lesson from Matthew:

In the runup to this passage Jesus has been telling parables, using ordinary things to explain the kingdom of God, pointing out God’s order for the universe as it peeks through the cracks and brokenness of the world.

This is not how people were used to thinking about things and it galvanized people. They couldn’t get enough! They swarmed around wherever Jesus showed up.

The people of the day would have known this passage from Isaiah, at least in general, even though we have no reason to believe that there were only Jews present. People knew the stories of the Jews, though, just like many people today who have on interest in joining a church have some idea about what Christianity is about.

Today, for example, many people who decline the title of “Christian” will speak about what a good guy Jesus was, how emulating Jesus is a great way to live.

And that, I suspect, is part of what Jesus was asking Peter:  

WHO DO YOU SAY I AM? 

     Jesus wanted to know.

      Am I good caterer?

      Am I the edgy hipster rebel?

      Or am I something more?

I feel pretty strongly that Jesus didn’t need to know the answer. I think Jesus already knew.

I feel pretty strongly that Jesus was really asking  WHO ARE YOU?

Because the way I see it, who we say Jesus is tells a lot about 

     who we are, 

     how we will behave, 

     what we will value, 

     how we will treat one another.

If you believe Jesus was a nice Jewish man who loved his mother, you may not notice the gifts that God promises so eloquently in Isaiah. Because what we believe about Jesus affects what we do.

Simon Peter’s claim that Jesus is

The Messiah, the Son of the Living God

But more than that, it was beyond following Jesus the caterer, Jesus the healer, Jesus the captivating speaker.

It was not about what Jesus DID. It was about his heart, his being, his very nature.

Note that Jesus did not respond to anything about Peter’s behavior.

Or what Peter understood.

It was not about being rational or scientific or within the law.

Jesus said that Peter’s belief was a gift from God. That kind of faith is a gift that takes the believer beyond the surface of personal benefit or logic or law.

And when Peter confessed his belief in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, Jesus gives a gift:

Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, 

and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven

What a tremendous thing! And, remarkably, as Peter and the disciples went forth with these words that Lutherans call the Office of the Keys, Jesus says “but don’t tell them I’m the Messiah.”

What?

Huh?

Don’t tell?

But what about evangelism?

Could it be that Jesus didn’t want that loosing and binding to become some kind of “I’m better than you” thing?

I do think it points us to how following Jesus changes us.  When we have faith that Jesus is the Messiah, our behavior skews to loosening rather than binding up. It’s a transformation.

We do have choices in life. We can hurl accusations and burdens, punishment and guilt, we can point out all the ways that others have failed and how wrong they are and never ever let them forget it.

BUT! We can also free people from their burdens. We can be the gentle landing spot in a hard and unkind world. But we can’t consistently do it on our own. Admitting that Jesus was a cool guy who made some good choice just doesn’t transform us to become people who loosen bindings, at least not in the same way that trusting that Jesus is the Messiah can. It is faith that allows us to let go of our need to be right and our need to show others how wrong they are.

The choices are in small daily actions, mostly:

I am keenly aware every day that at the Parktown Food Hub we can tighten the bonds by using our own standards to determine when need is great enough or we can loosen the bonds of shame and hunger for people who say they need food by giving without question.

I’ve been in enough churches and community groups to know that we can bind people by whispering and casting the side eye and demanding that another’s sexuality or gender or mode of dress fit our own standards or we can loosen bindings by loving from the heart and listening to the stories to understand other points of view.

And in this pandemic election time I am beyond aware that we can bind others by voting based on maintaining our personal privilege and increasing our own wealth or we can loosen bindings by thinking of people who are bound up in systemic racism, patriarchy, and white supremacy and voting for policies that create equity for everyone.

There are a lot of ways to live into faith in Jesus.  In today’s New Testament lesson Paul tells the Romans that we might prophesy or minister, teach or exhort, give generously, work diligently, or exhibit great compassion or cheerfulness. And how you vote or give or welcome will be different in different situations. It isn’t one size fits all, and that’s why being transformed by the renewing of our minds (as Paul puts it) by faith is critical. 

