Readings for Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2022

• Isaiah 60:1-6  
• Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14  
• Ephesians 3:1-12  
• Matthew 2:1-12

"Which King?" Sermon by Rev Fred Kinsey
It’s surprising, in a way, that this Epiphany story of the Magi, is the text that was chosen for this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity!  The wise men, or Magi, are foreigners, Astrologers, from a non-Jewish religion, in a distant Gentile country, most likely, Persia.  So, the ‘unity’ implied in this astounding story is, far greater, than just our Christian circles, and implies a kind of United-Nations-world-wide reach and universal scope. 
 
It’s a universality that stems from our human longing, and quest for, the One who is the light of the whole world, this king of Israel.  It’s the desire for a king who is a descendant of the One Creator-God.  And the Magi, therefore, are perhaps the perfect representatives of this universal quest for salvation from the beginning of creation, because they are masters of the ‘signs’ in the stars of the sky, or what the ancient world knew as, the heavens.   
 
The birth of the savior of the whole world, is who the Magi came to worship, and offer their kingly gifts, of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Came to kneel in homage to this Mighty Counselor, this Prince of Peace, and ruler who will administer justice and peace, according to Isaiah (Is. 9.6).  They weren’t Christian.  They weren’t Jewish.  But they recognized a king when they saw one!  And this One, was born under the Star of Bethlehem, a cosmic event that led them from the eastern edge of the world, to Palestine, in Roman territory.  This biblical story, about the birth of Jesus in Matthew – the scripture underlying, the Eastern, and oldest, Church celebration of Christmas – is the tale of unity, for all the nations, all the peoples. 
 
Welcome, to the service, for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity!
 
On the other hand, though, isn’t this the very kind of unity, we as Christians pray for, as well?!  “That we may become completely One,” as Jesus himself prayed according to the gospel of John?  (John 17:23)   We petition for, “the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband,” that, “the nations will walk by [the light of the Lamb], and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it,” as John of Patmos envisioned in Revelation.
 
It seems that, our Middle East Council of Church, hosts, want to welcome us, not only to ground-zero, of the birth of the Christ-Child, in Bethlehem of Judea, but also, they want to draw us into the spiritual and theological question of: Who do we worship as king?  Isn’t the unspoken question raised by Matthew’s Epiphany story:  Do we worship the king in Jerusalem?  Or the king born in Bethlehem? 
 
Again, the Magi show us the way, who, “…having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road,” says Matthew.  The Magi, having found the king they were looking for, the new-born ‘child, with Mary his mother,’ in Bethlehem, disobey Herod’s request to report back to him, in Jerusalem.
 
?Had the Magi been left with a kind of  ‘yukky feeling’ after meeting with Herod, I wonder?  Was their ‘creepy-radar,’ sending off alarm bells?  I would think so!  But in any case, it was divine will, according to Matthew, that the Magi, not return to Jerusalem and bring Herod word, so that Herod may – what did he say, ‘also go and worship him’ – worship his rival?  Pay homage to the king, that so frightened his kingdom? 
 
Herod, of course, was jealous of any pretensions to his throne, a throne that was based on authoritative, despotic, and absolute control.  A ruler that was answerable to no one, save the Emperor.  Herod, tolerated no rival!  And we know this by the very next story in Matthew, the slaughter of the innocents, where Herod orders the killing of every boy under the age of two, ‘in and around Bethlehem,’ in a ruthless attempt to eliminate king-Jesus. 
 
Who do we worship as our king? 
 
I don’t remember where I learned it, exactly, anymore.  But it was somewhere on our study tour to Israel-Palestine in the spring of 1978.  We toured as much as we could, from the cosmopolitan city of Haifa, north to Galilee and the Golan Heights, down through the West Bank and the Jordan Valley to Jericho below sea level, and up to Jerusalem, literally, up into the hills, to Zion, the city of Peace.  Tiny Israel-Palestine on the shores of the Mediterranean, I learned, was the fulcrum point, between east and west, north and south.  Between, Near-East and far-east Asia, Europe and Africa.  The land of Jews, Christians, and Muslims.  And Jerusalem is like a canary in a coal mine, an early warning sign for the fate of the world – spinning around it.  And at the time of the birth of Jesus, a pretender was on the throne.  Foreigners occupied the land.  But in the new-born Savior, hope had arrived. 
 
And, just like there were tensions over which king the world would worship, then, so in modern times, have tensions been growing steadily there, again.  If we want to pray for Christian unity, we need look no further than Israel-Palestine.  For, while money from pulpits in America, have been pouring into Israel since the  1980’s from leaders who are, you might say, wolves in sheep’s clothing – at the same time, the historic Palestinian Christians, have been intimidated and feeling pressure to leave, as a result. 
 
An investigation by Haaretz/(Israeli newspaper in English) reveals that extremist Christian groups have invested up to $65 million in projects in the ‘Biblical Heartland’ just in the past decade.  Meanwhile, as recently as December, “Christian leaders in the Holy Land,” the same leaders who are members of this, Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, “have warned that their communities are under threat of being driven from the region by extremist [radical Settler] groups, and called for dialogue on preserving their presence.” 
 
Or as Fr. Francesco Patton, the Catholic Church’s guardian of the Christian holy places in the Holy Land has said, “It seems that [the aim of these extremists] is to [push out the historic Christian presence from] the Old City of Jerusalem, even the Christian quarter.”  
 
The outsized economic and political support of certain extremist American church groups is a key factor in the decline of the Palestinian Christian population.  Who are these churches?  It’s organizations, like Christians United for Israel (CUFI), for example, led by prominent megachurch preacher John Hagee.  If you don’t know Hagee, his latest book title pretty much says it all: Earth’s Final Moments.  “Coming soon,” the book jacket says, “Earth’s final cataclysmic moment! Hagee reveals the shock and awe of God’s coming judgment in the Middle East, you can’t afford to miss what comes next.” End quote.
 
This errant Christian interpretation might be funny, if it weren’t so dangerous.  Based on the writings of 19th century British churchman John Darby, his theology never really was, defensible.  But astonishingly, opinion pollsters find that, 40-60% of Americans embrace Darby’s end-times belief.  Think - the popular Left Behind book and movie series.  So, we’ve got some work to do, here.
 
Darby, Hagee, and others, have created an alternative reality to the biblical narrative, as most Christians have come to know it – espousing a king who is a kind of natural born killer, who has no compassion for the poor, or desire for healing the blind, and proclaiming the year of Jubilee.  This is not the King we learn about in the Gospels, who shows us the way of hospitality, loving your neighbor as yourself, and God’s power, emptied on the cross, for the life of the world.  Darby’s Jesus, is calculating and exclusivist, a kind of, wild-west-Cowboy-Jesus.
 
