sermon | Rev. Shane Montoya

“Imitators of God” or “Don’t be Hangry, Be Angry!”

“Imitators of God”

Scripture: 1 Kings 19:4-8, Ephesians 4:25-5:2

Preached on July 1, 2018, at Edwards Church, Framingham.

Ever get that dark irritable mood where nothing seems to go right? One of those moods where every, single small thing just gets on your nerves, when you yell without warning, and folks around you can’t even eat crackers in peace without facing your wrath? And then realize that you haven’t eaten in 12 hours?

If so, then you might have been “hangry”

Hangry is a combination of the words hungry, and angry, and, you might have guessed, attempts to describe that state of anger, irritation, of unsettledness that comes from being hungry. Many folks know about this concept, this word, from a recent series of Snickers advertisements; some of them are quite funny.

But, it’s good to know for us that being hangry is not something that was made up by a modern junk food corporation, but does have biblical precedent. Our first Bible reading is a testament to that.

In that reading, the evil Jezebel has promised to kill the prophet Elijah, who has just fled from the court in Jerusalem. After fleeing the city on foot, Elijah is out in the desert under a broom tree and is settling down to sleep.

A broom tree, by the way, is a hardy desert plant, it looks more like a bush than a tree- not a majestic oak. It’s kind of low to the ground and brambly, and if there’s just one, you know that the land is pretty sparse, but it is more than capable of providing shelter and water.

Elijah is feeling crestfallen, sad, angry, disappointed, and perhaps a bit melodramatic. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”

Hearing this, God follows in the footsteps of the best of Grandmothers, and makes him some food and tells him to eat up. Elijah does so and falls asleep again, and once again, like the best of grandmothers, God tells Elijah to have seconds and to stay hydrated, for otherwise, “the journey will be too much for you.”

An exhortation to remember to eat might feel odd to hear in church in this particular moment in our nation, a moment that has many of our LGBT, immigrant, and non-white members, friends and family feeling vulnerable. And if you don’t know anyone who is feeling vulnerable, I assure you that they are.

But this story reminds us that Elijah was feeling pretty vulnerable politically too. Queen Jezebel, who had threatened Elijah, was a follower of Ba’al, an ancient Mesopotamian Storm God, who was followed by surrounding nations which had been traditionally hostile. Religions were (and in many cases still are), intensely political, tied up in notions of who is in power and allowed to hold political power. So this was as much a political takeover as much as a religious one.

I think it’s a pretty extraordinary thing that the message God gives to Elijah at this critical juncture is not some grandiose pronouncement, even something such as “Do not be afraid”, but rather, “eat some food.” Take care of yourself, don’t be hangry, for the road is long, and the journey can be treacherous. Your people need you, God says to Elijah, they need you alive and healthy to lead them and journey with them. And to do that, God says, first you need to eat, to drink, to tend to your physical needs, because we need you to be here and at your best.

The world does not need any more Hangry leaders.

For us as Christians, this command to eat bread given from God takes on a new meaning through our communion table, opening up a spiritual dimension to this physical and practical command from God. To be able to endure the journey ahead we must take care of ourselves and each other not only physically, but spiritually as well, feasting on the love of God made flesh in Jesus Christ.

And although we do this most viscerally in our partaking of communion together, we also do this in our prayers, our bible studies, our creating and listening to music together. I know that sometimes I get spiritually “hangry”, which manifests itself in a dark cynicism. Just as a physical hunger pain reminds me it is time to eat, my spiritual hunger reminds me to feed myself spiritually.

I’ve talked before about some of the ways I do that; Marvin Gaye’s album What’s Going On (in my opinion the best album ever made), coming to worship or, my newest addition, a daily prayer app on my phone that gives me a small ready-made worship service. This soothes my hangry soul just as a home cooked meal soothes my hangry body.

But being hangry is only one small branch of the family tree of emotions and behavior that make up anger. Anger as an end unto itself, serving its own needs, sowing violence and terror is something else entirely. Often born out of frustration, and targeted toward the vulnerable, it is a great evil that stalks this land.

That sort of anger, which we might call wrath, is something that the bible condemns justly. But there is one sort of anger that the bible does not condemn. It is one born out of the deep deep biblical imperative to love our neighbors as ourselves, and which moves us to right wrongs and heal the world. It is born out of that innate sense of equity and justice that we all have as children, a god-given gift to imagine the world as it ought to be, not as it is. This sort of Anger, a righteous anger, the bible tells us, can be a good thing, if properly channeled.

God, the Bible repeatedly tells us, is slow to anger and quick to return to mercy, but God does get angry sometimes over the course of the Bible. The prophet Amos evokes the image of God’s Anger made manifest against Israel’s enemies for what we would today call war crimes, and against the kingdoms of Israel and Judah for their treatment of poor and moral disorder in society.

Unfortunately, some of this Biblical imagery has been conflated with wrath, that terror, to frighten people, especially those with little power. Because of this, there has been, in progressive Christian circles, a hesitancy to talk about God’s anger. I understand that this has provided healing and comfort to those traumatized by these images as children by hateful voices in our current religious landscape.

But if, as Paul tells us in our second reading, in the letter to the Ephesians, that we are to be imitators of God, if God should not get angry, then neither should we. Therefore, in limiting and eliminating God’s anger as a valid emotional response, we have also frustrated our own ability to feel that righteous anger.

And honestly, there’s a lot of stuff that we should be mad as hell about.

