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LAKEWOOD UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
2601 54th Avenue South  St. Petersburg, FL  33712
On land originally inhabited by the Tocabaga
727-867-7961
lakewooducc.org
lakewooducc@gmail.com

Date: June 25, 2023
Scripture Lesson: Galatians 3:26-28
Sermon: The Forgotten Creed
Pastor:  Rev. Kim P. Wells

This past week many people were riveted by a tragedy claiming the lives of those aboard a vessel which sank to the bottom of the sea. 

Fifty miles off the coast of Greece, a fishing trawler with a capacity for 400 passengers may have been carrying up to 750 passengers when it sank after being stranded for several days awaiting assistance after making repeated distress calls for help.   The ship finally capsized and sank.  Aboard were immigrants from Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan who had paid up to $8,000 per person to be taken to Europe to seek a way to make a living.  At the moment, it appears that there are 104 survivors and that all of the women and children aboard the vessel perished. 

Or maybe the sea tragedy that had you riveted this past week was the ill-fated deep sea submersible Titan, missing for 4 days, carrying 5 passengers who had paid $250,000 each to see the resting place of the Titanic, some 13,000 feet below sea level.  The search for the submersible included resources from several countries and covered an area of 10,000 square miles and 13,000 feet into the sea.  Evidently, the vessel imploded and all 5 lives were lost.

Two horrific tragedies.  At sea.  Involving loss of life.  Very similar.  And also very different.  And which captured the attention of the global community to a greater degree?  I’m sure it was that submersible.  I know I was checking the news constantly.  Is it because it involved the infamous Titanic?  Was it the glitterati that peopled the vessel?  I’ll admit it, I was not tracking the news stories about the immigrants lost in the Mediterranean off the coast of Greece.

Somehow, we humans have a way of turning differences into divisions.  And then making hierarchies that reflect those differences and divisions.  That fishing boat had poor, struggling brown people on it.  Expendables?  Who were trying to escape an unlivable situation and make a better life for themselves and their families.

But the submersible, it had wealthy people on it.  People who were prominent and successful and noteworthy.  Yes, two were brown, from Pakistan, but on the top tier of that society.  Not worrying about how to sustain a family and how to go on living like the Pakistanis on the fishing vessel.  The people on the submersible were rich and famous and were notable because of the way our culture chooses to place different value on different kinds of lives and people.

Some years ago, I had a Black colleague tell me that in St. Petersburg, a Black life does not have the same value as a white life.  Period.  Money not withstanding.  And we have seen this as prominent Black people have been treated in a degrading manner by police and other officials around the country.

Somehow, racism and sexism persist.  Degradation of people who are not cisgender persists.  In our culture.  In western culture.  In Christian culture.  In some indigenous cultures, people who are ‘different’ in some way are esteemed.  They are thought to be special.  Holy.  Maybe with special powers.  But that is not the way in this culture.  Different, I have been told by another Black colleague, different means other, and that means less than. 

Different means other.  And we turn that into ‘us’ and ‘them’.  The ones who are like us, whom we trust and respect, and the ones who are not like us – whom we do not trust and respect.  Because they are less than. Foreign doesn’t just mean different, it means less than.  The whole system of difference and division, us and them, is often driven by fear – fear of being left out, fear of being less than, fear of not having enough, fear of not fitting in, and other fears as well.  But we readily turn differences into division.  And then there is competition and hostility that emerges. 

Things were not so different in the context of the New Testament.  We have inherited much from Greek and Roman civilization in Western culture.  So, that should not be a surprise.  Society was set up according to a caste system that included status based on citizenship, financial resources, ethnicity, gender, and religious affiliation.  And so it is that Jewish men regularly prayed: 

         Blessed art thou who did not make me a Gentile;
         Blessed are thou, who did not make me a woman;
         Blessed art thou, who did not make me uneducated [or a slave].

[See The Forgotten Creed: Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism by Stephen J. Patterson, p. 32.]

Distinctions around race, religion, class, and gender are nothing new!
This is the context in which Jesus lived and offered his ministry.  This is the context in which the apostle Paul sought to spread the gospel after Jesus’ death.  Paul’s focus was on attracting and welcoming Gentiles, non Jews, into the communities of followers of Jesus.  This invitation had certain issues – yes, one was diet.  Jews kept kosher.  Were Gentiles who became part of the Jesus community to keep kosher?  And more importantly, another issue was circumcision.  Jewish males had to be circumcised to be part of the Jewish community.  Were Gentiles who became part of the Jesus communities to be circumcised?  This was a major consideration in the time of emerging Jesus communities.  And could be a significant obstacle to church growth!   This was an issue of much contention among the circumcised leaders of the Jesus movement. 