Another thing I learned in Israel-Palestine, while I was there, is that Israel is happy to take Hagee’s money.  But that doesn’t mean they believe in the end-of-the-world-Left-Behind-theology, which necessitates God’s violent destruction of Israel, and all Jews who don’t convert. 
 
The king that Hagee and his crowd worship, is not the boy-child of Bethlehem, the teacher of the Beatitudes, and the servant who washes our feet.  His king is more like a conquering, compassionless, well – King Herod.  A despot and danger to the kingdom and will of God, that we, here, pray for, ‘to come on earth as it is in heaven.’  Unfortunately, I’m sure we can all think of leaders like this in our world today.  Those who envision themselves as the next King – like Herod. 
 
But the king we seek is born under the Bethlehem star, born humbly to unite all under a banner of justice and peace.  A Shepherd-king, who prioritizes care for those in need, grants us rest in green pastures, who turns fear into goodness and mercy.  A universal king, who is not limited to one place, but is the living Body of Christ in the world, and available through the Holy Spirit everywhere, and at every time, to all, who desire salvation. 
 
What king do we seek!?  Herod, or, Jesus?
 
The choice is easy.  But the journey is life-long, winding, and a road less-traveled.  Let us be prepared to say NO to the demands of Herod.  And let us stand with our Christian siblings who today are under threat in Palestine and the Middle East, for our fate is tied to theirs.  Let us join the Magi caravan, eyes fixed on the Bethlehem Star, bodies engaged in the work of God’s justice, hearts transformed so that we may ever pay him homage – and with overwhelming joy, let us gather our prayers together boldly, as the Body of Christ, and the people of God.  

Readings for Advent 1C, November 28, 2021​

• Jeremiah 33:14-16  
• Psalm 25:1-10  
• 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13  
• Luke 21:25-36

Thanksgivng Proclamation, by Rev. Fred Kinsey

“Jesus said: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations…”
 
The distress that was building up among the nations in 1st Century Palestine was central to the apocalyptic signs Jesus was naming – and everything that went wrong, seemed like a sign!  But the point was, as Jesus said, “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down” by all these stressors.  And, so that, they don’t “catch you unexpectedly, like a trap,” and traumatize you.  But, “Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things, …and to stand before the Son of Man.” 
 
Jesus believed, that defending Israel against the Roman Empire, militarily, was not only futile, but, an unsustainable tactic against any nation or empire.  He counseled fleeing the war in 70AD.  But also, more critically, to be ready to rebuild as communities of faith, congregations, spiritual cells of God’s kingdom, stronger, from the ground up, as an act of faithfulness, and as a reflection of the kingdom and realm of heaven, here on earth.  This is what was meant by escaping all these things, and standing before the Son of Man. 
 
In other words, faithfulness was in reading the signs, and creating a new world out the ashes, of the old one.  And so the question for us is:  ?What will we do in hard times as people of faith? 
 
Which brings to mind, for me, the history and meaning of this holiday weekend of Thanksgiving!  Most of us know that it was Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that established the Thanksgiving holiday for the whole nation.  But not everyone knows it was Sarah Josepha (Buell) Hale, a widow, and working-mother of five, a prolific writer of children’s poems and stories, a co-founder of Vassar College, an influential editor in her own right – who is known as, the, “Mother of Thanksgiving.” 
 
Sarah J. Hale began writing letters to Governors, Senators, and Presidents as early as the 1840’s, when tensions between north and south were increasing, to make the “occasional celebrations” of Thanksgiving, every since George Washington, into an annual, national holiday.  And it was her persistence and prominence in American culture, that has credited her as the single most influential person to finally setup Lincoln, for his famous proclamation.  Like Washington’s proclamation earlier, that asked Americans to give thanks for “the happy conclusion” to the Revolutionary War, Lincoln’s proclamation coincided with the turning tide in the midst of the Civil War, at the battle of Gettysburg, in PA. 
 
But amidst the strife of 1863, two years before the Civil War’s ending, the signs of bloodied battlefields, the sign of Confederate states who had willfully broken away from the Union, in order to preserve human trafficking, and deny that “all, are created equal,” made it hard to give thanks as a united country.  Preachers in the north, and preachers in the south, gave very different sermons on where God’s favor rested, during the war. 
 
But Sarah Josepha Hale’s campaign for a National Day of Thanksgiving was all about finding a way to move forward, and to reunite, as one nation, no matter their past sins.  “Thanksgiving is a festive[al] which will never become obsolete,” Sarah Hale predicted, “for it cherishes the best affections of the heart - the social, and domestic ties.” 
 
And although, Mrs. Hale was partly, maybe even mostly right, in a certain way, my Truth-O-Meter tells me that she was also, partly wrong.  United on paper, by the 13, 14, and 15 Amendments to the Constitution, just 5 years after the Civil War, we have never completely united around, “created equal.”  Chattel slavery may have ended with the Civil War, but discrimination based on race has continued through Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights, to this day.  ?When will we sit down at the same Thanksgiving table, black, brown and white, LGBTQIA+ and cis-gender, and truly be sisters, brothers, and siblings, united in purpose and belief? 
 
Our good intentions are just not enough.  And now, the virus of 1619 is spreading like a Covid variant, once again, in our very own Day, and never more clearly than we see in the hearings in the House for the January 6th insurrection -the uprising for a new Confederacy- as the hearings, slowly but surely come to a head, before our very eyes.  ?Will we have a country under the rule of law, wrestling honestly, albeit anemically at times, towards ‘equality for all?’  Or will we have a new White Supremacy form of government, as the Confederacy once conceived our nation in 1860? 
 
“Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength…” Jesus said.  Not to escape these things, but to “know that the kingdom of God is near.”  That we are alert to the signs, and we will know to prepare ourselves, even amidst the “distress” of our own “nation.” 
 
?What will we do in hard times as people of faith? 
 
As a people of faith, it ought to be easy for us to “stand up” and proclaim our allegiance, to the God of love and justice.  But too often we have remade God in our own image, worshiping at the altar of expediency and complacency, self-satisfied with the status quo and structures that continue to uphold our American Original sin. 
 
Perhaps we need some sort of a Day of “Christian Thanksgiving,” especially for White Affinity, like a Truth & Reconciliation movement, as a first step, on the way to equity.  ?Would this help us to know what season it is, that we are in, like a sprouting fig tree heralds the summer?  St. Paul, a Zealot, in life-long recovery, ever since his experience on the Road to Damascus, for his sins of persecuting the Jesus movement, threw his new resurrected-life, 100%, into proclaiming the Christ who was alive for all. 
 
