Text: Exodus 1:8-22

A week and a half ago Geneva Reed-Veal spoke at the Library of Congress.  She was addressing the newly formed Congressional Caucus on black women and girls.  Her speech lasted about four and a half minutes.  She began: “I don’t have a big long statement to read. What I’m going to say to you is that I’m here representing the mothers who are not heard, I am here representing the mothers who have lost children as we go on about our daily lives.”

Geneva Reed-Veal is the mother of Sandra Bland, the 28 year woman stopped by a police man in July of last year for a failure to signal a lane change.  Bland had verbally challenged the cop for pulling her over, the confrontation escalated, and he arrested her.  She was found hanged in a jail cell three days later.  The official cause of her death was ruled a suicide.

Sandra Bland’s story made national news, but in her talk Geneva Reed-Veal asked for a show of hands for who could name the other six women who died in custody in jail in the US that same month, July 2015.  Nobody raised their hands.  I couldn’t have either.

Reed-Veal’s response: “That is a problem. You all are among the walking dead, and I am so glad that I have come out from among you. I heard about Trayvon, I heard about all the shootings, and it did not bother me until it hit my daughter. I was walking dead just like you until Sandra Bland died in a jail cell in Texas.”

On this Mother’s Day, Sandra Bland’s mother has declared that I, and probably most of us here, are “walking dead.”  Alive, but unaware.

This winter and spring I’ve been part of a Sunday school class that’s been studying…

Text: Acts 16:9-15

Joel

Lydia was a businesswoman.  More specifically, she was “a dealer in purple cloth.”  Her conversion was important enough for the early church to include it among the limited selection of stories in the book of Acts.  But it’s a brief story, and it provokes just as many questions as it answers about the person of Lydia.

We’re told that Lydia was from the city of Thyatira, long known as a center for purple cloth production.  Kind of like saying you’re a corn farmer from Iowa.  Thyatira was in the region of Lydia in Asia Minor.  So not only are you a corn farmer from Iowa, but you are named Iowa.  Lydia was a dealer in purple cloth and she was… Lydia.

But when we meet her in this passage, she is not in Thyatira, or Lydia, or Iowa.  She’s in the city of Philippi, a major economic hub a couple hundred miles northwest of Thyatira.  And she has a home in Philippi.  She has a home.  She has a household.

We are told that Lydia was already a “worshiper of God.”  On a Sabbath she hears a message from another traveling salesman of sorts, a spiritual entrepreneur.  Paul is preaching to a group of women, and she’s one of them, gathered outside the city gate by the river.  She likes what she hears.  She joins this gospel movement and is baptized.  She and her household are baptized.  She invites Paul and his companions to join her, in her home.

And this is pretty much what we know about Lydia.

How does she come to be from two places?  Why is she the head of a household in a patriarchal world?  What exactly did baptism mean to her if she was already a worshiper of God?  And in those waters of conversion, how…

Text: Acts 11:1-18

 During the Easter season we’ve been talking about different conversions.  Not just a one and done experience, but a series of experiences that convert us toward the overflowing love and grace of God.  We looked at Thomas, then Saul, the artist formerly known as Paul, and last week Chris talked about Oscar Romero.  With Peter up this week I’m aware that makes for four men in a row, so I’m glad to report that next week the lectionary features Lydia, the seller of purple cloth, and the week after that, Mother’s Day, we’ll meditate on the Divine feminine.

As I looked at this Acts 11 story, which is one of Peter’s many conversions, I was reminded of a model I’ve found helpful in thinking about spiritual growth.  We’ve included an image of that as a bulletin insert.  It’s a pretty simple model, based on concentric circles, or in this case concentric hearts.  Rather than being linear, it starts inward and moves outward, from egocentric, to ethnocentric, to world centric.  And then there’s a fourth ring which for some reason isn’t in this image.  It’s sometimes called cosmo-centric, or being-centric, or Christ-centric.  I’m not even sure who to credit for this model.  I learned about it through the writing of Ken Wilber, who has done a lot of work integrating different wisdom traditions.

So I invite us to think about conversion this way this morning, as a process of expansion, growth outward in all directions.  And we can see how this Peter story follows this trajectory.

In the egocentric phase our awareness is pretty much limited to ourselves.  Ego is just Greek for “I”, so to be egocentric is to be centered on I, me, oneself.  This carries all kinds of negative connotations, nobody wants to be “egocentric,” but like these…

Text: Psalm 23

Speaker: Chris Pedersen

I don’t know about any of you, but I really enjoy always being right. In fact you could ask any of my family members, girlfriend, or close friends, I am always right. There’s really only one rule to always being right, never admit your wrong. There’s a few easy ways to sidestep any attempts people might make to force you into admitting you were wrong. All you need to do is say ‘alright, you were right.’ And then quickly change the subject. There’s also nothing wrong with being on the losing side! Being on the losing side doesn’t necessarily mean you were on the wrong side. Just ask any Cleveland Browns fan! I’m sure this is there year! I will admit I hate loving the Cleveland Browns. But enough about me and the Browns being awesome, we should talk about church stuff.
So, what makes a Christian, a Christian? Is it the way they act? The way they think? The way they spend their Sunday mornings? Is it based entirely on an inward change? An outward change? Maybe a bit of both? Depending on who you ask, it could be any of these things. Or none. Or all of them! Christianity is a very difficult thing to nail down and be like ‘this is Christianity’, even to other Christians. But when someone is living in a way that exemplifies Jesus Christ to the best of their abilities, then it is very easy to recognize it. I am sure that each one of us could think of someone that ‘best exemplifies’ Christ with their life. It is usually someone that inspires us to change. It doesn’t have to be just one person too, it could be many. But what I want to do is tell you about someone…

Text: Acts 9:1-19a

The first time we meet Saul he’s a part of a dramatic and violent scene.  He’s overseeing the stoning of a man named Stephen.  This is the end of Acts chapter 7.  Stephen has just given a lengthy public speech, a sermon, highly critical of his own people.  The individuals listening are agitated to the point of transforming into a mob.  In the words of Acts, “with a loud shout they all rushed together against him.”  Outnumbered and overpowered, Stephen is dragged out of the city and stoned to death.

Had everyone there paused, surrounded Stephen’s lifeless body, and posed for a photograph, it would have looked remarkably similar to the many pictures of lynchings from within our own country.  In 2015 the Equal Justice Initiative published a five year study recording 3,959 such lynchings of black women, men, and children that occurred in the US between 1877 and 1950.  A number of these lynchings included a congratulatory group photo, duplicated as souvenirs and postcards.

Stephen is remembered as the first Christian martyr.  Saul of Tarsus, who we also know as Paul, as in the Apostle Paul, as in St. Paul, is remembered as having been there, apparently a key instigator.  Acts says that this crowd “laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul,” and that Saul “approved” of Stephen’s killing.  Several verses later we’re told “Saul was ravaging the church by entering house after house, dragging off both men and women, (committing) them to prison.”

Were Saul alive today we may very well refer to him as a religious terrorist.  Is it going too far to suggest that Saul of Tarsus could have been Saul of the KKK, or even Saul of ISIS?  Maybe, maybe not.  Or maybe this makes Saul seem too different…