But if you do the thing you do because you are living your faith and following Jesus, it will show. Whether you realize it or not.

So… Who are you?

Jesus – and the whole world – really wants to know.

AMEN.

Abundance or generosity, which comes first?

Today was so exciting! I got to preach a call and response sermon with my good friend Pastor Dana Cassell of Peace Covenant Church of the Brethren here in Durham, NC. Dana's congregation is meeting interactively online and today's texts from Isaiah and Matthew were all about feeding and eating and generosity and abundance. Dana is brilliant and kind and thoughtful and lots of other good things so preparing was as much fun as sharing the message. What a gift to be able to participate!

Today's texts tie together food and God. God is all about feeding whatever our hungers are. Or as Sara Miles put it in her book Take This Bread, “There's a hunger beyond food that's expressed in food, and that's why feeding is always a kind of miracle.” 

The texts were:

Matthew 14:13-21

Isaiah 55:1-5 (How can anybody not love a text that starts "Ho"?)

As usual, what follows are the script notes from which the sermon was delivered. If a recording is available I will link it here.

Dana:

This is such a strange season – for all of us. I'm so grateful that we are finding safe and creative ways to gather and continue in fellowship and service – church workdays and graduation parties, book discussion and prayer time, doorstep cookie drop-offs and these regular WebEx worship services. 

I confess, though, that one of the things I am missing most are our Peace Covenant potlucks. I miss having time to sit around a table with you all without an agenda, talking about who made which dish and how our lives are going. The standing monthly meal together is one of my favorite parts of our fellowship: it makes it easy to invite people into our community, it creates an obvious way to connect with our community partners – like EAPC and the ESL class a couple of summers ago - , and it is built in time to just...be together. We nourish our bodies and our relationships at those monthly potlucks.

Those Peace Covenant potlucks are more than just people hanging out together, though: I believe that they are tiny little glimpses of what life in God's Kingdom looks like. Everybody is welcome. Everybody eats. No one bothers to check to see if you brought something to share or not, and even when the pickings are slim (sometimes, so slim that an envoy is sent to Harris Teeter during worship for a cheese tray to supplement the seventeen pies), we still leave the meal nourished. 

Eating together is a sign of God's plan for the world. All throughout scripture, God's provision is explained as a meal; a feast; a banquet. When the Israelites are wandering in the wilderness, God rains down manna from on high. Isaiah proclaims that God's people are the ones who “share their bread with the hungry.” When Elijah is on a prophetic journey and at his wits end, a poor widow cooks the last of her flour into a cake for him and saves both their lives, along with the widow's son's. Elisha, following in his mentor's steps, multiplies the oil of another widow and feeds one hundred people. Ezekiel says that one of God's promises is that “...the trees of the field shall yield their fruit, and the earth shall yield its increase. They shall be secure on their soil … when I break the bars of their yoke, and save them from the hands of those who enslaved them … I will provide for them a splendid vegetation so that they shall no more be consumed with hunger in the land … ” (Ezekiel 34:27-29). The Psalmist sings of God who satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things, a song that Jesus' own mother echoes, singing about the God who fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich empty away.

God loves a good feast. Feeding and being fed; eating together; sharing a meal; bonding over food is a deeply important part of what it means to be witnesses to God's reign in the world.

So, I'm missing our monthly potlucks – those little monthly opportunities to participate in the reign of God's grace and mercy and provision here and now.

I think God loves a good potluck, but I also know – especially in these days – that God is not bound to the boxes of human habit that we try to keep Her in. We might not be able to participate in Peace Covenant potlucks right now, but that doesn't mean that we can't partake in God's holy banquet.

In fact, a few of us have been participating in the feast right down the road at the Park Town Food Hub during these pandemic months. And if the story of the Food  Hub isn't one of loaves and fishes, well, I don't know what is. Sharon Schulze is with us this morning, and I'll just invite her to tell that story herself.

Sharon:

When I started seminary two days after my 50th birthday in 2013 I was very clear that my call was not to parish ministry. I had a lot of reasons why but those reasons weren’t actually what was going on. I did not know what the call WAS – but I knew it wasn’t traditional parish ministry.