And he joyously proclaimed thanksgivings for some of the smallest, but most telling signs, like the church he started at Thessalonica in Greece.  As one of his first congregations, on his first missionary journey, Paul wasn’t even sure if they even survived, after he left.  So, when he could, he sent his companion, Timothy to visit.  And the news Timothy brought back was surprisingly positive.  They were thriving, and supporting one another, in their new congregation, showing their neighbors what the love of God, looked like.  So Paul immediately writes back to them: “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you?”  “…May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you.”  In the midst of an authoritarian Roman Empire, a small congregation thrived as a sign of God’s rule, and Paul gave thanks.
 
Sarah Cole and Abraham Lincoln, no doubt knew this: that our public Thanksgivings, soon enough, turn into love for one another, whenever, and wherever, it is a thanks, that is grounded in our Creator God. 
 
Paul wrote this letter to the Thessalonians from the cosmopolitan city of Corinth, where he was having a very rough time keeping this much more secular church together, and for whom he wrote his poem on love – that “love is kind, love does not insist on its own way, love never ends.”  The Corinthians, it seems, had yet to learn the lesson of Thanksgiving!   
 
But in the midst of Paul’s struggle in Corinth, good things were beginning to happen just down the road in Thessalonica.  Because, they were “alert at all times,” and seeing “the signs.” 
 
Let our Thanksgiving celebrations, this week, also be an opportunity to see and acknowledge the signs of distress; and to be ready to respond, kneeling before the Son of Man, and acting according to the righteousness and justice of Christ. 
 
?What will we do when times are hard and the signs are ominous?  Let us be ready, our ‘hearts on guard.’  For the kingdom and realm of God has come near and we, congregation, are called to be the people of God. 

Readings for Reformation Day | October 31, 2021
Jeremiah 31:31-34  I will write my law in their hearts, says the Lord
Psalm 46  The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold. 
Romans 3:19-28  Justified by God’s grace as a gift
John 8:31-36  Jesus says, Continue in my word and you will know the truth

"What is truth?" Rev. Fred Kinsey
Today is the day, 504 years ago, that a young Martin Luther posted his 95 debating points on the door of the Wittenberg castle church for all to see – as the legend goes.  It was the Eve of All Saints Day, or All Hallows Eve, October 31, 1517. 
 
So much has been written by, and about, Luther, it’s not surprising, I guess, that just this week, I came across a new fact.  New to me, at least.  Young Martin changed his sur-name!  It was probably right around this time, at the posting of the 95 Theses.  His original family name was Luder. L-u-d-e-r.  But, as he set out to protest the corruption he found in the church, and as he diligently read the scriptures, he fell in love with the word in our Gospel reading today, “e-leuther-ia,” which means “to set at liberty,” or simply, freedom.  And so instead of Luder, he became Luther, for e-leuther-ia! 
 
And so perhaps, like so many stars of our time, Prince, Lady Gaga, Bob Dylan, Audrey Hepburn, to name just a few, it seems old Marty, was ready to make a name for himself, too.
 
In our Gospel reading, Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free – e-leuther-ia.” 
 
Luther, was in pursuit of that freedom, the truth about Jesus the Christ, and what it could teach him!  He was so enthralled with this question, that despite his father’s expectations, that his oldest child should go to law school and become a high-priced lawyer, the young Martin took his vows, and entered the Augustinian monastery, before his father had opportunity to change his mind. 
 
Luther desperately wanted to find his freedom.  His soul was imprisoned and tortured by the thought of eternal damnation, which the medieval church had kept alive.  And not only did the church hierarchy, not believe it themselves, but they conceived of ways to profit off of the falsehood too. 
 
And to bring the truth out into the open, Luther posted his 95 Theses, hoping to debate things like, Indulgences, the veneration of the relics of the saints, restricting access to the Bible and other prohibited books, and the ostentatious wealth of the Church verses the Gospel’s call to carry your cross. 
 
Luther experienced this huge disconnect when he was sent on assignment to Rome.  He even engaged in the tourists’ most popular attraction, going up the “Scala Santa, or Holy Steps — brought back from the Holy Land and believed to be the very steps from Pontius Pilate's palace that Jesus climbed on the day he was convicted, [and Luther] saying the Lord's Prayer on each step.  Reaching the top, Luther stood up and thought, "Who knows if this is actually true?"”   (https://classroom.ricksteves.com/videos/martin-luther-s-experience-as-a-pilgrim-in-rome)
 
And so, Luther didn’t feel any closer to the freedom that Jesus promised, after visiting the capital of the Holy Roman Empire.  It wasn’t until perhaps two years later, in what has come to be called Luther’s Tower Experience, that the vision of his Protestant theology started to come into focus for him.  Reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans that, we are justified by God’s grace as a free gift, by our faith in Christ, or, the faithfulness of Christ, was the big breakthrough. 
 
There’s nothing we can do to deserve this grace, Luther realized.  It’s a passive, and overwhelming gift.  It’s the truth, and a gift of life, given to all people.  A gift of salvation.  We are saved by grace through faith.  Grace alone; faith alone; scripture alone, as Luther would write.  This, is the truth, that made Luther free.  That liberated him from his guilt and anxiety.  There was no flagellation, no holy relics, no Indulgences, that could save him.  Only God’s gift of grace in Christ Jesus, can free us. 
 
That’s the truth!
 
Of course, some people say, truth is relative.  And not only today, but Pontius Pilate cynically said, later in John’s Gospel, at the trial of Jesus, “what is truth?” 
 
Fast-forward to today, and just in the last couple of weeks, the former President’s Media and Technology Group (TMTG) issued a press release announcing the creation of a new social media site called, “TRUTH Social!”  Rather than a “tweet,” a statement on the new site would be a “truth.”  Although, if you read the fine print, in the Terms of Service, it says, criticism of the former president is prohibited. 
 
Mr. Trump is passionate about creating his own “brand of truth,” certainly one that is not based in scripture.  It is more closely aligned with a, self-absorbed, self-deluded, Authoritarianism, that no one dare question.
 
But ‘truth’ matters.  Truth can set us free.  While a false-truth can imprison us. 
 
Today we celebrate the true spirit of the Reformation.  And it is not a celebration of the person of Martin Luther, or any of the other reformers who came before or after him.  Luther himself was deeply flawed, as well as, brilliant and courageous.  But in his later days, we know, that he devolved into bitterness about converting Jewish people to the Christian faith.  And, as Lutherans, we have to acknowledge this. 
 
In one flippant writing for example, Luther even says he may resort to burning down Jewish homes if that’s what it would take for their conversion.  This is tragic, detestable, and unacceptable.  And we have to acknowledge our part in it, and because of people like the former President, and the white nationalists who would use it still today, just as the Nazi’s did to justify Kristallnacht, and all that followed, just 80 short years ago. 
 
