Sermon 5/15/11

Date: May 15, 2011
Scripture Lesson: Acts 8:26-40
Sermon: Ready or Not
Pastor: Rev. Kim P. Wells

In 1996, a group of three people from this congregation approached me and asked to meet with me. They wanted to initiate a process of discussion and discernment about the congregation becoming Open and Affirming. In the United Church of Christ, Open and Affirming refers to an extravagant welcome to all to be part of the church, specifically including people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered. While Open and Affirming was adopted by the national UCC in 1985, individual churches make their own choice about endorsing this commitment.

Back in 1996, this was really a hot button topic as it still is in some churches today. And this church was small and frail and financially precarious. Survival issues were the elephant in the room back in 1996. Were we going to make it as a church? Were we viable? While I personally supported Open and Affirming at a theological level, practically speaking, it was another matter. I had to ask myself and these three people, given the precarious situation of the church, is it the right moment to bring up the most controversial, inflammatory, and incendiary issue being discussed in the church at the time? Hmmm.

As far as Open and Affirming is concerned, one of the people who approached me about it had this perspective: If we are not bold about what we stand for, then maybe it doesn’t matter if we close as a church. That swayed me. If we weren’t here for the gospel of Jesus Christ, then maybe we didn’t need to be here. Yes, some people left the church over this, but new people came, gay and
straight, which is why we are still here today.

On the one hand: What is a good time to talk about something controversial in the church? When is it a good time in the church to confront difficult issues? On the other hand: When is it a good time to share the love, joy, and peace of God with all people?

In the story we heard this morning about the encounter between Philip and the Ethiopian official, there are several controversial matters that come to play in the story. The action takes place on the road to Gaza, a wilderness road. It was, and still is, a dangerous place: Tensions and hostilities between peoples creating friction. The Ethiopian is a foreigner. Not fully welcome in Judaism. He may come to the Temple for high holy days, but he is not allowed inside.

When we think of Gaza today, we still see tension between those of different backgrounds. Animosity between Israelis and Palestinians erupts regularly over settlements and the boycott of goods and services virtually starving those who live on the Gaza strip. We are still facing the difficult issues of conflict rooted in ethnic and religious identity. When is it a good time to talk about that, in or out of the church? When is it a good time to talk about the universal love of God?

And conflicts over ethnicity are an issue not just in Israel but here in American society as well. Immigration is a hot button topic. There is routine exclusion and discrimination practiced against immigrants. The church custodians are legal immigrants from Bulgaria. They have been here well over five years, since before the economic slump. Vladimir has a master’s degree in international finance and Slava has a master’s degree in math and they have jobs cooking, cleaning, and delivering pizza. There is nothing wrong with those jobs, but they can’t get hired in anything related to their fields of expertise because their foreign educational credentials are dismissed. When is it a good time to talk about ethnocentrism and discrimination in or out of the church? When is it a good time
to talk about all people as children of God?

Then there is the matter of the Ethiopian official’s sexual identity. This, too, makes him an outsider. Not fully welcome. Not fully included. Because of his physical condition. Again, a difficult issue still being confronted today. There is still significant tension and hostility related to sexual identity in church and society. There are still barriers related to physical condition. When is it a good time to talk about that? When is it a good time to talk about the image of God in every human being?

Related to sexual identity, gender still accounts for significant inequity in society and the church, in terms of jobs, pay, access to power, and leadership. While the UCC is better than most, there are still issues. Apparently most of the leaders being nominated for staff positions in the national UCC, to be elected at the General Synod in Tampa, are men. We just got the ballot for new trustees for our UCC Pension Boards. All men. On the ballot they give you three choices: Vote for all. Vote for none. Or vote for some and add a write-in candidate. I added another square on my ballot: Abstain. In the write-in space, I
wrote: Where are the women?

Father Roy Bourgeois who founded the School of the Americas Watch and spoke here at our church last year, has been threatened with being defrocked as a Catholic priest because he supports the ordination of women. He says, “I see this with such clarity that rather than recant, I’d rather eat at a soup kitchen and live under a bridge, and do that with deep inner peace and a clear conscience.” [The Christian Century, 5/3/11, p. 9] When is it a good time to talk about gender equality in the church and beyond? When is it a good time to talk about the creation story: Male and female, God created them? When is it a good time to talk about all people equally loved by God?

Then we see that the Ethiopian official is in charge of the entire treasury of
Queen Candace. This can also be seen as a matter of controversy. He has access
to wealth and with it, power. You know people are going to be constantly trying to influence him and gain favor from him. That is a difficult position to be in and maintain trust and integrity.

To say we have issues over public money in this country would be a gross understatement. We hear every day about what is and isn’t being funded, about taxes, about cuts, about pork, about loss of services, about the debt ceiling, etc. You can’t turn on the news, open a news webpage, or look at a newspaper without seeing issues about public money and the values involved. And the decisions about these issues are being made by people. What are their motivations and perspectives and values? US Uncut is an organization committed to eliminating loopholes and tax havens in the corporate tax code. Carl Gibson, a leader in this movement tells us, “The $3 in my wallet is more than ExxonMobil, GE, and Bank of America paid in taxes last year, combined.” [The Christian Century, 5/17/11, p. 9] I paid over $62 to fill my gas tank this week and some of it was taxes. I pay taxes, why doesn’t ExxonMobil? There’s something wrong with this picture. Public finance is clearly a controversial topic in and out of the church. When is it a good time to talk about the wellbeing of the society as a whole? When is it a good time to talk about greed? When is it a good time to talk about economic justice? When is it a good time to talk about the earth intended to sustain all people, not just some people?

