Sermon: Sunday, May 13, 2012 — Sixth Sunday of Easter / Mother’s Day

Texts:  Acts 10:44-48  •   Psalm 98  •  1 John 5:1-6  •   John 15:9-17

The year was 1868, just three years after the end of the American Civil War.  The nation was still recovering from the deadliest war in our history, when measured by the number of Americans killed.  An estimated three-quarters of a million soldiers lost their lives, and another four hundred thousand were wounded.  Ten percent of young men in the Union states, and thirty percent of young men in the Confederate states lost their lives.  A generation had just been lost.

It was 1868 when a woman by the name of Ann Jarvis established a committee for the purposes of observing a “Mother’s Friendship Day” as a method of reuniting families that had been torn apart by the war.  It was the first modern attempt at establishing a day for mothers in the United States, and it was a direct outgrowth of our nation’s experience of war.  It was a recognition that, while war may divide us, a parent’s grief over the loss of a child is universal.

The movement to establish an annual Mother’s Day observance stumbled along in the years following 1868.  Four year later, Julia Ward Howe led a “Mother’s Day” anti-war demonstration in New York City.  If her name sounds familiar to you, it’s probably that you recognize her as the author of the familiar lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which she’d written over a decade before, near the start of the Civil War.  Having lived through the war between the states, Julia Ward Howe was singing a different tune by 1872, when she delivered her famous “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” which is now included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal.  Hear today that famous Mother’s Day address.  Julia Ward Howe writes,

Arise, then, women of this day!  Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly, “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies; our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender to those of another country to allow our sons to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.  As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Imagine that.  The origins of the holiday we observe this morning, so often reduced to chocolates and carnations, in reality rooted in powerful organizing by women (not for women) to promote a peaceful resolution to global conflicts, and understanding between people of different nationalities.

You can hear Julia Ward Howe’s faith all throughout her Mother’s Day proclamation.  She speaks of baptism by water or by tears, recalling for us that through baptism Jesus joined all of humanity in solidarity with our sufferings, and by baptism we are joined to the humanity of people of every nationality, on every side of every war.  She called for a global conversation at which every party might notice that they are made in the image and likeness of God, not of Caesar.  She pleads for us to find in our faith an allegiance to a power higher than nation or state.

It is as if she has been reading the epistle assigned for this morning, First John, the fifth chapter.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Written during a time filled with real Caesars, not metaphoric ones, the author of First John is making not only a bold statement of faith — but a bold testimony about where Christians place our faith. “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God…”  To call Jesus the Christ is to say that we believe that Jesus is God’s anointed one, the one chosen by God to inaugurate God’s reign, here and now.  In a time when Rome’s Caesar claimed the title, “Son of God,” the early Christians not only said that it was Jesus who was God’s truly beloved child, but that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.

Let that sink in.  This religious language is so familiar, so worn after two thousand years of use, that it’s really difficult for us to hear it for the radically political speech that it is.  The author of First John, writing to the early church and preaching to us this morning as well, is saying that we who have met God in Jesus are in every way as empowered as any Caesar, as any national, militaristic, conquering power.  In gently disarming language this scripture tells us, “who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

Again, let that sink in.  On the eve of a global gathering of the world’s military powers here in Chicago, Illinois, United States of America — scriptures tell us that it is we who carry the name of Christ, we  who are called Christians, who believe that Jesus is the messiah, the beloved child of God, who will conquer the world.

This message is so radically subversive, so blatantly seditious, that it is no wonder the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity early in the 4th century.  As they say, if you can’t beat them, join them… and the empire had been trying , unsuccessfully, to beat the Christian witness down with a century of martyrs, but to no avail.

It is ironic that, while we were enemies of the empire — because we refused to acknowledge the Roman emperor as the Son of God, our witness for peace was strong and clear.  It is tragic that, once we were accepted by the powers of empire our witness became much less clear.  This is not uncommon though, is it?  We might expect those who have endured great persecutions to be more inclined to work for the peace, liberation, and safety of others, but that is not always the case.  Those who came to this country as immigrants have not always worked for the rights of those who followed.  Those who fought for the guarantee of civil rights have not always continued that work to protect those who remain outside those protections.  Christians, who refused to acknowledge Caesar as God’s Son and were willing to pay for their faith with their lives have become ambivalent about worldly power since being adopted by the emperor, forgetting that we were first adopted by God when we were bathed in these waters.