So, what we celebrate today, is the Spirit of the Reformation, which was inspired by the Holy Spirit, herself!  We celebrate the freedom, that comes from knowing God’s truth. 
 
Pilate’s famous remark, “What is truth,” is the wrong question.  “Who, is the truth,” is the real question.  As Jesus says, later in chapter 14 of John’s gospel – “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” 
 
Jesus is the truth that sets us free, because he is sent by God, at once an outside reference point to our human fallenness, and also a close and intimate friend, like a familiar Good Shepherd.  He is the truth, because he knows, ‘greatness’ is in becoming a ‘servant,’ and, ‘the last shall become first.’  That’s how Jesus became the true Messiah and Savior for us. 
 
From our perspective, here in this life, the truth for today, you could say, is much like that oft quoted Reformation motto: “The church is reformed and always being reformed according to the Word of God.”
 
God’s truth is un-changing.  But our experience of truth must always be in the process of praying and reflecting on where we have been, and where God is calling us to now, in this moment, in this time, in our era.  As new discoveries, scientific and literary, are revealed to us, we need to re-measure, according to the Word of God, what is the truth that sets us free. 
 
There are many ‘false-truths’ that intend to imprison us, for their own selfish reasons.  But freedom in Christ, is the only true liberation for us.  This is the constant task of the followers of Jesus, as we journey with our Good Shepherd to the foot of the cross, and beyond. 
 
Let us rejoice today, and celebrate the truth that sets us free, the Word revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, which always is reforming us, by God’s love and grace. 

And on this Reformation Sunday, let the people say, Amen. 

Readings for 10th Sunday after Pentecost | July 25, 2021

• 2 Kings 4:42-44 and Psalm 145:10-18  
• Ephesians 3:14-21  
• John 6:1-21 or Mark 6:34-44

Mathematical Miracle, sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
I think we can call the Feeding of the 5,000 a Mathematical Miracle!  It is, a miracle story, in the vein of the coming Kingdom or realm of God, revealing to us the singular generosity of God who desires all to be fed, in a world that has ‘enough for all.’ 
 
It’s also symbolic in its math.  5 loaves and 2 fish, equal the number 7, or perfection, in Jewish symbolism.  The 12 baskets of bread left over, symbolize the fruitfulness of the 12 tribes of Israel, in the new order that Jesus is ushering in.  And the 5,000 represent the multiplication of the 5 books of Moses, the Torah, or the greatest gift of God to humanity.  (Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8, Anchor Bible, pg. 419)
 
It’s no wonder, that, besides the Passion narrative at the end, and the Baptism of Jesus in the beginning, the Feeding of the 5,000 is the only other complete story that is recorded in each of the four gospels. 
 
This is also the story we picked to go with our Unity Vision Statement.  “Unity’s vision is to be an urban green space, welcoming everyone into a holy encounter, where we are changed, that all may be fed, as Jesus feeds us.” 
 
In the next four weeks we’ll be reading from the Gospel of John, as he unpacks the meaning of, food, eucharist, Torah, manna, welcoming, bread enough for all, and much more, in what’s called the Bread of Life series. 
 
In this Mathematical Miracle we’ve read from Mark today, the first thing that Jesus does is, he takes stock of the way things are: “How many loaves of bread do you have” Jesus asks the disciples?  The twelve wanted Jesus to send the crowd away, all 5k+ of them, to go and fend for themselves at the nearest fast-food establishment!  What are we supposed to do, they ask?  We don’t have any money; and we’d need a half year’s salary to be able to buy enough, for even a meager meal, for all of them! 
 
So, the second thing Jesus does, is to organize them.  After he takes stock of ‘the way things are,’ he doesn’t panic when he finds out it’s only 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish!  He knows, “we” are the ones who will care for our people, the people of God.  “And he commanded the disciples to make them all recline, eating-group by eating-group on the green grass.  So, the people sat down, cluster by cluster, in groups of, a hundred, and in groups of fifty…”  That’s what organizing people, Jesus-style, looks like!  Which comes from, believing in what is right, and just, and heaven sent. 
 
This is a story, a Mathematical Miracle, about God providing enough.  About feeding regular everyday hungry families.  And living in the presence of the kingdom and realm of God, together. 
 
But acceptance of, ‘enough for everyone,’ is threatened by what we might call, Mathematical Misappropriation(malevolence)  – the message, and false belief, that we must compete for limited or scarce resources.  Mathematical Misappropriation indoctrinates us into an acquisitive competition, that anyone can be a millionaire if they try hard enough.  And, if for some reason you’re not, it’s your own darn fault.  As if we aren’t already working our tails off!  When we buy into this message, we have been co-opted by, Mathematical Misappropriation.  But, the millionaires have set up the rules to favor their own advancement, and any concern for ‘enough for everyone’ is somewhere way down the list, subordinate to, self-enrichment. 
 
We are all caught up in it to some extent, unless, we’re actively working against it.  Even then, it’s darn near impossible to escape, unless we’re organized to sit people down together, to expect, and demand what God wants to give us – the Mathematical Miracle. 
 
The reason I’m on this hobby-horse this week, is the one, very large example, of, this Mathematical Misappropriation.  And that’s, Billionaires blasting off into space!  Which is, of course, an amazing mathematical feat, a spectacular achievement, a testament to working hard, like we all do, but in this case, there are only three in the club: Branson, Bezos, and Musk. 
 
Maybe you’ve followed these stories, and are an admirer.  And once again, I say, totally spectacular achievement!  Miraculous!  But for me, I can’t square the gospel circle. 
 
Jeff Bezos, the most recent space traveler, who is 57, has a vision for what he’s doing.  It includes creating solar energy to be sent back to earth.  Which sounds good, but the reason, he says, is “I’m pursuing this work, because I believe, if we don’t, we will eventually end up with a civilization of stasis, which I find very demoralizing. I don’t want my great-grandchildren’s great-grandchildren to live in a civilization of stasis. We all enjoy a dynamic civilization of growth and change,” he says.  But is that really true?  Isn’t he talking more about himself?  More about a relative few, these days, who get to ‘enjoy the growth and change of a dynamic’ society, a lot more, than most of us!    “[S]tasis would be very bad, I think,” Bezos said.  And this is where I get very nervous!  When one famous person starts to decide what our values should be, all by himself.

In another interview at Cape Canaveral in 2017 he admitted, “I have won this lottery. It’s a gigantic lottery, and it’s called Amazon.com. And I’m using my lottery winnings to push us a little further into space. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to do that.”
 