The Ethiopian official is studying the words of the prophet Isaiah. Philip illuminates those teachings for him. What is the right time for the church to illuminate the words of the prophets from our cherished Bible? Prophets who rile against usury (charging exorbitant interest). Prophets who decry exploitation of the poor, ill treatment of foreigners, of the elderly, children, and widows. When is it a good time to talk about the prophets who lambast the abuse of religion to serve the interests of its leaders instead of promoting justice, compassion, and generosity? When is it a good time to talk about such things?

The Ethiopian official reads the phrases from the prophet Isaiah, “Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,” “a lamb silent before its shearer,” “in his humiliation justice was denied him.” Imagine how those words resonated to him given his experience? One who has been cut, humiliated, denied. When he hears that Jesus willingly endured suffering, humiliation, and injustice by choice, out of love, imagine how he was moved. Imagine his feeling of astounding joy. It is Jesus’ expansive, self sacrificing love that drew people to his way, to his movement, to the community of his followers. When is it the right time to talk about Jesus’ love and solidarity with those who are on the fringe, the margin, outsiders, second class, suffering, demeaned, degraded, and devalued? When is it a good time to proclaim Jesus’ expansive love for all people? When is it a good time to declare our devotion to a God of universal love?

This Ethiopian official was a man of high rank and importance with significant responsibilities. Yet he leaves his post to make a perilous journey to carry out his religious devotion. He goes to Jerusalem for the Jewish high holy days. He makes this effort to practice a religion that will not even fully accept him because of his ethnicity and his sexual identity. Yet he goes, prays, and studies, with earnest devotion. When is it the right time to show our commitment to our spiritual path? Sure, we have other concerns, we can always make excuses. But when is it a good time to really practice what we preach as Christians?

Philip was in the middle of growing a new movement. Getting people to join up. And God tells him to go to this wilderness road, to this Ethiopian official. It may not have been safe. He was already doing God’s work. This official presented inclusion problems for the early Jesus movement because he was not a Jew, he was a Gentile. There was the water. What about baptism? What would they say at ‘headquarters’? This was controversial. Philip could have made excuses about how this is not the right time to involve himself with the official. When is it the right time to deal with controversial issues? When is it the right time to show the universal love of God in Jesus Christ?

We can always find excuses and explanations for what we are or aren’t doing. It’s not the right time. We are busy with something else. It will cause too many problems. We don’t want to rock the boat. We don’t have the power to change things anyway. It’s not our problem. There always excuses. We need to be on the lookout, constantly, for what is holding us back, what is standing in our way, what is preventing us from full expression of our Christian discipleship. We need to remove the obstacles and distractions that are diverting us.

Though the gospel is an inclusive message of universal love, the true core values of Christianity, the teachings of Jesus, are always going to offend someone. Given the world as it is, they should make us all at least squirm a little. They should remind us of our commitment and what we still can do to be true to our calling. It will never be the right time to deal with the controversial matters raised by the gospel. It is always the right time to demonstrate the love, joy, and peace of God.
When I was a teenager, we went to a UCC church in Minneapolis that sponsored a family camp every year. It was always one of the best weeks of the summer. So, one year we went off to camp and one of the first activities of the week was tie dying t-shirts. This was back in the first incarnation of tie dye. We all had shirts and were busy with big vats of die of many colors and rubber bands, and we used a technique to make letters and words. It was a lengthy process – soaking and rinsing and wrapping and drying. After several days, the shirts were done and we all put them on.

Our senior minister, not only the top authority at the church, but also
approaching retirement, had put letters on his shirt, words, evidently. He proudly put on his t-shirt surrounded by a group of us teenagers. We looked at his shirt. We looked at him. We were puzzled. We tried to restrain our giggling and laughter. On his shirt, we saw a capital D, a lower case o, then a straight vertical line, and a cross or a t, we weren’t sure which, all evenly spaced. It looked like this: D o I t. “Dolt?” We really could not suppress our laughter. Who would put “dolt” across a t-shirt? Bless him, poor Phil Sarles could not figure out what we were laughing about. Your shirt. It says, “dolt.” He looked at us confused. What he saw on his shirt was Do It. (And this was in the olden days way before the Nike motto.) Do it! Don’t hold back. Seize the opportunity. Do it.

The time will never be right to be bold about gospel values that are controversial and threatening to some. The time is always right to spread the universal, extravagant love of God. God is calling . The gospel of love is waiting. The love, joy, and peace are ripe. Do it. To some, you may seem like a dolt. Don’t worry about that. Like Philip and the Ethiopian official – ready or not. Do it! Amen.

A reasonable effort has been made to appropriately cite materials referenced in this sermon. For additional information, please contact Lakewood United Church of Christ.