Catch the Spirit of Mother Emmanuel.
A Sermon Preached by Jessica Zdenek
Sunday June 21, 2015 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church 11 a.m.
I
was nervous to preach my first Sunday sermon at St. Stephen’s, so I made sure
to do all my research and writing in advance and I had it all written last
Tuesday. And then Wednesday came. And I heard the reports of a young man who
had walked into an historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. I heard how this young man was welcomed into
a Bible study. How he stayed for an hour
before drawing a gun and taking the lives of nine people who had extended him
hospitality.
Suddenly
I had no words. And all of the words I
had written on Tuesday were not what needed to be said on Sunday.
Emanuel
African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church is the oldest AME church in the south.
It is referred to as "Mother Emanuel". Emanuel has one of the
largest and oldest black congregations south of Baltimore, Maryland. This
sanctuary was one of the very first places where blacks began to gather, to
educate one another, to grow in dignity, and to protest their slavery.
In
1821 a group began to organize a slave rebellion and this created mass hysteria
throughout the Carolinas and the south.
And the church was burned. Worship
continued after the church was rebuilt until 1834 when all black churches were
outlawed. Then they worshiped
underground until 1865 when the church was formally recognized and the name
Emanuel was adopted, meaning God with us.
I
want us to catch the spirit of that church this morning because there is
something indestructible about it. Because
we are one in the spirit. And the same
spirit that flamed the courage and dignity and perseverance and endurance of
that congregation, will light our way as we face our own sins of complicity, of
silence, of apathy. Because we share the
same spirit of love that cannot and will not die. A love that will keep rising generation after
generation again and again, breaking hearts of stone, crumbling our best laid plans,
until we know that love is enough and there is enough for all of us.
You
would think the church is a safe place.
But I’m not exactly sure why we would think this.
Faith
is not safe. Love is not safe. God is not calling us to lead save
lives.
There
is nothing safe about God appearing to Job in a whirlwind after his world has
been ripped apart. This God would
certainly fail a pastoral care class.
“Gird up your loins!” God tells Job.
Gather your courage. Because I’m
calling you into the boat. Into a
storm. Into transformation. Into the presence of the One who has the
power to calm the storm. Because we use
to live simple lives, but we will be transformed into disciples who have the
power to do what Jesus does. Because by
the time our boat reaches the other shore we will not be the same. Because we are being called to witness incredible
miracles. Because we are being called to
end racism.
There
is a stain glass window that hangs in Emmanual AME sanctuary. It is a picture of Jesus on the cross, though
his body moves with energy like a tree. It
was donated to the church in honor of the four girls who died in 1963 after a
bomb exploded during Sunday morning services in the 16th Street Baptist Church
in Birmingham. The inscription on the
window reads: Whatever you have done to
the least of these, you have done to me.
Most
of us love to help the least of these. And in the face of tragedy we want to do some
good. Isn’t it always easier to be the
one helping, than to feel our own least of these? We can pretend for a while, but eventually
the people we are trying to help will annoy us.
They will frighten us. They will
bring us smack up against the very things we despise and want to run away from within
ourselves. We will have to move away from
the comfortable position of power to meet the least of these on an even
field. We will be asked to get in the
boat and sail through murky waters. We
will have to sail through storms that only God can still. We will want to hold onto something familiar,
to keep a foot on the shore. But certainty
will not get us far.
As
we begin to move out into the world to work for justice and to stand in solidarity
with those who have long been rejected, we will also have to move within,
discovering parts of ourselves that we have long rejected too. We will have to begin to move into more vulnerable
landscapes. Places we must stand without
the armor around our hearts. Places where
new shoots and roots will grow as we practice beholding that which is
uncomfortable. Sacred ground, where we
will have to face our cowardice. Our
apathy. Our hatred. Our fear.
Our pain. This is where we are going. We are moving towards the cross. We are facing God in the whirlwind.
To
the ancient Hebrews God was above, in the highest heaven, in the holiest of
holy places. What changes radically in
New Testament is the idea that God comes down to us. God descends from the heaven to join humanity
in our darkest moments, in the depths of despair—we learn that God is no
stranger to pain, to injustice, even to death.
We will have to follow to God down into the darkest corners of our
hearts.
Pema
Chodron writes in her book, When Things Fall Apart, “What we reject out there,
we reject in ourselves, and what we reject in ourselves is what we are going to
reject out there. If we find ourselves
unworkable and give up on ourselves, then we’ll find others unworkable and give
up on them. What we hate in ourselves,
we’ll hate in others. To the degree that
we can have compassion for ourselves, we will also have compassion on
others. Having compassion starts and
ends with having compassion for all those unwanted parts of ourselves, all
those imperfections that we don’t even want to look at.”
Each
time we practice turning towards that which is uncomfortable within us we turn
towards the cross. We turn towards our
pain and we walk this road with Jesus who can help carry our burdens so that we
don’t put that pain on others, so that we can’t forget or deny or dissociate or
scapegoat it away. We are going to have to
stop playing this game of perfection. We
are going to have to face the ways in which we terrorize the vulnerable parts of
ourselves and so justify living lives that use fear and power to control
others. We are going to have to face the
ways in which we participate in this culture of fear and scarcity, the ways in
which we deny God’s abundant love.
Racism
exists because we have settled for being a divided people. Because we are terrified of God’s abundant
love for all. Terrified of not being in
control. Of having our nice little
worlds ripped apart by God’s whirlwind.
What
we have yet to discover, is that which survives the whirlwind. That which is indestructible. The book of Job teaches us that our blessings
are not signs of God’s special affection.
And our tragedies are not a signs of God’s absence. Suffering comes to us all, because we are all
human beings. No one gets a free pass. Our blessings will not protect us from the
inevitable pain of being human or from God when he shows up in a storm. We have to practice letting go of our plans,
our perceptions, even our blessings, in order to learn how life flows
back. To see how resurrection really
works.
Jon
Stewart abandoned the humor this week in his response to South Carolina shooting. He said, “We have to peer into the abyss of
the depraved violence that we do to each other and the nexus of a gaping racial
wound that will not heal yet we pretend doesn’t exist. By acknowledging it and seeing it for what it
is… we still won’t do jack ****. I hope
he is wrong about us not doing anything.
We
can begin to do something by taking the plunge into our own shadows. Let’s turn towards the whirlwinds and the crosses
that appear in our lives. Let’s gird up
our courage to behold that which is painful without drinking, without overworking,
without downplaying or denying the pain, without shifting the blame, without
displacing our rage upon another person or race. Let these tender spots, become invitations to
our transformation. Let’s get in the
boat. Let’s follow the same indestructible
spirit that has been leading the people of God out of slavery for thousands of
years, until we too are free from the chains of division that enslave us to the
illusions of safety we seek in our possessions, in faith, our race, in our class,
until we find the vulnerable spaces, the human spaces where love can access us,
where love can heal us and make us one people under God.
Will
you persevere in resisting evil? I will
with God’s help.
Will
you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself? I will with God’s help.
Will
you strive for justice and among all people and respect the dignity of every
human being? I will with God’s help.
Yes,
we will with God’s help.
Amen.