Our second scripture passage from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians does remind us that we shouldn’t discharge anger entirely from our emotional lives. Rather, Paul reminds us that anger should not cause us to sin, that is, to separate us from God’s love. As long as our anger is born out of empathy, that sense of seeing others as fully human and worthy of our and God’s love as we are, it does not separate us from God’s love.

For when anger comes from a suspicion that something is not right with the world, when it is properly channeled and backed up by a deep and abiding sense of love, anger can be a force for equality and justice. This anger arises from a deep swell of God’s love, which envisions the world as it should be, rather than accepting the injustice of what is, has been at the core of the Abolitionist movement, the Civil Rights Movements, and all the other movements for equality, which demanded from society the full recognition of their God given humanity.

This is the anger that has erupted in recent weeks about the treatment of children at the border. That we can still feel anger when children are torn from their families, or when whole families are being detained indefinitely for the legal act of seeking asylum, is a good thing.

When there is something that is deeply wrong, when our most vulnerable friends and neighbors live in fear, that we feel anger is a good thing. Feeling that anger means that we still have empathy, that ability to love our neighbor as ourselves. That empathy that is a core of what it means to be a Christian. My wife, Shannon, summed up this distinction well, in saying “It is the difference between Anger as an end, and Anger as a means to an end.”

If we are to be imitators of God as Paul suggests, then anger must be a part of our emotional vocabulary. It should be a deliberate anger, slow to start, quick to end, and tempered elsewhere in our lives in relationships built on mercy, kindness, honesty, and in the steadfast love of God.

Building a life built on those principles is hard today. The forces of greed, corruption, of inhumanity are vast and organized. Systemic evil seeks to set us apart from one another, to keep us docile and helpless, tries to teach us that the only way forward is to purchase, buy, and consume. I believe that It is only, only, in reaching out to one another, and to another source of power, of a reservoir of love vast, and unable to be bought, sold, or controlled, that we can make it through.

This sermon marks my final teaching with this church as a gathered body; I leave you with a deep and abiding gratitude for my time here, and this is my final lesson: Embrace your full selves; bring your whole physical, emotional, and spiritual lives to the messy confines of the church. Love and care for one another, joining together in your grief, your righteous anger, and your joy. Know that all that you are is pleasing to God, and nothing, no nothing, here on heaven and earth can separate you from the love of Christ Jesus.

Amen.

“Wounded and Risen”

Listen along as you read!

Wounded and Risen

Preached by Rev. Shane Montoya on April 8, 2018 at Edwards Church Framingham, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s Assassination

Scripture: Psalm 133, John 20: 19-31

I saw a comic recently on Facebook that featured three men in ancient clothing talking to one another. One of them says to the other two, “All I’m saying is we don’t refer to Peter as “Denying Peter”, or Mark as “Ran away Naked Mark”. Why should I get stuck with this title?”

To which one of the other men in the cartoon responds, “I see your point, Thomas, but really, it’s time to move on.”

This is true church: it’s time to move on from Doubting Thomas.

This is partly because of the simple fact, The word “Doubt” doesn’t actually appear in the original Greek text of our Gospel reading.

This is especially pertinent to us, because when we modern folks think of doubt, we think of intellectual arguments, of skepticism and testing done by scientists in labs.

This is not what this passage is about.

Thomas wasn’t having a theological debate about the nature of the trinity or the ontological implications of the physical resurrection. We know this because the word that we translate as believe or faith in the New Testament, “pistis”, is not about intellectual agreement, but about trust and faithfulness.

It’s the trust that children have for their parents, an utter dependence on God’s grace and mercy. So Thomas was doubting doctrine. No, Thomas was full of despair. Despair that his friend and teacher had abandoned him and only him, that he would not share in the bounty of grace which God had promised him and his community.

Thomas, though, Thomas didn’t abandon his fellow disciples in his hour of despair, nor did they abandon him. Instead, even though he was in the midnight of his soul, he still gathered with his people. I think that’s quite notable.

And if there is one thing we do know about our God, it is that God keeps promises. Jesus, seeing Thomas’s despair, does the work he said he would do as the Good Shepherd, following after the one who was alone and in pain even when the 99 had been seen to.

Thus, Jesus makes a special visit, just for old Thomas, who is the depths of his despair. Thomas sees Christ, and, after feelings with his hands Christ’s wounds, proclaims “My Lord and My God!” He is not suddenly convinced of the Nicene Creed through an academic paper. No, what happened to Thomas was that he encountered his Lord and his God both wounded and risen, fully human and fully divine. In doing so, his despair is turned into trust and faithfulness. His love and trust in and for Jesus Christ is restored.

This isn’t in the bible, but history tells us that Thomas would go on to start the Christian church in India, a community of millions that has survived persecution, from local rulers and from Europeans, and isolation.

So I don’t try to use Thomas as a foil so much anymore. Sometimes, I wish that I could be as faithful as Thomas, making the leap of faith to preach the gospel in a distant land. Me, I just made the arduous journey from Natick to Framingham.

Indeed, in considering Thomas’s behavior, throughout this whole episode, I find him to be something of a hero.

Sometimes I wish that we would “doubt” as well as Thomas did. For, if in seeing with our own eyes the wounded and risen Christ, in his full humanity and full divinity, that we would be faithful and trusting as Thomas was, I would consider that a faith well lived.

But for me at least, this begs the question:

What if we “doubted” our neighbors, our fellow humans the same way?