The last great hope of the denomination folks was the year-long internship I would do from 2017-2018. You will do your internship and THEN you will understand that being a parish pastor is the BEST THING EVER!

Instead I learned that the ELCA has something called mission developers.

So when the bishop visited a few weeks later I told him I knew what I was going to do – I was going to be a mission developer. He did not miss a beat but asked “what mission will you develop?” I knew at some rudimentary level but I didn’t say it. I didn’t want anybody else to tell me I wasn’t hearing what I was pretty sure God was saying.

Several years later I found out that Aja Purnell-Mitchell, my partner at the hub and the person who started the food pantry work that would be the seed of the Parktown Food Hub, was having a vision of a community gathering place where people could have their needs met – food, housing information, whatever needs they might have.

When Lisa and I met Aja for the first time we expected to ask her a lot of questions. What actually happened is that she described her current activities and we sat with mouths open. Then we squeezed into my little red Ford Ranger (not the room Blue Thunder I have now!) and drove over to what is now the hub space. Aja walked in and said “Oh yes, this is it. This will work for the hub.”

And that’s the day the Parktown Food Hub was actually born.

There had been talk of moving Parkwood UMC to a more community-oriented group and call it Parktown to indicate that the reach is beyond the Parkwood community into all of South Durham. 

Lisa had secured $2500 from her employer, RTI International, to upfit the space bringing the first employer in RTP back into the first neighborhood in RTP, to start something new for what is now one of (if not THE) youngest and wealthiest regions in North Carolina.

Local stores kept giving us things (like all the paint) so in the end the original funds were essentially more than doubled.

It was as if a little bit of seed money was growing something much bigger and the entire community was getting excited.

Dana: 

One of the striking parts of this passage about Jesus is that he's headed out to a deserted place because he's tired. But he sees the crowds following him and, Matthew tells us, “had compassion for them, and cured the sick.” After all the healing, the disciples say “Jesus, tell the crowd to leave so they can go get some food! It's late! But Jesus says “They don't need to leave; YOU give them something to eat.” The disciples are sort of baffled by Jesus' command, but – unsurprisingly – Jesus turns out to be right. Sharon, does that line from Jesus “YOU give them something to eat!” resonate with your work at the Hub?

Sharon:

Thursday before last you might remember the tremendous thunderstorm that came right over this area. We had just received three trucks of food. We had so much because the food bank had extra. All that food had come to us without cost. We didn’t even have to pick it up! They brought it to us and put it wherever we pointed. It wouldn’t all fit under our big porch roof so we had set up a tent over three pallets of produce. It was a great big free abundance.

But in the storm, water gathered on the tent and it didn’t just fall over, the aluminum legs snapped. The boxes were getting soaked. 

As I sat inside and watched the tent break, watched the food get baptized in a ferocious storm, and I thought… now what? It was so easy to think in terms of scarcity: we don’t have space, we can’t even keep the vegetables dry, we don’t have the people, this is all just too much… but really the only thing that was scarce at that moment was generosity.

The largest number of families we had served before was 120… but that day 141 families came. The line routinely winds around the mosque parking lot in two rows, but that day there were three rows. The 141 families probably included about 600 people (you know, including men and children, since mostly it is women who come to pick up the food).

I cannot even imagine feeding 5000 people (plus women and children). I CANNOT IMAGINE. 600 people about did me in. But God was telling us “YOU need to give this food away to all these people who have come out in the rain.” 

But that wasn’t the end, either. Our vision board had urged us to feed anyone who was in line by 6 pm. I was still wearing my scarcity hat and I didn’t want to. I wanted to FINISH at 6 pm so we could start the hours of cleaning up the mess that remained. 

So I was what I thought was ‘generous’ and at 5:45 I went over and stood behind the last car in line. A few minutes later a car drove up and I said “I’m sorry – no mas, no mas, come back next week.” The women smiled and drove away and I looked across the street and saw that there were still eggs and produce, cold foods, and potatoes, there was still so much left. 

And I was convicted.