Paul decided that circumcision was not necessary to be part of the new communities that were forming around the Jesus tradition. The argument about justification by faith associated with Paul was about circumcision.  Paul believed you could be justified by faith, you did not need to be circumcised, to be part of the Jesus community.  We can see the issues of difference, division, less than, written all over this debate and this issue.

In the midst of all of this, we find the lines that were read today from Galatians:  

         Each one of you is a child of God because of your faith in Christ Jesus.  All of you                    who have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.  In Christ                        there is no Jew or Greek, slave or citizen, male or female.  All are one in Christ                    Jesus.

Scholars who analyze ancient texts have determined that in these verses, Paul is quoting a baptismal creed that was probably being used at the time.  After studying the original language and the way Paul wrote, the creed that has been teased out of these verses may have been:

         For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
         There is no Jew or Greek,
         there is no slave or free,
         there is no male and female;
         For you are all one in the Spirit.

There is a wonderful book about all of this written by Stephen Patterson, a scholar of the Bible, early Christianities, and religion in general, called The Forgotten Creed:  Christianity’s Original Struggle against Bigotry, Slavery, and Sexism.  Patterson is a professor at Willamette University and very involved in Westar Institute which spawned the Jesus Seminar that studied what can be known about the historical Jesus.  Before Willamette, Patterson was a professor at Eden Theological Seminary, a seminary of the United Church of Christ.

I heard Patterson give a lecture about the forgotten creed at a Westar Event a few years ago.  It was so exciting.  The book is very good and I recommend it if you would like to know more.

To me, it is very significant to learn about one of the first creeds of the people who followed Jesus and what was important to them:

         For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
         There is no Jew or Greek,
         there is no slave or free,
         there is no male and female;
         For you are all one in the Spirit.

Now, let’s remember that the society of Greek and Roman origins was a caste system.  It was extremely stratified.  There were classes.  And there were slaves – largely the spoils of war.  And there were serious restrictions on the rights of women relative to the rights of men.  So, this:

         There is no Jew or Greek,
         there is no slave or free,
         there is no male and female;

was not just symbolic, poetic language.  This creed wasn’t lofty and dreamy.  It wasn’t flowery metaphorical language.  It was radical revolution.  These phrases were related directly to the prayer of the Jews cited earlier, the three parallel dyads, and this creed was a direct commentary on the most ingrained divisions that defined society.  
And notice what this early, maybe first, forgotten creed does not mention.  The creed was used at baptism to mark new life in Christ.  And Patterson points out that this creed does not mention the attributes and character of God.  It says nothing about the character and nature of Jesus Christ and how he saves people from their sins through his crucifixion and resurrection.  It says nothing about heaven or eternal salvation.  It talks about people, here and now, and the foundation of human identity which is not in our differences, but in our sameness – we are one.  The creed is a testament to solidarity.

This creed is one of the earliest statements about what it meant to be a follower of Jesus and part of a community of Jesus.  It was a statement of solidarity with others as children of God.  Regardless of heritage or characteristics or status in society.  A child of God.  And so each and every person was sacred.  All have this in common.  And that created a commitment to solidarity, to oneness.

This was as far out then as it is now.  And it wasn’t long before the church developed new creeds and left this one largely behind.  So Patterson calls his book, The Forgotten Creed. 

I think it is well past time that the church remember this creed.  Recite this creed.  And recommit to this creed.  And work at remediation of all the damage that the church has done by ignoring and denying this creed. 

Could the church of Jesus Christ say –
There is neither democrat nor republican?
There is neither city dweller nor rural, small town dweller?
Could we say there is neither first world nor developing world?
There is neither rich nor poor?
There is neither white nor Black nor brown nor Asian?
Could we say there is neither east nor west?
Could we say there is neither trans, nor straight, nor gay, nor cis?
All are one?
Sociologists and statisticians tell us that the Christian church is largely behind the culture wars in this country.  The church has veered far from it’s origins.  