Upon returning to earth Bezos, the richest man on the planet, who’s been cashing in a billion dollar’s of stock a year to pay for his space program, awkwardly thanked "every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this. Seriously, for every Amazon customer out there and every Amazon employee, thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. It's very appreciated," he continued. 
 
Of course, Amazon employees, like the rest of us, don’t have any choice in Bezos’ decision to spend his riches on a tourist ride to space.  Neither has Bezos entered into dialog even with his own workers for their pleas for better working conditions, like time enough for a bathroom break, or the ability to form a union.  Instead of trusting and organizing together, Amazon surveils its drivers and warehouse workers; and workers quit at nearly twice the rate of other retail jobs. 

Bezos is a convenient target, of course.  The richest man in the world.  And, truth be told, we’re all beholden to the same Mathematical Misappropriation system, to some extent.
 
So, the gospel message I want to convey is that, we can do something different, something gospel oriented, together.  We can listen, and hear, what Jesus is telling us about the Mathematical Miracle that comes from organizing ourselves.  First, we have to believe in the Son, the favored child of God, and the Good Shepherd’s goal of “enough for everyone.” 
 
Too often we’re like the disciples, fearful of a world that is hungry, or worse, blaming them, for their plight.  Our answer then, is, go away.  You can buy something in town if you’re hungry.  Why should I help?  I’m poor too! 
 
So, following Jesus is full of hard decisions.  Believing he is ‘the bread of life’ is more than just ‘liking’ it, on social media.  It has to be how we live, and what we live for, too. 
 
Instead of panicking, Jesus organizes us.  I’m sure Bezos, Brandon, and Musk have lots to organize in their high-tech quest for space exploration.  But that’s not the kind of organizing Jesus is talking about.  Billionaires have lots of freedom and little accountability.  At least in the 1960’s and 70’s the space race seemed like a national community effort and was paid for by our common fund, the national budget.  Private space trips, on the other hand, are not held to any accountable standard, by the people.  There is no conversation going on about their singular decisions. 
 
Organizing by Jesus, is community organizing.  It comes from the grassroots, who are invested, in our case, in the enterprise of becoming followers, those who are on the way to the cross and resurrection of Jesus. 
 
And so, in the story of the feeding of the 5,000, we can see that, at first, the people arrive in disarray.  They’re looking for a shepherd to lead them.  The disciples are not quite ready to be organizers yet, so Jesus organizes them, sitting them down, eating-group by eating-group, on the green grass – like the grassy hill of Psalm 23, where the sheep are organized and cared for by the Good Shepherd.  Jesus’ order is further envisioned by Mark when he describes the eating-groups as reclining, cluster by cluster, in groups of, a hundred, and in groups of fifty, lined up like those ready to study Torah, God’s Word. 
 
And so, following in the mold of Moses, who organized the Israelites to stay together 40 years on the way to the Promised Land, Jesus organizes us to come together and support one another, to share our food, and trust and know, that God provides enough for all. 
 
In Toni Morrison’s book, Beloved, she describes the transformative power of this belief in a Good Shepherd: “She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.” 
 
St. Teresa of Avila said, “God has no hands but our hands.”  Which is a lot like our ELCA slogan: God’s Work, Our Hands! 
 
Let us organize ourselves into clusters of eating, and living, and advocacy-groups, believing and trusting in the Mathematical Miracle, of the Feeding of the 5,000, that all may be fed as Jesus feeds us.   

Readings for Pentecost 4B, Sunday June 20, 2021

• Job 38:1-11 and Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32  
• 2 Corinthians 6:1-13  
• Mark 4:35-41

Sermon: "Margins of Our Lives" by Pastor Fred Kinsey
We now have two Independence Days in our country.  Finally, a celebration for blacks, as well as whites.  A Holiday, not just for those with an abundance of power and privilege, but also for those who have been marginalized.  And indeed, the crossing from one shore to the other, may be more passable, with the passage of Juneteenth Day, here in Illinois, and on the federal level, just this past week! 
 
Jesus, in our gospel today, loads his Disciples into a fishing boat to make a passage, to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  It’s a voyage of great intentionality for the Master.  Mark’s gospel envisions bridging this chasm, despite the fear of the journey, from the comfortable center of the home shores, to those on the margins – in this case, the Gentiles, those who live east of Lake Galilee and the Jordan River, on the outer edges of Israel. 
 
In the boat, Jesus, tired, after healing and teaching in parables, finds a cushion to stretch out on, and immediately falls asleep.  Afterall, four of his disciples come from a fishing background on this very lake, and who better to leave the skipper responsibilities to?! 
 
But, as can happen on the Sea of Galilee, a great windstorm arose, almost more than the fishing boat could handle.  They were taking in water, and large waves and swells were causing great alarm.  The Disciples, their worst fears realized, call out in a panic, sure they are about to capsize.  And seeing Jesus still enjoying his nap, without a care, they were all the more aggravated and annoyed.  They actually had to shake him up out of his slumber, like a sleeping teenager, to get his attention and plead with him to save them.  Jesus then, immediately exorcised, the demon-waves, crying out to the sea, “Peace, Be still!” 
 
Jesus amazes his Disciples with his divine power.  But what I’m mostly interested in today, is how closely this story follows, the Jonah and the Whale story.  For the disciples, as it turns out, are eerily, mirror-images of Jonah, the reluctant prophet.  The obstinance of Jonah, had grown out of his low regard for the people of Nineveh, his Gentile neighbors.  He is far from convinced that he must go and preach repentance to them.  They are, admittedly, wicked and not God-fearing, and way too far on the margins, thinks Jonah, for him to be concerned with them. 
 
So Jonah hops a boat going in the opposite direction from Nineveh, away from where God was so purposefully directed him to go.  And so, with Jonah, the same thing happened to him that happens to the Disciples.  A great windstorm arose and threatened to swamp the boat.  And God eventually has to save Jonah. 
 
The Disciples, of course are saved by the Son, by Jesus.  Not just because it’s what the disciples want and plead for, but because God has a mission on the margins, for them, just like God did for Jonah.  Jesus is focused-in, on going to the other side, to save and reconcile with the wrongly enslaved, in Gerasene, of the Decapolis – present day Jordan. 
 
Conquering our fear of the evil Sea monster, and raging storm, is all part of the journey.
 
In 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was finally published – the Revolutionary War, of course, already underway – the beauty and clarity of the right to freedom was forever enshrined, in its words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” 
 
Fine rhetoric by the Founding Fathers, except that, men meant men, and not women.  And as was defined a decade later in the Constitution, men also meant white men, and not negro slaves.  Independence, freedom, and democracy, were only applicable to the monied few, a minority of citizens, at the birth of our country. 
 
July 4th was never a holiday, and day of celebration, for African Americans in the U.S., for the most part.  And that is why, the long struggle to make Juneteenth a national holiday is so important. 
 