50 Years ago this past Wednesday, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

It shocked and horrified our nation; some of us in this room remember that day. The country convulsed with what some historians have called the deepest civil unrest in this country since the Civil War.

It was the tragic end of a life that was dedicated to the liberation of his people from the bondage of Jim Crow, a vision of equality that many, did not want to hear.

He did it by making racism a moral crisis in this country.

He knew that White Folks in this country, even, and especially well meaning and good hearted folks in the Northeast and West, were not truly aware of the full scope or implications of the murderous regime of terror that African Americans lived under in the Jim Crow South.

There were stories, and news reports, sure. There were the horrific scenes of violence over the integration of the school systems in Little Rock, Arkansas and other towns and cities in the South.

And, of course, MLK also knew that White Americans were a people who were very good at turning away from what was going on “over there.” After all, if it was so bad, why didn’t they just leave? I’m sure it wasn’t really that bad, they said. “If they followed the law, this wouldn’t happen.” “The truth must be somewhere in the middle.”

So MLK decided to force the issue, setting out to destroy even the perception or possibility of moral ambiguity about conditions in the South.

He felt, no, he knew that if the wider public knew the full extent of the brutality of life in the Jim Crow South, even under “moderate” leaders, then folks would become so shocked and horrified that they would demand change.

Dr. King believed that when White America saw the wounded, and especially the risen nature of African Americans, in the American South, enduring with solidarity, and dignity, that Whites would finally see them as fully human.

And for a historical moment, an all too brief historical moment, the strategy worked. Americans were awaken from a moral slumber during the freedom summer, and watched with shock and horror as black and white protestors were savagely beaten by racial segregationist city and state governments.

For a moment, White Americans looked at wounded and risen African Americans and believed them. Collectively, we said, “My God, what has happened here?”

This sparked the passing of the Voting Rights Acts and Civil Rights Act of 1964, which were truly massive accomplishments, but did not eliminate the many differences and disparities, especially economic, that African Americans lived with.

Indeed, in the years after these bills were passed, public sentiment started to turn against MLK and the cause of Black freedom within the United States. This was partly because of deliberate efforts of the United States government to stir dissension; this is not a conspiracy theory- it’s well documented that the FBI wanted to discredit MLK and other African American Civil Rights leaders. The FBI even sent an anonymous letter to MLK, encouraging him to commit suicide.

Part of it was also because of his early campaigning against the war in Vietnam, which was still popular at the time. Images of burned out villages were just starting to appear on American televisions, but the widespread opposition to the war that would galvanize the country in the late 1960s had not yet appeared. In1966, MLK had a disapproval rating of almost 63%.

By the time he was killed in Memphis 50 years ago, White politicians as prominent as Ronald Reagan, then governor of California, would say on the day of MLK’s funeral, “that his death was ‘a great tragedy that began when we began compromising with law and order and people started choosing which laws they’d break.’”

This, in effect, blamed MLK for his own assassination, equating murder with civil disobedience.

It would be nice if I could say that after MLK’s death, things got better for African Americans, but in many cases, they did not. Trends in the United States, including the closure of factories, stagnation of wages, the HIV epidemic, and the rise of prisons as places for private profit impacted African Americans disproportionately.

No longer were we saying, “My God, what has happened here?”, and worked to better the lives of African Americans and others who were suffering. Instead, we began to say, “I don’t believe you.”

If only we had trusted, and believed.

If only now we would trust, and believe.

If only like Thomas the truster, Thomas who did not abandon his community, even in the midst of his despair, we would believe.

We would believe the poets and artists and activists who are opening their wounds to us, to see and touch their wounded ness and their risen ness, and to proclaim, “My God, what has happened here?”

We would believe and surround with the strength and hope of community those who were struggling with depression and anxiety and other mental illnesses, not trying to fix them but simply being present with them.

We would believe that new life is possible and sometimes probable for those whom society has written off.

We would believe that our God is not just a transcendent God worthy of our praise and majesty from a distance, but one who would appear to someone he called friend not in the form of an majestic angel, but as his friend whose wounds were still visible and who would invite him to touch them.

And if that is our God, what does that say about who we should be in the course of our love? Our God who is glorious and vulnerable, fleshy and fantastic? Is that not what love is?, to be vulnerable to one another and then to believe each other’s pain?

Believe the Good News, Friends, believe that Christ is risen and wounded, and that we can be too.

Amen.

May the Force Be With You

“May the Force Be With You”

Scripture: Psalm 24, John 14:18-31

Sermon Written and Preached by Rev. Shane Montoya on January 21, 2018 at Edwards Church, Framingham

A small group huddles in the darkness. They know hope; but on nights like these, it seems distant.

An evil Empire, vast in power and might, especially in its destructive capabilities, seeks their complete annihilation. For this evil Empire, once a proud republic, desires nothing more than the domination of all in its path, and the members of this small group have a different political vision than what the center of power holds.

They know that domination is not the way forward, but cooperation. They seek a system where all are equal.

I am, of course, speaking of the Early Christian Church, and not Star Wars, but, yes, both our Christian story and Star Wars both feature Evil Empires, inspiring heroes and heroines, danger, temptation, and at least metaphorical death and resurrection.

We can even see an arc of Jesus’s birth, life, death, and resurrection can even in the titles of the Original Trilogy of Star Wars movies, released back in the 1970s and 80s:

With A New Hope, referring to Jesus’s Birth, The Empire Strikes Back referring to Jesus crucifixion and death at the hands of the Roman Empire, and Return of the Jedi, well, I’m trying really hard not to refer to it right now as the Return of the Jesus.