And since this is Pride month, I want to comment briefly on the division of gender and the related topic of sexuality.  In that early baptismal creed, there is reference to no Jew or Greek, slave or free, and then, male and female.  The last phrase, the connector is ‘and’, not ‘or’.  It’s not male or female, but male and female.  Patterson offers a very interesting perspective on this phrase.  Apparently, this goes back to the understanding of the creation story in Genesis.  It was thought that God originally an earthling.  This earthling was nongendered.  But for procreation and social relations to ensue, there was the need to have two genders, so this earthling was divided into two, male and female.  So the last phrase of the creed, There is no male and female, is a reference back to the origin stories in Genesis when a human was an earthling, maybe androgynous, but not gendered.  This is the recalling of an ideal state because with gender, difference, turned into division and subjugation, as it usually does.  With gender came the power dynamics of male dominance borne out in society and in the church.

Patterson cites how in the first communities of Jesus women were prominent as leaders.  They were really living out the creed despite the social context that strongly mitigated against that.  Baptism, new life, really meant a different orientation of values and relationships.  It was about being one.  In solidarity.  Everyone a child of God.  That was the primary identity of all who were baptized.

But oneness is not sameness.  When we are rooted in this fundamental oneness, then we can talk about diversity without diversity leading to division and hierarchy.  With a basic foundation of oneness, as human beings, we can explore and examine our differences without fear and without creating constructs that stratify and glorify one construct over another.  Oneness makes it possible to celebrate diversity, to share differences, with appreciation and not fear.  It makes it possible for us to learn about each other and from each other in a way that is mutual and fosters interdependence not hierarchy and subjugation.

This Pride season is a time to celebrate differences.  It is a time to appreciate who we are as human beings in all of our diversity and difference.  It is a time to appreciate the wide spectrum of identities and proclivities of our amazing species.  And for people who follow Jesus all of these differences and divergences are grounded, rooted, in our oneness as children of God.  This solidarity leads us to appreciate, celebrate, and value who we are in all of our rainbow diversity.   And the oneness, this valuing of each and every person, expresses itself in respect, dignity, and equal rights for all.  That is what the church should stand for in society.

         For you are all children of God in the Spirit.
         There is no Jew or Greek,
         there is no slave or free,
         there is no male and female;
         For you are all one in the Spirit.

This oneness is radical.  It is revolutionary.  And we need to reclaim this forgotten creed.  This abandoned creed.  For it is needed to save the church.  And to save the world.  The basic premise of our Christian faith is:  WE ARE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT.    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.

LAKEWOOD UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
2601 54th Avenue South  St. Petersburg, FL  33712
On land originally inhabited by the Tocabaga
727-867-7961
lakewooducc.org
lakewooducc@gmail.com

Date: July 16, 2023
Scripture Lessons:  Genesis 1:20-31 and John 10:7-15
Sermon: What Is Pro Life?
Pastor:  Rev. Kim P. Wells

Summer Sermons 2023 are based on topics suggested by the congregation.

While we were in Los Angeles this past week and a half, our son asked me to take his pick up truck into the shop for a repair.  When I dropped the car off, I asked the technician if there was something to see near by, somewhere to go, while I waited for the car.  He suggested going to the park with a lake a few blocks away.  So that is what I did.  I spent several hours enjoying Echo Park Lake, in the heart of Los Angeles.  The park includes a small lake with a walking path around it.  There are swan boats that can be rented.  The ones that you pedal to paddle.  It turns out that the lake began in the 1800’s as a reservoir for drinking water for the city of Los Angeles.  In the 1890’s the decision was made to turn the area into a public park and the four owners of the land around the reservoir donated 33 acres to be used as the park. 

Development of the park continued in the 1930’s as a Works Progress Administration project during the Depression.  A beautiful fountain was added when the 1984 Olympics were held in Los Angeles. 

Yes, Echo Park Lake is an attractive city park with a gorgeous view of the downtown skyline and lovely homes and apartments surrounding the lake.  But what really got my attention when I visited was, well, the posted rules for the park.  Among the rules for the park, along with things like no dumping and littering were:
        
         No feeding of non-domesticated animals
         Cruelty to any animal is a felony
         Abandonment of animals is against the law
         Harassment of animals is against the law
         All migratory birds are state and federally protected
         No injury to park property or plants

Frankly, I was surprised at the many rules that were intended for the safety of the wildlife and the trees and plants, as well as the water itself.  The protections seemed very comprehensive and specific which probably explains why, here at this lake, in the middle of urban Los Angeles, there is a plethora of bird life including various species of ducks and geese and other water birds. 