It was on June 19, 1865, nearly three years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation that “a” last group of slaves in Galveston, TX received the news that: “all persons held as slaves … shall be then, thenceforward and forever free…”  Major General Gordon Granger, had taken a long time, traveling as he was by horseback, to get the word, all the way out, to the margins.  He read the proclamation at a number of locations, including “the Negro Church on Broadway, as Reedy Chapel-AME Church was referred to then.”  And Reedy Chapel, held perhaps the first Junteenth celebration the very next New Year’s Day!   (https://www.galvestonhistory.org/news/juneteenth-and-general-order-no-3)
 
Slowly but surely, the celebrations spread across Texas, and the whole country.  And forever after, black Americans have celebrated Juneteenth as their Independence Day.  Their, Freedom, Liberation, and, Emancipation Day.
 
God, in Jesus, calls us to the margins, to continue the work of liberation.  To set the captives free, to proclaim the year of our Lord, a Jubilee Year.  The aim is to lift up the downtrodden, and bring low the mighty.  To make a level playing field, where no one is denied equity. 
 
Jesus knew that didn’t mean aiming for, a color-blind society, because that is a society which, in and of itself, is blind to institutions and systems of racism.  Jesus’ quest to travel to the margins, was embarked upon with, open-eyes, and there he declared liberation and salvation, in word and deed, teaching and healing. 
 
Also on the margins, I think we could say, especially as we celebrate Pride Month, was Angel Haynes, a transgender woman, murdered because of her identity, this past October, and who we have been praying for every Sunday.  “Angel was taken away from her mom, grandmother, uncle…she was taken away from all of us unexpectedly,” said her best friend, Takia Weddle.  She was just 2 months shy of her 26th birthday. “She was a caring, determined, funny, smart and, giving woman. Unfortunately, our time with her was cut very, very short,” added Takia, at her vigil, the weekend after. (https://avp.org/ncavp-mourns-the-death-of-angel-haynes-25-year-old-black-transgender-woman-memphis/) 
 
Jesus faced great opposition in going to the margins, as we see in his boat ride with his Disciples, across the Sea of Galilee.  Just as Jonah’s uncaring attitude, landed him in the storm, needing to be saved by a big fish, so the Disciples needed saving by Jesus from their unfaithfulness to those on the margins. 
 
We know that the wind and the waves were against Jesus’ mission.  But more significantly perhaps, so were the Disciples.  They had little regard for the Gentiles on the margins, on the other side, even though Jesus had taught them to love your enemies.  They were afraid, not just of the rough seas, but, of what they would find on other shores.  They never would have gone, without Jesus as their slumbering, all-powerful, captain!  
 
Jesus calls us, to the margins, especially from our privileged positions of dominion.  I am confident, that -we here- are not counted among the Insurrectionists, who are the wind and waves of evil.  But: ?Are we regularly traveling with Jesus to the margins, on the other side?  Do we walk as allies with Black Lives Matter?  Are we speaking up against the historic and invisible barriers of racism, that persist, and still regularly occur, each and every day in our land? 
 
The storm that threatened to swamp the boat with Jesus and his disciples, was indeed the raging battle of evil that surrounded them.  But like Jonah, the disciples had gotten into deep waters because of their complete lack of concern for the Gentiles, those on the margins.  And, it was their silence, that invited the specter of death. 
 
This is our battle today, too.  Silence is complicity.  Silence, and in-action, will swamp our boat.  The boat we are all in together. 
 
Let us forego Jonah’s boat, that is fleeing responsibility, and our call, to follow God’s ways.  And let us get in the boat with Jesus, however fearful it may seem to cross over.  And let us head, directly and purposefully, to the margins of our lives.  Let us go to the other side, knowing that our liberation and salvation, cannot be found without enrolling in our baptismal calling, and taking the voyage, every day. 
 
Let us trust in God’s beloved Child, our slumbering Savior, who commands the wind and waves!  

Readings for Fourth Sunday of Easter

• Acts 4:5-12 
• Psalm 23  
• 1 John 3:16-24  
• John 10:11-18

"Our Cornerstone," Rev. Fred KInsey
Peter and John, and all the disciples, were building their lives anew, in Jerusalem.  Jesus had told them to wait there, the day he ascended to the clouds, and they would receive a ‘new’ kind of power.  And after Pentecost, it started to come together.  They had built their lives on following Jesus, during his life.  But what were they to build their lives on, after he died and was raised, and on the 40th day, ascended to God’s right hand? 
 
In our reading from, The Acts of the Apostles, today, we see Peter and John filled with a new confidence in their building project.  A confidence they never quite had with Jesus, in the flesh. 
 
Sometimes, they had asked for power, like when John and James, the sons of Zebedee, who were once part of the family fishing business, asked for special places, to sit, one on either side of Jesus, in the kingdom to come; in their visions of that victorious Davidic kingdom! 
 
Peter had confidence too when he correctly named Jesus as the Messiah, in the midst of that swanky Roman resort town, on their northern border.  But all those moments of braggadocio, were short lived, as Jesus necessarily, and decisively, dashed their hopes, and corrected their false expectations.  All their dreams of being on easy street, becoming royalty and princes in a Davidic Shepherd-King monarchy were misplaced. 
 
Jesus didn’t even try, really, to let them down easy, but told them boldly, and directly, that these were visions of earthly kingdoms, built on faulty foundations.  Yes, they would learn more of the heavenly built kingdom if they continued to follow Jesus.  But they should know, his, was a servant-based model.  A kingdom and realm that challenged the earthly powers, built on human-made power, with the subversive power of God, built on communities of justice and love, and constructed in solidarity and faithfulness, with communal banquets for the poor, the humble and meek. 
 
John and Peter, once they received Jesus’ Spirit at Pentecost, the spirit of life, in this alternative, sharing, prophetic movement, spoke in a new way, now, says the writer of Acts.  They spoke, boldly!  Nothing enrages the earthly powers more than bold prophetic speaking, especially when it stirs up, and ignites, God’s people; when it, gives them, hope! 
 
Take Alexi Navalny!  He knew full well when he returned to Russia he would be arrested and thrown into jail.  Even though it was the Kremlin who tried to assassinate him by poisoning, not too long ago.  But because Navalny speaks boldly against the sins of Putin, against his falsely earned riches and the Herod-like power he wields, nothing could be more challenging.  Bold speech aimed in the right direction, can have the power of creation itself. 
 
And Navalny is not only popular at home but around the world.  His spirit, is much greater, than his fleshly existence.  As soon as he walked off his Lufthansa flight, he was arrested and put in a Soviet jail, and apparently, they are trying to poison him again, in there.  But world pressure has come to his rescue, at least for the time being.  Death and resurrection, takes many forms.
 
