Texts: Jeremiah 32:1-15; Matthew 6:21

It’s a long and winding road from Jeremiah, through Jesus, to Jourdan Anderson’s 1865 letter to his old master, to the color coded map on the front of our bulletin, to the Black Manifesto, to Columbus, Ohio in the 21st century.  A long and winding road.  The letter and the map are both pieces that Adam brought in to our Exodus Bible Study class in the spring.  We were trying to make connections between the Hebrew’s exodus from slavery narrative and the African American experience.  These two pieces did that, with the bonus of bringing it home to Ohio soil.

Last Sunday’s sermon included the story of James Forman interrupting worship services at predominantly white churches throughout 1969, beginning with the influential Riverside Church in Manhattan, New York.  He did this to read from the recently written Black Manifesto which called for reparations for black Americans from white Christians and Jews.

One hundred years before this a formerly enslaved man named Jourdon Anderson, living in Dayton Ohio, wrote a private letter to his former master (included at the end of the sermon).  The old master had initiated the correspondence, as Jourdon acknowledges in the opening.  “Sir, I got your letter and was glad you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again.”  Jourdon goes on to highly qualify what he might mean by “glad.”  It seems that the former master still holds a place for Jourdon in his heart.  The feeling, it seems, is not mutual.  The formerly enslaved Jourdon would only be glad for a reunion if the old master has a change of heart.  And Jourdon is careful to outline just what a change of heart would look like.  He essentially asks that his old master…

Jeremiah 7, 26

Temple sermon #1

It was the beginning of the reign of King Jehoiakim of Judah, a little before 600 BCE.  Jeremiah, the priest and prophet, went and stood in the gate of the temple of Yahweh in Jerusalem.  He proceeded to deliver a sermon that did not bring the house down.  It didn’t physically bring the house down.  The invading Babylonians would do that 20 years later.  It didn’t inspirationally bring the house down.  As far as we can tell, nobody was laughing, clapping, or shouting ‘Amen’ at Jeremiah’s words.  On the contrary, the text says when he was finished: “then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, ‘You shall die!’”  Wow – not a sermon response most seminaries prepare you for.  I much prefer silence followed by a hymn.

In the sermon, Jeremiah had challenged the mentality that the temple was the ultimate source of security for the people.  He says, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.’”  The way Jeremiah talks about it, this must have been a popular sentiment, and even a popular phrase of the time.  One neighbor says to another: ‘Hey, have you heard about those nasty Babylonians trying to take over the world?’  The neighbor replies: ‘Yeah, but we’re all good.  You know, we’ve got the temple of Yahweh.’  ‘Totally, the temple of Yahweh.’  The temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh, the temple of Yahweh.

Jeremiah has a different suggestion.  “If you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to you own hurt, then Yahweh will…

Text: Jeremiah 1:4-19

 The opening chapter of Jeremiah narrates his call to be a prophet.  It’s told in the first person.  “Now the word of the Lord came to me.”  In typical Hebrew Bible fashion, it’s not clear how “the word of the Lord” actually came.  Whether it was through the voice of another person, a conviction heard inwardly, a message on the inside wrapping of a Dove chocolate.  What’s clear is that the call reaches the young Jeremiah, and sets the trajectory of his life.  The word of the Lord said, “I appoint you a prophet to the nations,” and this is what Jeremiah became.

A little over a year ago the chairs of the different CMC Commissions sat down together.  We asked ourselves the question: What do we need to be paying attention to?  What’s going on in the world, what’s going on in the congregation, what’s going on in our hearts, and might this point to some kind of overarching focus for the coming year?  After filling up a white board with input, and giving space for silent reflection on what we had heard from one another, a strong consensus emerged that we need to be talking about race.  Although we often hesitate to use this language, another way of saying this would be that through this shared discernment, the word of the Lord came to us.  The word of the Lord came to us, gave us a calling, and set us on a trajectory.

During the season of Lent we had a worship theme of Trouble the Waters.  We took a collective dive into the waters of white privilege, black lives matter, and a posture of antiracism.  This month of October will be a similar worship theme.  The prophet Jeremiah will be our tour guide as we ponder moving…

Text: Luke 16:19-31

A chasm has been situated between us
A breach between bodies
A rift resolutely rooted
A fissure fastly fixed
A schism surely set

There is a space between us,
A divisive distance drawing us deeper down
Roads so rutted by heels so rooted
Feet firmly fixed
Minds made immovable

A chasm has been fixed between us

And I find myself asking the question:
How does one measure the distance between heaven and hell?
Is it the length of space between Abraham’s bosom and the fiery lake?
Between a table sumptuously laid and a city gate where mutts take up residence?
Between fine purple linens and sores worn like patches sewn on a life barely holding itself together?

Anesthetizing amenities alienating us from any affinity with the afflicted.
Is it the price we pay for our paralyzing privilege?

A chasm has been fixed between us.

How does one measure this divide?
Is it the number of characters it takes to become unfriended?
Is it the number of votes needed or resolutions passed to prove our righteousness?
Is it the number of hours of silence that accumulate between us when all those unsaid words pile up like notes to a hymn about grace you swear you once knew?
Is it the number of miles between the concrete jungle and the open field adorned by stars you haven’t greeted in years?

A chasm has been fixed between us

How does one measure the distance between heaven and hell?
Is it the centuries worth of seconds unconsciously crammed between a stalled vehicle and shots fired? 
Or the nanoseconds it takes a mind to discern between a book and a deadly weapon? 
How does one measure how much fear has taken up residence between a 13 year old black boy and the trigger of a gun?

Which gun? 
Either one.

A chasm has been fixed between us.

But who owns this distance?
Who bears the burden of this breach?
Who is responsible for this…

Texts: Jeremiah 4:11-12,22-28; Luke 15:1-10

It’s our first Sunday back in this building which is feeling both familiar and new.  It’s the opening Sunday of the Christian Education year.  And it’s the fifteen year anniversary, today, of the 9/11 attacks.

Any one of these three could be the focus of a worship theme.  But with all three we have a full plate.

One of the most startling realizations I had this past week was that for all of our young people starting Sunday school today, 9/11 is an historical event.  Something to read and hear stories about, but not something they, you, experienced personally.  Even our high school seniors were just two or three years old when it happened.  Recent college grads were in their first years of elementary school.  The post 9/11 world is the only world you’ve known.  Fifteen years ago our country was the big kid out on the playground, and got sucker punched in front of everyone.  We’ve been hitting back ever since, uncertain how to heal.

I love how our lectionary scriptures keep us grounded in a bigger story.  A story that stands on its own, yet manages to speak something fresh into our time.  Today’s two readings share a common theme of loss, with Jeremiah anticipating an impending loss, and Luke offering parables that conclude in celebration, on the other side of loss.  Loss is something that happens at every level of existence, from the national loss of an event like 9/11, to personal loss – a sheep, a coin, a parent, an ability, losing our bearings, losing our religion, losing our mind.  Loss.

Civil rights veteran John Perkins is fond of saying that a leader is someone who is willing to enter into the pain of their people.  By this definition, the prophet Jeremiah was an exemplary…