This is partly because are similarities in how the Gospel story and Star Wars are structured: both make at least some use of the “Heroes’ Journey” format, in which a character performs deeds, becomes famous, falls afoul of some powerful political leader, and then metaphorically (or literally) descends into hell, only to return stronger.

But what’s been intriguing me lately, and this is a theme that I touched on briefly a couple of weeks ago during the Epiphany worship service, is that the Star Wars saga gives me great insights into the difference between consuming and participating in a story. I’ve come to realize that this is incredibly important to our lives of faith.

It’s taught me that Christianity is not, or well, should not, be something we consume, like listening to a pop song or reading a fun novel, but something we participate in. Our story is not one in which we should hear it or read it on Sunday mornings and then not have it be in our minds, our hearts, our bodies, our souls the other 6 days and 23 hours of the week.

It is a story we participate in, not one we consume; to hone that difference a little bit, let’s go back to our first scripture reading today. In our psalm reading, Psalm 24, Clair reminded us that while the Earth belongs to God, there are some places that are special.

There are mountaintops, both physical and metaphorical, where only the pure, the clean of heart, those who seem to hunger and thirst for God, can approach. They are exclusive places, places reserved for saints, for the prayer warriors, for those who seem to always know what to do to please God.

They are for Moses and Elijah, Peter and John, for the grand heroes of our Christian Story, who changed the world through their deeds. Certainly not the sort of place for someone like me, Full of self-doubt, full of doubt about whether or not I’m doing the right thing, if I’m reading enough Bible or spending enough time with God.

A place, it sometimes feels like, that is designed to make the rest of us feel a bit inadequate. Make us feel as though that story wasn’t written for people like us. A story that I can’t, we can’t, participate in. It forces me out of participation mode and back into consumption mode.

The old Star Wars movies are the same way. I didn’t live in a world with robots and laser pistols and Lightsabers. I wasn’t and would never be a Jedi Knight, like Luke Skywalker, a lovable and charming rogue like Han Solo, or even confident like Princess Leia.

So they were fantasies that existed over there. Sure, I could play the video games, read the books, and watch the movies, but I was always aware in the back of my head, and I don’t think I could have named it then, that the stories weren’t really for me to participate in. They were there for me to enjoy myself with. A worthy goal, to some extent.

But its not the stuff of stories that help us make meaning out of the world. Those consuming stories are not the stories that define and shape how we live. Which is part of why the most recent Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi is so interesting.

I believe that The Last Jedi was an attempt to make Star Wars more like a participatory story. There are signs all through the movie about this: there’s a main character, Rose Tico, played by Asian American actress Kelly Marie Tran, who isn’t anything special.

She’s a maintenance worker, a mechanic. She’s bright, but not a genius. She’s not a skilled fighter or ace pilot. She’s kind of a normal person.She does step up and become brave when she needs to be, but that wasn’t because of any special ability, power or talent that made it easy for her to be brave, but because it was what she needed to do to save the people she loved.

And stepping up? Well, that’s something I can see myself doing.

Maybe not by traveling through space on a one-in-a-million chance space adventure, but maybe by advocating for people who need my voice.

Maybe by listening to someone who’s not doing so good, or making lasagna for someone who’s recovering from surgery; and when I can see myself in the story, And especially when folks who don’t see themselves in stories very often, especially women, and folks of color can see themselves in stories, and begin to participate in them.

It’s important.

It really does mean something.

So when stories in our Bible like our second scripture reading today, from the Gospel of John, tell us, point blank, that this whole Bible thing, this Jesus guy, this whole Christianity thing is participatory gig, I take note.

He reminds us, “On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.”

Jesus Christ here is literally telling us that we are called to a participating faith, one in which we have a major part to play. Jesus is subverting the message of the psalm, that the mountaintop experience of God is only for the holy rollers, instead saying that it’s for everyone who tries to love God and their neighbors and has good days and not so good days and bad hair days besides.

For we do not have a religion that calls us to a life of passivity, a life of watching only heroes and stars do faith, over there, but a sometimes messy and often beautiful faith lived right here. This is because Jesus’ way- God’s way- is not based around worship of a distant God, existing solely in the realm of metaphor, who exists only in our beautiful choir pieces and piano solos, but in the sometimes awkward singing of our whole congregation in an unfamiliar song, and in a God who jams out with us while we’re singing a little bit louder than we should to Uptown Funk.

Because God wants all of us to be in Christ, not just the parts that society tells us that we should feel good about. God loves and wants our bodies that have gained a little bit more weight than we wanted to, that maybe we think aren’t that pretty anymore, simply because God wants to be around us, to be with us, to be in us.

God wants our addictions and annoying habits that we want to break, God wants our jealousies and petty rivalries, because God wants us to become the people that deep down inside, we know we can be.

Our God isn’t the God of the philosophers, unchanging and unfeeling, ontologically pure but emotionally distant. But a God continues to grieve with us, as Jesus mourned the death of Lazarus beside Martha and Mary.

That is the truth about our God.

Truth with a capital T is not something I talk about much when it comes to religious and theological discussions, but I will do so for this; our God calls us to a life of faith that is in active partnership with God, in our joys and struggles, and in our hopes, our dreams.

It’s not an easy thing to do; no one ever said it would be.

No heroes’ journey is ever easy.