I was really glad to see the concern for nature conveyed in the rules for Echo Park Lake and I throughly enjoyed my afternoon at the lake while my son’s car was being fixed.

Concern for nature is at the heart of the purpose of the human species according to our faith tradition, as we heard from Genesis this morning.  Humanity was created, in the image of God, to carry out God’s mission of caring for the wondrous creation.  That includes human life as well as the life of plants and animals – all forms of life –  and it involves protecting the health of the environment that supports all of the myriad forms of life that make up the natural world.  So to be pro life is to be a supporter of all forms of life and of all of the habitat that is needed to support that life. 

The rights of nature movement is a beautiful expression of being pro life in our time.  This is a movement, worldwide, that seeks to get legal protection, rights, for land and water, as well as other than human species of life.  The rights of nature movement seeks to gain legally recognized rights for animals and plants and waters as well as people.  To me, this is a beautiful expression of our calling as a species to be pro life in all of its diversity, adaptation, abundance, balance, and interdependence.  That is what it means to be pro life in the Christian tradition:  To support the flourishing of all life, all of creation, by taking seriously our place in the vast system of creation to be caretakers entrusted with the stewardship of all that is. 

And this faith-based conception of what it means to be pro life is manifested in the ministry of Jesus and his focus on what it means to fully support and protect human life.  In the stories and teachings we have that are associated with Jesus, we see Jesus completely protecting the sacredness of human life.  He offers not only material support for human life – food, water, wine, healing –  but he offers spiritual support and the support of the community for all people.  This is expressed through forgiveness, grace, egalitarian community, generosity, equal rights for all people, and the decrying of laws, practices, and attitudes that diminish the lives of some people and privilege others.

Jesus shows us what abundant life for everyone looks like.  No one living at the expense of another.  Everyone valued and cared for.  No one demeaned or degraded.  No one beyond redemption or transformation.  No one.
I recently read a novel that takes place in Finland in 1946.  One of the characters, a doctor, reflects on the treatment of the dead body of another character:  “She weeps, too, for the care and attention she knows this body [the dead body] is being shown, in contrast to the countless labour-camp prisoners, her husband perhaps one of them, whose bodies are disposed of like so much offal.”  [Ice by Ulla-Lena Lundberg, p. 400.]  To be pro life to is to care at least as much for the living as for the dead.

When we are not pro life, fully supporting the life and habitat entrusted to our care and keeping, then we are denying and diminishing ourselves as human beings.  In the verses from John, we hear of false teachers, those who will try to lead the flock astray.  Well, we could spend until next Sunday discussing how we have gone astray when it comes to our calling to care for all of life; the ways that we have manipulated and dominated so that much of life is made subservient to the interests of a small portion of the human population.    

Here in Florida, an environmental coalition wanted to protect the rights of the waterways of Florida so that they can provide suitable habitat supporting many species of life.  But a ballot initiative to protect the rights of the waters of the state would never be supported.  No industrial dumping, no agricultural run off, no dumping of sewage and waste water, no spewing of heated water.  This kind of initiative would never gain widespread support here in Florida where people supposedly come first – which really means the economy comes first and that translates into rich people come first.  People in Florida don’t care enough about nature to bear the cost of needed protections.  BUT we do care about ourselves.  Overall, we are a selfish, self-centered lot.  And so these environmental groups came up with the idea of protecting not the rights of water or nature per se, but the rights of people, us, the inhabitants of Florida, to clean, safe water for consumption and recreation.  Now, that is something which serves us, so we can get behind that.  So that is the ballot initiative we have been promoting here at church and in the state.  It’s watered down, but it is a way to make a step in the right direction.  Oh, we know those thieves, marauders, and hired hands, that Jesus talks about, who are monopolized with serving what they see as their own personal interests. 

Our faith teaches that we are created to be pro life.  We were put here to be protectors and care takers of all that supports life, all life, not just human life.  And Jesus shows us how to create human community that does just that: supports all of human life, through faith and community, and fulfills its role in the wider Divine plan by living simply and sustainably with generosity and compassion.  To be pro life, in the human community is to support life in all of its diversity, adaptation, abundance, balance, and interdependence.  ‘I am because you are’ as the African proverb puts it.  We are in this together.  And we are in it with the wider community of life around us and the habitat that supports all of life. 

Now we all know that when we say ‘pro life’ these days, the phrase is usually associated with the issue of abortion and reproductive rights.  The words ‘pro life’ are associated with protection of the life of an unborn fetus. 