Earlier in this passage from First John, as we heard last week, the author writes, “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.”  The letter continued this week with the admonition, “For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, for whatever is born of God conquers the world.” And then in John’s gospel we hear the content of this commandment we are called to keep, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

Christians, called to be God’s conquerors, you are called to conquer this world in the only way God is interested in conquering anything — with love.  It is as the bumper sticker says, “when Jesus said ‘Love your Enemies,’ I’m pretty sure he meant ‘Don’t Kill Them.’”  Or, expanding upon Cornell West’s newly minted proverb, “Justice is what Love looks like in public,” we might  say, “Peace is what love looks like in public.”

And this, finally, brings us to the moment we are living in.  As we look around the walls of our sanctuary and see these powerful images from the “Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan” exhibit, a project of the American Friends Service Committee — which is a Quaker organization working out of a belief in the sacred worth of every person, and faith in the power of love to overcome violence and injustice — we are struck by how unlike the sweet images we typically find on the cards in the Mother’s Day section of the greeting card rack they are.  But, my dear friends, these images are so much more like the kind of Mother’s Day that was originally intended, because they show us the reality of war — that mothers and daughters and fathers and sons on every side of every conflict lose everything when their children, both soldiers and civilians, are killed.

Ann Jarvis, the original founder of the modern Mother’s Day movement, worked throughout the Civil War to organize women to care for the wounded on both sides of the conflict.  She refused to limit her care for only “her own” because, as a mother, she knew that all children are “ours.”  In her called for a Mother’s Day she, like Julia Ward Howe, emphasized the causes of pacifism and social action.  She died in 1905, her vision of this kind of Mother’s Day still unrealized.  Two years after her death Ann’s daughter, Anna Marie Jarvis, took up her mother’s cause and began organizing to make “Mother’s Day” a nationally recognized holiday.  Seven years later, in 1914, her dream was realized, and the United States recognized the second Sunday of May as Mother’s Day, and so this day our country observes the 98th anniversary of that first federally acknowledged event.

However, less than a decade later, Anna Jarvis and her sister, Ellsinore, were being arrested for disturbing the peace.  They had returned to public demonstrations against what Mother’s Day had become, a sentimental, commercial holiday celebrating mothers instead of the powerful movement of mother’s for peace that their own mother had worked so hard for her whole life long.

As the nations prepare to assembly here in Chicago over the coming weeks for the NATO summit, proposing to solve by war and military power what we as Christians have been called to answer by love, listen again to the closing words of Julia Ward Howe’s original Mother’s Day Proclamation,

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

My dear sisters and brothers by baptism, that is what is happening here in our hometown in the coming weeks.  Forget what you’ve heard on the television and over the radio.  The people who are organizing rallies and teach ins downtown and across the city are not seeking to answer NATO’s militarism with violence, but with love for one another — across nationalities.  They are seeking “the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.”

I intend to be with them.  I’ll be spending tomorrow evening training to be a peace chaplain at the upcoming NATO demonstrations.  That is how I will make my Christian witness for peace.  We will be gathering for worship next Sunday in Palmer Square, along with members of First Lutheran Church, Humboldt Park United Methodist Church and Kimball Avenue Church to make our collective Christian witness for peace, and at that service we will be commissioning and blessing those among us who are finding ways to give their own Christian testimony and witness for the cause of peace.

On this Mother’s Day, I beg you to consider not only your own mothers, but all the mothers of the world — those whose children are safely at home, those whose children are caught up in the gears of war, and those whose children will never again sit at the family dinner table but who will only be seen when we are all gathered around the great dinner table of God.  Consider the cause of mothers, and fathers, sisters and brothers, and decide what your witness for peace will be.

In the name of our mothering God.

Amen.

Sermon: Sunday, September 18, 2011: Second Sunday in the Season of Creation

Texts: Genesis 3:14-19; 4:8-16  +  Psalm 139:7-12  +  Romans 5:12-17  +  Matthew 12:38-40

One of my favorite musicals of all time is West Side Story. I watch the 1961 movie adaptation every couple of years, and each time I’m caught off guard by how a story that begins with so much hope and romance can end up so sad and depressing. It’s epic in its tragedy. And, of course, it’s based on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, so you know the story before you even watch. It’s archetypal.