Peter and John are thrown into jail for speaking boldly about the power of, resurrection, forgiveness, and new life; and because all the people of Jerusalem were listening and thousands believed.  And the people believed, because, Peter and John healed a man that couldn’t walk, like Jesus had done. 
 
It was late in the day when they were arrested, so the authorities waited until the morning to bring them before the high court, and they asked Peter and John, not about resurrection, but about what power, what name, did they use to do this healing?  Because first of all, they couldn’t believe that Peter and John were speaking so well, so boldly, knowing that they were “uneducated and ordinary men.”  And secondly, where did they get this power, a power that was so very threatening to the high courts’ existence.  This was an ‘existential problem’ for the priests. 
 
But the power, “the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,” the crucified and raised one, Peter, was happy to tell them!  If it were, you and I, we might think we were being more crafty, if we didn’t say that, so, directly.  We might realize how it could get us in trouble in that situation – you know, if we spoke too boldly.  But Peter knew what he was doing.  He knew it was an existential problem, and that it could cost him.  He didn’t do it foolishly, but confidently.  Boldly, as a new servant-leader.  This name of Jesus, this power of Jesus, his Spirit, his gift and promise of resurrection for all, was so much greater than any threat, from the offended, confused, high court, that Peter was happy to talk about it, all day long. 
 
And so he did, inspired now, quoting Psalm 118: “this Jesus is ‘the stone that was rejected by you, the builders’…” that is, the high court that Jesus had roundly criticized for its worldly thinking and hypocrisy – the same rulers who were caretakers of the temple building.  And, “this stone that you rejected,” said Peter, still singing from his Psalm book, “has become the cornerstone,” a new foundation of a living building, the one by whom all “mortals,” of every nation, may find healing and salvation. 
 
And here, the high court had thought, in rejecting him, that they had saved their jobs and positions.  But now, the crucified one was clearly back, in a whole new form.  The spirit of Jesus had risen and taken residence in his disciples, and thousands of followers. 
 
So, Peter and John were, once again, following their Master and Lord.  Only now, finally, it was in spirit and truth, not with eyes closed, but with new eyes altogether, fixed on the for-real prize.  Peter and John were building their house, their lives, on the cornerstone, the cornerstone that they too, had rejected, not too many days before. 
 
Yet, that’s how they knew to, share the good news, to invite others, boldly – these priests included.  For like them, Peter and John had mistaken Jesus for a rival political power, but they had come to find, that the true Messiah was a cornerstone of a whole new building, of a new power rarely seen on earth, because its origin was from the heavenly realm, the Lord of Life – one who didn’t need to be in rivalry with anyone, or anything, else. 
 
Jesus is the stone that is a stumbling block for so many, who exposes false earthly-powers, but who is also at the same time, the foundation of a new temple, whose stones cannot be thrown down – a new spiritual construction that has no ending.  Jesus is that new cornerstone, that new temple.  If we follow, we build our lives on this crucified Messiah, the Savior of the world. 
 
For Peter and John, it was existential too.  It was life and death.  The authorities of this world could order them, to be crucified too, but Peter and John rested in the promise of, life in the new age, the promised resurrection that was already holding them up, and sustaining them every minute, of every day; the foundation and cornerstone that was their rock and their salvation; the new temple that they rejoiced in, and at whose feet they worshipped, and who they could talk about, without end. 
 
Let us build our lives on the sure foundation, the stone that is so often rejected, but which God has made the cornerstone of our very existence.  The foundation that holds us up, and lives and breathes, everywhere we go.  Jesus Christ of Nazareth, our life and our salvation.  

Readings for 3rd Sunday of Easter, 4/18/21

• Acts 3:12-19  
• Psalm 4  
• 1 John 3:1-7  
• Luke 24:36b-48

"Innocent Victim," Rev. Fred Kinsey
We kind of stumbled into the protest rally for Adam Toledo on Friday evening in Logan Square.  I thought it was supposed to be on Saturday, but the hoards of people walking down the boulevard past our apartment carrying, Justice for Adam signs, was unmistakable. 

We had already ordered our pizza from Reno, a restaurant right across from the Monument and public square where the protest rally was getting underway, so we quickly put on our coats and rushed out the door to join in.  Not ideal, but we had a half hour before our pizza was ready to pick up! 
 
It was by far the biggest rally I’d seen in Logan Square.  Bigger than last year’s BLM protests in the same spot.  Though, I would say, this was a continuation of that movement.  And, part of the growing attraction here, has been, you can easily march to Mayor Lightfoot’s house, which is just a few blocks away. So, this particular gathering wasn’t just 50 or 100 people scattered on one side of the LGSQ Monument, but was filled all the way around, and spilling out into the round-about street circling the Monument, where Milwaukee Ave, Logan Blvd, and Kedzie intersect. Police were out, redirecting traffic, all around, for blocks.  Most people were wearing face coverings, but around the Monument protestors were packed-in pre-pandemic style, and social distancing was scarce, except towards the fringes, where Kim and I found space. 
 
As we gazed at all the protest signs: No Justice, No Peace; Defund the Police, and Justice for Adam, amongst others, Kim reminded me how Daunte Wright’s mother had said, “there’s never going to be justice for us. [to me] Justice would bring our son home to us.”  And I recalled, that after Adam Toledo’s family had viewed the video, of his last moments of life, earlier in the week, the thing they urged Chicago to do now, was to focus on changing the systems that killed Adam: “The Toledo family implores everyone who gathers in Adam’s name to remain peaceful, respectful and nonviolent, and to continue to work constructively and tirelessly for reform,” as they stood in front of cameras they had never wanted to see.
 
The unyielding resoluteness, to yet another senseless death, this time of a young teenager, 13 years old, seemed to pervade this gathering, like a vigil as much as a protest.  Just a day after the tragic video was publicly released of the needless death of Adam, city officials were framing the shooting in ways to protect the police and demonize the child. 
 
But traumatized protestors were disbelieving.  Jasmine Rubalcava, who lives “minutes away” from where Adam Toledo was shot in Little Village, brought her four-year-old son to the [LGSQ] protest. Like many Chicagoans, she opted out of watching the footage, saying, “no matter what’s in the video, he didn’t deserve to die.”  (https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/04/16/thousands-march-in-chicago-to-protest-police-killing-of-13-year-old-adam-toledo-adam-deserved-to-live/ )
 
Karina Solano, an organizer with Únete La Villita, said, “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing excused CPD having shot and killed him. Nobody deserves to die at the hands of the police, especially not kids. We don’t need to see the video to know that Adam deserved to live,” Solano said.  (ibid.)
 