And, let’s be clear, there is no direct mention of abortion in the Bible.  There is a reference to life before birth in Psalm 139:  “It was you who formed my inward parts; you who knit me together in my mother’s womb.  My form was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.”   These verses are poetic professions of theology not biology.  They speak of God, a God that knows us fully and completely and still loves us!

Interestingly, the roots of what we know as the pro life movement are in the 1800’s among doctors who were concerned about protecting the lives of women who were having abortions that were often fatal to the mother.  They wanted to protect the lives of women.  That is a far cry from the position associated with the pro life movement today.  Today what is known as the pro life movement, is a movement that is centered on making abortion illegal and unobtainable.  Period.  It is supposedly protecting the life of those not yet born.  It is definitely protecting patriarchy, privilege, and subjugation of the masses.  What is called the pro life movement is not protecting life in the broader sense that encompasses the wellbeing and flourishing of creation as whole. 

In fact, supposedly protecting an unborn life – is it really pro life?  One of the speakers at the UCC General Synod in Indianapolis talked about “children born into a world of horrors.”  And there are so many.  Flooding. Heat.  Houselessness.  Famine.  Censorship.  Climate change.  The school to prison pipeline leaving so many children without fathers and mothers to raise them.  The addiction epidemic that prevents parents from providing adequate love and care for their children.  Lack of access to health care and affordable child care.  And what about, here we will touch on a real hot button, the ravages of extractive capitalism irreparably damaging the earth and the lives of people from whom labor is extracted for the gain of a few leaving children without the basic necessities of life?  To be pro life is to dream and invest in a new economic system that provides for all.  Not for a few at the expense of the many which is what we currently have in this country. 

When we get sucked into capitalism and rugged individualism, we are perpetrating the thievery and marauding Jesus talks about.  When we look out for number one, for ourselves, our family,  our tribe, our kind, and allow the society around us to continue to privilege the rich and ensure their rights at the expense of those made poor, we are not pro life.   And we cannot find our highest good, our true purpose, our deepest joy without honoring our place in the Divine plan to care for all of life and all of creation.  To separate ourselves from that web is to cut ourselves off from our health and wholeness.  It is to throw ourselves to the wolves, to that which is death dealing, instead of that which is life giving – the way of egalitarian community that we see among the followers of Jesus. 

I want to close with another story from Los Angeles.  When I was making my way home, we got to the airport a bit early.  After checking my bag, I wanted to take a few minutes to repack my carry on bag.  I looked for a place to sit down in the ticketing area.  I didn’t see any seats.  I went up a floor to the security and gate level of the airport.  Again, I looked for somewhere to sit.  There were no chairs to be seen.  I went back down to ticketing, surely I missed seeing a seating area.  Ah, there were some seats.  An airport attendant was standing next to the row of 6 chairs.  There was a sign indicating that this was the place to wait for wheel chair assistance.  There was no one in any of the seats.  I asked the attendant if I could sit there for a few minutes to repack my small backpack.  She said no.  That’s when an expletive which should not be repeated in church escaped my lips.  The attendant, a middle aged Black woman, said, regretfully, “I’m sorry.”  I told her, my home airport was Tampa and there were chairs and places to sit down everywhere you turn.  That’s when I learned that there used to be a lot more seating in the Los Angeles airport.  But it has been removed.  To discourage houseless people from staying at the airport.  There is a woman who has lived at the airport for the last 5 years, moving from bathroom to bathroom.  And that would explain why there are repeated public service announcements at the airport saying that only people involved in traveling and employees of the airport are permitted on the airport premises. 

After the tutorial about the issues relating to the houseless in the LA airport, the attendant told me to go down a floor, to baggage claim and ground transportation, and walk past the coffee and tea shop, down to the last carousel, and there were a few chairs there.  Sure enough.  So, I sat down and repacked my little carry on backpack.  Then headed up two levels to airport security and the gates. 

The houseless problem of LA prevented me from having a convenient place to sit down to repack my bag.  Really?  But that is how it is with the web of life, the web of reality, the web of creation.  Everything is interconnected.  Interdependent.  To be pro life, is to be aware, to care about, and to make choices, that are for the benefit of the whole.  And then what we find is that we are taken care of.  We have what we need not only materially, but also spiritually and emotionally.   When we are truly pro life, according to our faith tradition and the teachings of Jesus, we find that we have life.  To the fullest.  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.