The same is true of Genesis, that book of the bible that begins with the two accounts of creation in which God makes earth and all its creatures and calls it all good. And not just the “good” that we might use at dinnertime in response to the question, “how was your day?” The Hebrew used in Genesis is rich, sensual, evocative language that gets repeated in the Song of Solomon. Eden is a garden rich and fertile and intensely pleasurable to God and for all of creation. It is a place of so much hope and romance…and so quickly it begins to fall apart.

As we noted last week, the book of Genesis spins myths about creation that convey a memory of the deep inter-relatedness of all that God made. The earth and sea and sky, and all their creatures are related to one another, and to humankind – which God tasks with tending to the care of creation. We are invited to name the animals the way we might name our own children, because they are kin to us, and all of us children of God.

Then the rupture begins. A tree of knowledge. Forbidden fruit. The curse pronounced on Adam and Even, that both will endure forced labor – she in giving birth and he in working the land. But listen again to the final verses of Genesis 3, paying special attention to the relationship between humanity and the land:

Cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I don’t know about you, but when I think about how the story of the garden of Eden has been told and taught to me, it always felt like the moral of the story was that Adam and Eve were being punished for disobeying God’s rules and eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I’ve heard plenty of speculation about what that fruit symbolizes, and questions about why humanity was commanded to avoid knowledge, which seems like a good thing. But there was never really much discussion about what “the fall” meant for the land.

“Cursed is the ground because of you… until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

God’s message to the first people seems clear: you have separated yourself from the land in ways that are a curse to both you and the land, and will remain so until you remember that you and the land are one.

Although Genesis is presented as the first book of the bible, modern biblical scholarship assumes that it is a product of the period of time when the people of Israel were in exile. It is profoundly retrospective literature. The kingdom of David and Solomon had divided on itself and been conquered from outside, and all the hope and possibility of the people who had entered the promised land and taken dominion seemed dashed. You can almost hear the teachers and story-tellers responding to the people’s question, “what went wrong?”

In response to that fundamental question, Hebrew scriptures don’t make excuses, or point the finger at their enemies and shirk from their part in the whole mess. Instead, with the words of Psalm 139 on their lips, “where can I flee from your presence?” they took a hard look at their predicament and told an origin story in which humanity’s misery began as it left the sustainable lifestyle of the earlier hunter/gatherer tribes and moved into the world of agriculture and the civilizations to which it gave rise.

So Adam and Eve give birth to Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd. Genesis says that “In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard.” (Gen. 4:3-5) So Cain lures Abel into the field and kills him, and for the second time in twice as many chapters, the ground is cursed by human action as God laments,

“What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you till the ground, it will no longer yield to you its strength; you will be a fugitive and a wanderer on the earth.” (Gen 4:10-12)

The rift between humankind and the earth is played out in an episode of family violence, as humanity continued to distance itself from land, sea, sky and all their creatures, our kin.

I won’t go into all the details here, but there is wonderful biblical scholarship that looks at these stories from Genesis, and the ones that follow, as ancient reflections on the rise of civilization. The movement from tribal life to more fixed agricultural economies allowed for the rise of settlements, then cities, then kingdoms. This meant the need for warriors to guard the wealth that accumulated in such places, then armies to conquer and acquire the wealth of others.

But these scriptures are millennia old, reflecting on a transition that humankind made millennia before that. What relevance could their observations have for us today? What does the theological imagination of a nation of people captive to war, alienated from their homeland, economically dependent on foreign nations, and longing for a return to better days have to do with us, here, in the United States, a decade into the longest war in our nation’s history – having surpassed the Vietnam War almost 16 months ago?

Our remarkably short gospel reading this morning reveals Jesus in passionate debate with the religious establishment during the time of the Roman occupation. Jesus has taken John the Baptist’s message of repentance and has cracked it open for people from every tribe and nation and empire – challenging the established order and its inherent violence. The scribes and Pharisees can’t or won’t acknowledge that what Jesus is preaching is the same message the prophets of Israel had always brought when faith got too cozy with empire, so they ask for a sign to prove the validity of what he’s saying.