So I send you with this ancient blessing, from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away,

“May the Force be with you.”

By Whose Authority?

Sermon: By Whose Authority?

Scripture: Galatians: 2:1-10 and Luke 1: 46-55

Written and Preached by Rev. Shane Montoya on October 29, 2017 in honor of the 500^th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation

Every so often, a person arises; a special sort of person who does not simply flow with the currents of the river of history. Someone who causes tyrants to tremble, often so much that they do their work, and they always continue to do their work, under great physical, emotional, and spiritual risk.

These great heroes will force us to realign our entire moral universe. They seem to be the living embodiment of Mary, Mother of Jesus’s prayer we read today. Working through them, God puts uplifts the lowly and brings down the mighty.

In that great river of history, through a combination of being at the right place, at the right time, and sheer force of will, they force a new path for the river. Hopefully leading those of us caught up in the river toward a path of God’s justice and righteousness.

Today in church, we celebrate one of those figures. A man who, if not for him, we would not be here. I speak, of course, about Jesus Christ. Yes, I know it is the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and yes, I believe it is a very big deal. I was a history major in college, and I listen to 20+ hour audiobooks on history, many about church history, in the car regularly.

But I was reminded a couple of days ago through seeing a conversation between some Lutheran colleagues that Luther would have absolutely, Hated, Just hated any celebration of his legacy that was not centered on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So we explore today the rich tradition and complicated legacy of Martin Luther, particularly as it relates to issues of authority, I will try to remind us that the gospel message was absolutely central to what Luther did.

And although I don’t believe that Luther got everything right- if he did I’d be a Lutheran ,I will not begrudge him his devotion and total focus on what he thought Jesus Christ was calling him to do.

We had the distinct pleasure of learning a little bit about Martin Luther earlier today through the virtuosic acting of our wonderful volunteers; Yes, Martin Luther was a university student, hoping to study law when, after traveling back to school from a short trip home, got caught in a thunderstorm.

By his own account, he was knocked down by a bolt of lightning and cried out, “Save me, Saint Anne, and I will become a monk.” Luther would continue that to display that flair for the dramatic and theatrical.

He would become a monk in the Augustinian order, an order dedicated to the 4^th century Christian thinker Augustine, originator of the idea of the original sin, which would feature profoundly in Luther’s own thinking.

As a monk, Luther was extremely… fastidious, and became more and more fastidious as he grew older.

He became obsessed with confession, becoming more and more fearful that he would die with sins left unclean on his soul. He became so fixated on confession and being clean before God that he, this is no joke, Luther got his confessor to tell him to not worry so much about it.

Seriously, think about that for a minute. What it would take for a monk- and not just any monk, but a monk who did confession for a living in the 1500s to tell another fellow monk, “Hey buddy, slow your roll there, you’re getting too pious on us.”?

But that’s who Martin Luther was, and his confessor decided to do two things with Martin Luther:

The first was to send him to university, and the second was to encourage him to read the Bible. The first one sounds almost obvious- to get Luther out of a structured monastery setting, to fill his days with the rigors of academic life-

Many of which would be similar to anyone in a modern university: studying, teaching, writing, presenting papers. But the second one is a bit more curious: Read the Bible? Didn’t they already do that? The answer was complicated.

Martin Luther, we must remember, was living in a completely different intellectual and spiritual world.

The printing press, a German invention, was only a couple of generations old at the time, and although this greatly increased the availability of books, removing the need for monks to hand copy everything in their stores, literacy was still relatively rare- although growing.

But more important than that was some of the theology that was prevalent in the Roman Catholic Church that reading the Bible was not only unimportant, but could be counterproductive to the faith

After all, if the church- and by that, I mean the Roman Catholic Church- was instituted by Jesus Christ through the Apostle Peter, and if the church was the guardian and guide of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, surely the Holy Spirit had ensured that the church’s teachings were correct.

Indeed, it meant that the church’s teachings couldn’t be wrong. Reading the Bible by oneself could only allow for agreement with the church’s teachings, with much time wasted on Biblical study that the church had already done, at best, or heresy at worst.

But Martin Luther was a man living, although not on a frontier geographically- he was in a frontier in time. He was alive smack dab in the middle of the Renaissance, a movement which encouraged folks to among other things, go back to the original sources.

Although this movement started in philosophy and science, it began to trickle to theology and the Bible.

Nor was Luther the first to read the bible and come to different conclusions: John Wycliffe, an Englishman, had translated the Bible into English almost 130 years before Martin Luther was nailing documents to a Church Door,

Coming to many of the same conclusions that Luther eventually would. Jan Hus, a religious leader in what is today the Czech Republic, semi-successfully separated a portion of that country for an extended period.

But both of those folks were not Martin Luther. They weren’t in the right time or place to utterly shift the course of history, but Martin Luther was.

As he began to read the Bible, particularly the book of Romans, Luther began to have some questions about things.

Questions about the nature of grace and sin, of confession and absolution, about how humans can become justified-

That is, how we can be in right relationship with God. The church in his day said that the best way to do that was to do more more more. After all, if saying a mass was a good thing that helped to cleanse the soul, then saying more of them was even better.

That is why when you go to European cathedrals, those monuments to the majesty of God, there is not just one high altar down the center aisle of the church. No, on the sides of the churches, about where our stained glass is, there would be side chapels.

And back in Martin Luther’s day, folks would pay to have a number of masses said for them, to help cleanse their souls.