Despite feeding at least 141 families I was racked with guilt that it wasn’t 142. I ended up telling two families “ok, but I need you to take extra” but even now, I feel ashamed that I told that car to leave – that I couldn’t be generous.

The last two families got containers of eggs that had 1-2 cracked eggs, leftover produce and cold items. It was an unusual mix of stuff, but there was a lot of it! It was kind of like those 12 baskets. 

They received a bounty because there was so much left and because my conviction made me want to be more generous. Because somehow we did not give in to scarcity and in a rumbling stumbling bumbling way managed to end on a note of generosity. 

Dana:

Another part of this scripture that really hits home is that “everyone ate and were filled, and there were LEFTOVERS.” I love that everybody gets to eat – that Jesus didn't take names or ask for identification or require proof that people needed food – somehow, in the process of sharing and eating, everyone was filled. I think that kind of universal invitation is part of the Food Hub's ministry, too, right, Sharon?

Sharon:

It is a core principle of the Parktown Food Hub that we will never require people do “demonstrate need.” Although we do have to collect a small amount of information for the federal program that has been providing some of the food that is keeping us going now, we do not believe that it is our place to judge whether a family “is really in need.”

This is not to say that some families have greater need than others, but we feel totally inadequate to judge what that need is. If a family comes to the Parktown Food Hub then we assume they have some need that they believe food will help meet.

It’s hard sometimes because some people are VERY FRUSTRATING. For example, one family came on a Thursday but all of the non-perishables from Monday were still in their trunk. Another group brings a Suburban that is so full of tires and junk that it’s hard to find space for the three portions of food that they receive. In spite of situations like that, we have decided to just assume that every carrot, every onion, every package of chicken is somehow meeting a need. That Jesus is somehow saying “YOU are the one who can meet that need.”

And there are all kinds of needs: a young woman whose father died of COVID and was crying as she waited in line. Another woman brings me small amounts of donations – often strange things! – and then stays to talk for half an hour. We have children who QUIVER with excitement to be helping and adults who spend hours talking and sharing with one another as they pack boxes and wait for people to show up for their Monday appointments. Especially now during COVID-time, we seem to be meeting all sorts of needs.

One thing I hadn’t yet figured out was how to bring the cohort of volunteers together with the cohort of people who come to get food.

But then Pastor Dana facilitated a conversation between Darla Kay and I which resulted in a physically-distanced Story Circle with ten people from all the different groups that come to the hub… including Mega, our very brave Parkwood neighborhood Black Lives Matter protester.

Darla Kay had said “we must have at least 10 people” so I invited 12 people, hand-picked to bring together people from all of the hub constituencies. On the day of the event, 10 people had arrived and I was SO RELIEVED. And then Mega’s partner walked up and said she was here, but she didn’t know why, and would I please explain why Mega wanted her to attend?

She joined one of the groups (thanks to Darla Kay’s very warm and gracious welcome of her and her two children) and ended up saying “I’m wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share but I’m just going to go for it and share the whole story.”

It was as if God was saying “you need 10? I’ll send you 11. Because that’s how I roll. When you are walking with me you will be showered with abundance.”

The Story Circles were a huge hit and we intend to continue them – I hope some of you will attend. But it is just another part of the unfolding of the vision that was planting in Aja and I in October 2018. That Parkwood UMC, especially Pastor Anita and Lisa and Bob, bought into and helped multiply the resources made available in the summer of 2019. The vision that had us in the right place to support McDougald Terrace residents and that now has us placed as a significant support for families who are being battered by the effects of COVID.

You might think I am here to tell a story of what we did, and I will ALWAYS be delighted to tell that story… but ultimately that’s not why I’m here. This is a story of how God kept planting seed, watering the seed (sometimes with a thunderstorm!) and leading the people who need to be together to the place where their needs and gifts would intersect.

God is planting seeds for you, too. You might want to come join our group at the hub and that would be awesome! We love growing our community and caring for the existing community. But maybe your thing is somewhere else, doing something else. Then go do that. Just follow the abundance of passion and people and care.

Dana:

Specific opportunities:

* Food Hub!

* Food Bank 

* DCIA supply drive

* Help welcome Kiera & Will