Instead Jesus offers the sign of Jonah, who spent three days in the belly of the whale. Remember Jonah? He was a prophet of God sent to call Ninevah to repentance. Jesus evokes the memory of Jonah, and the early church told this story, as a way of claiming that mantle of prophetic critique against the powers of empire… but also as a sign that, as with Ninevah, it was not too late to repent.

By faith, we have to hope that the same is true for us. Our alienation from the very earth out of which we are created has led not only to disastrous consequences for the soil, it has been reflected in and amplified by our warring with our neighbors. Afghanistan, once covered by forests, now has less than 2% forest cover as a result of a decade of bombing and refugees scavenging for firewood. The skies above Afghanistan, once one of the world’s major migratory pathways, has lost almost 85% of the birds which once flew on its winds. The pollution left behind by explosives has proven carcinogenic and is shown to cause thyroid damage. The land, littered with land mines, no longer sustains life.

Truly: “Cursed is the ground because of [us]… until [we] return to the ground, for out of it [we] were taken; [we] are dust, and to dust [we] shall return.” Our violence toward one another poisons the land, and because we are made of earth and return to the earth, everything we do to the land eventually returns to haunt us.

In his commentary on the passages for this second Sunday in the Season of Creation, theologian Ched Myers, who has written extensively on restorative justice and peacemaking, joins the apostle Paul in claiming for Jesus the role of the one who reverses the dissolution of Adam and Eve and their sons, calling Jesus “God’s ultimate countermeasure to the fall.”

Jesus is baptized by John in the wild waters of the Jordan, far from the domesticated ritual baths of Judean cities (3:13-17). The Nazarene prepares for his ministry with a wilderness vision-quest to find out where his people went wrong (4:1-11). His inaugural sermon proclaims the incompatibility of God with the mammon system (6:24), and declares that the smallest wildflower has more intrinsic value from the divine point of view than the grandest civilizational pretensions of Israel’s greatest king, Solomon (6:28f). Jesus symbolizes the ‘retribalization’ of Israel in his naming of the twelve disciples (10:1-4), and directly challenges imperial cities to repent (11:20-24). He enacts the Jubilee principle of the right of the poor to the edge of every field (12:1-8), and communicates with illiterate peasants through stories about the land: ‘A sower went out to sow…’ (13:3). His seed parables envision the kingdom of God not as some otherworldly place and time, but as the reclamation of the very soil upon which Palestinian serfs toil (13:24-32).

Jesus Christ, the sign of God’s solidarity with the suffering of God’s creation, God’s reconciliation for humanity and God’s redemption for the earth, lies deep in the heart of the ground for Jonah’s three days, then rises to proclaim that God’s story does not end in tragedy, but in triumph.

For us the challenge is to take the epic and the archetypal and to apply it to our everyday lives. It is the challenge to think globally and act locally. How do we share the land the surrounds our own homes, our church home? How is violence carried out on the streets of Chicago tied to the violence done to the land beneath our feet and the waters that supply our homes? What sickness are we spreading on the land and reabsorbing into our skin? Where does the oil pulled from the ground to fuel our cars end up, and to what effect? How do we heal the earth and its inhabitants while we continue to carry out a war against our neighbors around the globe?

Genesis, like West Side Story, like Romeo and Juliet, is epic and archetypal in its tragedies. The Season of Creation has a story arc as well, beginning with the forests of creation and then our alienation from the land. Now the story begins to pivot toward hope. Next week we turn to the wilderness as the place of God’s passion and presence, and the following week we remember the rivers as the waters of new creation and we celebrate the baptism of two of our children, Johnnie and Rachyl Lindquist, along with the First Communion they will share with their Sunday School classmates on that day.

As we move from the word to the meal this morning, let’s pray for a deeper communion with the land and all who live upon it. As we consume this bread and this wine, let’s pray for the soil out of which the grain to make our bread and the grapes to make our wine were grown. Let this meal remind us that what we do to the land, we do to ourselves. As we take each step on our way to the communion rail, let’s pray that God will help us take one step closer to home, the good earth of the garden from which we came and to which we are returning.

Amen.