And heck, if you could pay to have a mass said for you and that help cleanse your soul, why not? And shouldn’t you be able to pay for other things that the church was doing, and have that go on your “permanent record?”The church was, after all, the guardian of the gospel.

So when the church needed to say, go on crusade, or rebuild Saint Peter’s Cathedral in Rome, what do you do? You sell the ability to cleanse the soul, to get into right relationship with God.

After all, the church can’t be wrong because it has the power of the Holy Spirit behind it, right? The church called these indulgences, And Johan Tetzel, who we met earlier today, he was the guy who was selling these indulgences like hot dogs at a baseball game: “Get your indulgences here, 1 for 2, 3 for 5, 10 for 10,“ was one of the folks who sold them.

Now, I may have taken a small bit of dramatic license with him selling them like a baseball vendor. But to understand the crude commercial nature of these transactions, the second quote, “As soon as the gold in the basket rings, the rescued soul to heaven springs” is a real quote from his mouth.

So, Martin Luther, this professor and academic, sees this going on, and he’s reading the bible, particularly the letters of Paul, such as the letter to the Romans, and the letter to the Galatians and he’s not seeing this stuff in there.

He’s not reading about indulgences. He’s not seeing anything about having that the way to get to heaven is to pay the church to say masses for you.

We can picture him desperately searching the gospels and letters, trying to make sense of the disconnect between what he was reading, about our relationships with God being defined not by what we do but through the grace of God. The grace of God that we encounter through our faith, that when we make even the most tentative steps toward God and Jesus Christ, that God wraps us in.

That was Martin Luther’s great insight in that specific time and place, the one that the world needed to hear, the one that calls out to us through the ages.

But if that is the content of the Protestant Reformation- especially its Lutheran branch, then its methods are almost as important to us, if not more relevant.

Because salvation through grace by faith, could not have found that message through the teachings of the church at the time. Luther’s genius, the thing that allowed him to remake the course of Christian and world history, was to rethink the way that we thought about authority.

In his day, the Roman Catholic Church was the authority on all things spiritual; going against it meant death, both spiritual and often physical. Luther said it was not the Church that had ultimate authority over the teachings of Jesus Christ, But rather that the Jesus Christ, as found in the scriptures, had authority over the church.

Luther did not follow the doctrines of inerrancy that modern fundamentalists would create almost 400 years later. He did not worship the bible. Rather, he thought of the Bible as the place in which the Word of God- Jesus Christ- is most easily found.

One famous metaphor he used was to compare it to “the manger in which the infant Christ sleeps.” It is the bible that must set norms for how the church operates, not the church that must regulate how and if the Bible is read.

This has astounding implications that overturned in an instant, millennia old hierarchies. If we are to find the Word of God- that is, Jesus Christ, most easily and accessibly in the Holy Bible, then we must do things to make it more readily accessible. No longer would the Bible only be accessible in a millennia old translation into Latin, but we had a duty to get as close as possible, to the oldest texts, and translate those directly into the local languages that people actually spoke.

Although literacy would remain low by 20^th century standards, in the decades to follow, literacy would greatly rise, higher than it had ever been in history, propelled not only by the marvelous technology of the printing press, but also by a theological imperative to know God and Jesus Christ through the scriptures in a local language.

This meant that church services would also be done not in Latin, which only the educated understood, but in local languages. No longer would the goings on of the church service be a mystery to the faithful- I believe our faith still has plenty of mystery, but something that we could understand logically as well.

With more freedom, we could create some of the most beautiful works of music ever created; most of Johann Sebastian Bach’s and many of Telemann’s musical works were to be performed in church.

This revolution, of aesthetics, reason, the power of humans to be able to make sense of their world was rooted in this world of reformation. For that, we, and the whole world, have much to give thanks for.

But what does that mean for us, today, living in a world of mass literacy, mass entertainment and mass science? Of course, Luther’s core message is one that still resonates, still forms a core of our theology, how we understand what it means to be Christians, even if we do put it into different words. That Jesus Christ is known to us through the Bible, and through faith, God’s love can help make us whole. I don’t want to underestimate that.

But I believe Protestant Reformation is worth remembering for another reason. And that reason is that we are going through another reformation right now. This reformation is not one that we started; we have played only a tangential role in it at best. Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians, especially in Africa, Asia, and Latin America (although also in 3 of the churches that meet in this campus) are some of the fastest growing religious groups in the world today.

And their practice of Christianity, as strange as it might be to us in Progressive, mostly white, comparatively staid New England, is sending shockwaves throughout the world today. Most surprisingly, it is entering our very own practice of progressively minded Christianity.

The primary lesson of this reformation is that authority is not only to be found in the ancient text, of the Bible, but in the personal and lived experience of the believer. In those churches, individual worshippers with spiritual power have profound experiences of speaking in tongues, of becoming slain in the spirit, of speaking in “prophecies.” I’m not saying that our own practices are anything like that, at least in form, but aren’t we now recognizing the power of folks’ personal stories?

When we have our mission moments, our stewardship testimonies, aren’t we honoring those stories to a place that was at one point only reserved for the Biblical text?

In the Seeds of Grace service that I’m helping to organize and lead, we do this explicitly; we have non-Biblical readings, but they’re almost all stories; In addition, we call on people to share their stories, be they of abundance, despair, or hope.

They are honored through our sacred silence and ritual as holy creations of holy people. This is our new reformation.

So when we honor Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, we do so not only because of his ideas, because of his and its broader historical and theological importance, but also because it gives us permission to reform.

That our religious allegiance is not to institutions, even our beloved denominations and church buildings, but to Jesus Christ and the gathered body of Christians, but that we have other duties and bonds that stretch out beyond that as well. It reminds us that as a poor Jewish girl said over two thousand years ago, that the arm of God is mighty and is with us, that tyrants should tremble before the church when it stands for the poor.

Finally, it reminds us that the call to be prophets, apostles, poets, dreamers and reformers did not end two thousand years ago or five hundred years ago or fifty years ago, but continues on today, with you.

Amen.

The Bible Starts in A Garden

The bible starts in a garden, but it ends in a city.

All the way from the Garden of Eden in Genesis to the New Jerusalem that John sees in the Revelation, one of the really cool things about the Bible is that if you know where a Bible story takes place, generally you can guess some of the major themes of the story.

If someone is on a mountaintop, generally they’re going to be having an encounter with God- like Moses on Mt. Sinai, Elijah and the still small voice of God, or the disciples and Jesus’ transfiguration.

Bible stories based around the city are probably about the difficulty of us living out God’s dream with each other- The Tower of Babel, or some the encounters in Jerusalem that Jesus has with the Pharisees.

And if its in a garden, the story is going to be about new beginnings.

Today’s story, of Mary Magdalene encountering Jesus in the Garden, comes almost at the end of the Gospel of John, which normally might lead us to think that it might represent an ending. But then the garden reminds us that this is really about a new beginning.

It represents a new beginning to the Christian story, to God’s story, one that proclaims hope in the midst of hardship, conviction in the midst of desperation, and resurrection in the midst of death.

It’s a message that is sorely needed today. We live in a culture steeped in confusion and doubt, some of it rightly earned, about almost every aspect of our lives.

Too easily, we can fall into patterns where irony takes the place of joy, cynicism overrules idealism, and we insist on false fronts instead of accepting people for their authentic whole selves.

I know I fall into these patterns on my bad days. Probably on my good days too.

Which is a part of why I am and need to be a Christian, of why I need the story of Mary in the Garden.

Just like Mary, Jesus helps me be the person that God needs me to be.

But this story of Mary in the Garden also reminds us that Christianity is not a religion just of gardens, a purely personal and spiritual religion that produces no fruit and that stands for nothing.

For when Jesus tells Mary that she cannot hold him, but rather must share the news with the disciples, this reminds us that that Christianity is a team sport. The Gospel is not meant to be done solo.

The Gospel is to be done in coffee hours and the blessedly awkward conversations that we have every week with folks we otherwise might never meet.

The Gospel is to be done in hospital waiting rooms sitting silently with a friend or a loved one, hoping that a surgery goes well.

The Gospel is to be done in town halls, city council meetings, and on the streets, standing up for the poor when no one else will.

So let us not just be Christians in the Garden, where the beauty of God is readily apparent, but in the city too, where even if we need to look a little bit, it’s right there too.

Turn, Turn, Turn

Turn, Turn, Turn,

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3: 1-13 and James 2: 8, 14-17

Written by Rev. Shane Montoya, Preached on June 25, 2017

A couple of months ago, Debbie and I started to plan the Palm Sunday Service, imagining it as a joyful protest parade of Jesus followers, carrying signs, blowing noisemakers, singing songs and proclaiming our love of Jesus Christ as something radical and revolutionary.

Bible scholars tell us that the Palm Sunday parade was actually something of a protest against the Roman military government, led by Pontius Pilate, based in Jerusalem.

Every good story needs a villain, so we had to recruit some villains for our story- 2 or three big and burly folks to play Modern day interpretations of Roman Soldiers, Bodyguards in Black, guarding a regal yet authoritarian figure. These would be our heels, in wrestling terminology, our folks to boo to better reinforce the clash of violent military power with the strong and gentle love of Jesus.

Of course, if you actually knew the people that we picked to be our villains that day, you would laugh. There was Dawn Sorenson, minister of the gospel, faithful deacon of the church, and unless you get her on the topic of inclusive language, one of the least scary people I know. There was, I believe, Matt Walker, dressed in black leather jacket and tie-dye t-shirt- I’m sorry Matt, but it’s impossible to be scared of someone in a tie-dye t-shirt.

But the most miscast person of all was the person who we got to play our Pontius Pilate, our scary dictator, the target of our scorn so that the gospel of Jesus might be lifted up that day.

Don Akin.

Don who, I found out on Thursday night, would spend hours practicing his speaking parts- the prayers, the passing of the peace, the readings whenever he was a liturgist. Don will not get to be a liturgist anymore, as he was just two weeks ago, at least not here on earth.

He will not get to passionately argue for making the chancel handicap accessible anymore, as he did last Tuesday at our council meeting. He will not attend Bible Study, as he was supposed to on Thursday evening, the day that he passed.

For Life comes at each of quick, and death can come even quicker. Which is why the bible readings for today are so appropriate, even though they were chosen before Don’s passing.

The book of Ecclesiastes is probably my favorite book in the Hebrew Bible. It reads as advice of an old man, a teacher to the young, giving the sort of advice that is often ignored, just as my advice will probably be ignored today.

The teacher reminds us that much of what we take as permanent is not. That what we think of as solid stone is often nothing more than a cloud of mist, of dust, a vanity. Unfortunately, this is advice is, I believe, misinterpreted to paint him as a cynic and a hedonist, someone who’s voice is only tangentially important to the larger story of how we should relate to God.

But I think it actually reveals fundamental truths about the nature of how we should be in relationship with the world. For I believe that this book reminds us of the shifting nature of life and death itself. That times change and seasons shift, that each of us has a time to be born and a time to die. That sometimes life is so so sweet we can barely imagine it, and other times life is so bitter we just can’t swallow it.

It teaches us that in the face of adversity, in the face of pain and strife and grief and never ceasing struggle, that the good we do matters.

That even when our cherished institutions, our governments, our schools, our churches seem to be imploding, that when all of the big solid things that we humans create that we put so much faith in are tottering on the edge, when solid stone is revealed to be no more than mere dust in the wind, that is when the good we do especially matters, that we have lived life abundantly and fully and done well counts.

So graduates, grievers, grandparents, I will give you three pieces of advice today. The first is to live life boldly. Do not live as, some would say, without apology or regrets, for all too often that means a life lived without regard to others. Scripture tells us that we are meant to live life together, in community, and that sometimes it would be hard and that we will have to apologize.

James reminds us that sometimes this is hard, to live our values in our communities. Faith can sometimes be easy when it’s just a matter of trusting in God or assent to creeds or confessions, but that it becomes hard, real hard, when we have to do it in the context of other people.

I know that I have been in very similar situations to the one that James describes. In Downtown Boston, at the Park Street T Station, in the shadow of two churches- The Episcopal Cathedral and Park Street Church, I know that I have thought to myself similar things about people experiencing homelessness. “Why don’t they just get some help?” For that I have regret, a desire to change, to make the future different from the past.

This desire for change is one of the key pieces of our relationship to God. The Psalmist asks God in Psalm 51 to “create in me a clean heart.” Sometimes we are able to do this well. Sometimes we can change our behavior easily and permanently. We can learn someone’s new pronouns, we can recycle better, we can stop using certain words that have hurt people.

Other times it’s a goal and aspiration, and something we try for, something that makes us thankful that our God is always willing to forgive us, not just one time, not just seven times, but all the time. Living a bold life also means trying enough that failure is an option.

Which leads me to my second piece of advice, which is to lead a life that is good, not a life that is nice. This means living a little bit on the edge of the comfort zone, interacting with people in ways that allow for the possibility of failure. It is the difference between living a life that is “nice”, that offends no one and ultimately stands for nothing, and a life that is good, that is lived in defense and support of the values of Jesus and the fruits of the spirit.

A life that reinforces our common humanity and understands that divinity is something that is not distant, only accessible to some, but something that abides with us, with all of us. A life that says that although I love myself, and we must all, if we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, love ourselves, it does not mean that I am “in love” with myself.

A life that guards, nurtures, protects, and provides for others because friends, we’ve got one chance here on God’s Green Earth, and, no one is making it out of this life alive. A life that recognizes that we are all sheep in need of a little shepherding from above, and from each other.

That is a good life.

One more Don Akin story before I finish with the third piece of advice. We had a Church Council meeting just a week and a half ago that I had the honor of leading a small worship for, and I asked folks where and when they felt God.

For me it was when I was listening or singing a song that unlocks my heart, a heart that I admit, sometimes seems like solid stone. Sometimes it’s through a beloved hymn of the church, like “For All The Saints”, or a song that touches my soul, like Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” Heck, I know I feel God when Outkast’s “Hey Ya” comes on, which just makes me want to get up and dance like no one is watching.

Other folks spoke their truths about where they found God: for some, in the faces of those around them. For others, in a beautiful sunset or in their environmental justice work, or in a bible study. But then Don answered, and I think this will be an answer that will stick with me. Don said that he felt God in moments of regret. When in his words, “he screwed up big.”

He related the story of him feeling like he had accidentally insulted Rick Seaholm, our beloved choir director, and a man that I know that Don cared for, when he was liturgist a few weeks ago.

Something that I know I didn’t notice, and I suspect many of us didn’t either. But Don cared and lived boldly and lived good. He put himself out there enough to be a liturgist and practice those words for hours, and when he screwed up, he allowed himself to feel regret.

He allowed himself to care, and it is so so easy for men in particular to not allow themselves to care in the interest of being seen as strong, and then Don allowed God to come into his life and help pick up the broken pieces of his heart, to create in him something new.

And this is the third piece of advice I give to you today, graduates, grievers, and grandparents: Allow yourself to care so much that sometimes life breaks you, and in those moments of brokenness, allow God to come in and help pick up the broken pieces.

It means to heed the words of the psalmist in allowing God to show up for us in our dark days, whether they be a bad time or when we suffer from depression, or anxiety, or one of the other real and invisible mental and physical illnesses that move about us unseen.

What would that be like for me?

For us?

Let’s think about that for a minute.

Let us imagine the Gospel message lived out in a world full of folks who recognized that although we are not all hurting in the same way or at the same time, one of the baselines of our common humanity is a shared brokenness and wholeness.

Imagine that.

Imagine a world where the gospel message was one not of political or cultural domination but shared commitment to guarding, nurturing, and protecting others just as our God guards, nurtures, and protects us.

Imagine us doing this work together, this faith made into the fleshy and messy work of mission and justice.

Imagine a faith where Jesus is fully present in the communion table, our hearts, and with us on the front lines of the work of justice.

I don’t think we have to imagine that hard. I think we can do it.

Together.

Amen.