It is this idea of ‘the innocent victim’ that theologian James Alison identifies in the gospels, and in our Gospel Reading from Luke today.  Jesus, the innocent victim, having been raised on the third day, just as he said he would, has revealed in his death and resurrection, the victory of love and peace and justice.  Nothing, nothing, nothing, can excuse the death of Jesus, the innocent victim.  Just as Peter says in his sermon from our Acts reading today: “Jesus…,” “the Author of life,”  whom you handed over and rejected… though he… [deserved] release,” you killed, and instead let go, a guilty man, Barabbas, in his place.  This is the fear of the families of George Floyd, Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo, but also of black and brown families everywhere, in America.  The fear of their sons, becoming ghosts.
 
When Jesus appears to the disciples, in the evening, on Easter day, according to Luke, they are still confused and not yet, the believing Apostles, as we think of them today.  Out of nowhere, Jesus suddenly stands among the disciples, like a ghost. And the first thing he says to them is, “Peace be with you.”  Because, they are startled!  You and I couldn’t do that, suddenly appear.  But Jesus addresses their fear, and the inner dialog they are having with themselves, still so full of confusion on this Easter resurrection evening. 
 
So, to assure them he’s not just a ‘spirit, a ghost,’ as was fairly common for people to do, then, and now, Jesus asks for something to eat to demonstrate he is more than a scary apparition.  They gave him a piece of broiled fish, which he chewed and digested before them. 
 
But his appearance as a New Being, an eschatological promise of new life, and the first-fruits of ‘the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come,’ had more meaning than the prosaic debate between, spirits and physicality. 
 
Jesus has returned like this, to confirm to them that he is the Messiah, the one who is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and thus, be our Lord of Life.
 
As Brian Robinette says, “The resurrection awakens true memory. It unseals the collective amnesia that has allowed us to suppress the injustice of our violent exclusions and expulsions,” as we did with Jesus, and like the world would have us do with Adam Toledo and Daunte Wright, and like we sometimes do to any person who is not allowed in as a full human-being, but is victimized.   
 
But, Robinette continues, “the risen One appears to [us] in the midst of an unbreachable divide to restore communication … and offer [us] a renewed innocence, a second innocence. This new innocence is the offer of forgiveness. Just as Peter welcomes those responsible for Jesus’ murder to embrace the forgiveness offered to them by God, so too do we find running[,] throughout the New Testament[,] the intimate association of resurrection, forgiveness, and newness of life.” 
 
And so precisely in our gospel today, the innocent victim, Jesus, inspires Luke to encourage us, “that repentance and forgiveness of sins are to be proclaimed in his name to all nations.” 
 
Why is it that the families, and especially the mothers of their black and brown sons, are the ones calling for peace, even amidst receiving the news of their own sons’ becoming “innocent victims?!” 
 
There is something that the mother’s, and families, and now even spreading to Chicagoans, and dare we say beyond, have experienced, in the loss of such unnecessary lynching’s.  The transformation through death and deep grief, comes only in walking through, anger, denial, depression and every other emotion, that creates in us a holy resolution, to somehow move forward, to demand not just justice, but, new life, a new reality, a well-deserved healing and peace, a new way of being. 
 
Never again do we want to see innocent victims!  And so, it’s on all of us to demand and create the change Jesus came to give us.  We can’t opt out because of white privilege; we can’t opt out even when our own dear child has been taken.  We can’t rest on our laurels, knowing that Jesus gave his life for us 2,000 years ago.  The ‘new life’ is a gift from God, but only if we make it into who we are, if we pray and work for it to come equally for all of us. 
 
As we see in our Gospel reading today, it’s almost impossible to understand Jesus in his resurrected body, that first-fruit of the new creation God is making, already, now, through him.  Was he spirit or flesh?  Ghost or person?  How could he be like us in the ordinary function of eating, but so unlike us in appearing and ascending? 
 
But what is possible, is to love Jesus and love the Word of God, and thus to share in the journey of ‘understanding’ how he is ‘fulfilling scripture’ as our ‘suffering’ Savior, and our risen “innocent victim.” 
 
In the midst of gathered communities every week, God is opening our hearts and minds to understand “that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations... You are witnesses of these things.”

Readings for Fourth Sunday in Lent | March 14, 2021

• Numbers 21:4-9  
• Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22  
• Ephesians 2:1-10  
• John 3:14-21

In the Air, Rev. Fred Kinsey
In the new season of Queen Sugar, love is in the air! All three Bordelon children have landed in a good place.  Nova and Calvin have finally resolved their issues and settled into a committed relationship.  Charlie has finally decided to let all her rebound relationships go, and concentrate on being there for her son Micah who’s starting college at Xavier, her alma mater.  And Ralph Angel and Darla are getting married! 
 
But, as you might expect, love is not the only thing in the air, this season.  Like all sitcom’s, Queen Sugar is dealing with multiple tensions.  It’s the unseen stuff, in the air, good and bad, that’s always hard to get a handle on.  And now they’re having to deal with the virus of Covid-19, on top of the virus of 1619.  
 
The three grown Bordelon children – Nova, Charlie, and Ralph Angel – were brought together on the family farm, just outside New Orleans, in season one, when their father died unexpectedly.  Only Ralph Angel, the youngest, had stayed on the farm, and had, at least a rudimentary understanding, of the sugar cane business.  Nova the oldest was nearby in New Orleans, a journalist and traditional healer, which was nothing lucrative, not like her younger sister, Charlie, who had built a multi-million dollar company around her husband, an NBA star on the west coast. 
 
But – stuff is in the air – and Charlie’s, handsome but hapless husband, turns out to be sleeping around, and they soon divorce.  Nova writes a book that’s wildly popular, but in it, she exposes all the failings and secrets of her family members, who then, in their anger, shun her.  Ralph Angel, is trying to prove he can manage the farm and be a good father to Blue, his son with Darla, but until this season, he continued to make bad decisions, going in and out of prison, a couple times. 
 
As one of the few African-American families who farm in St Josephine’s Parish, they are always fighting the invisible virus of 1619 too, which, like an unseen aerosol, is floating in the air all around them.  The virus finds a welcome host in the old Anti-Bellum Landry family.  They own the Parish’s only Sugar Mill, and all the black families are forced to pay their oppressive prices.  When Charlie heroically starts a new Sugar Mill for the black farmers, the Landry’s vow to put them out of business.  Charlie is able to defend her mill, at great risk to her financial investment, staving off every attack, until the Landry’s, never able to give up their historic supremacy, clandestinely have it burned to the ground. 
 
The air of Queen Sugar is filled with relationships of, love and sadness, triumph of the spirit and heartbreaking falls, hard won pride and devilish deceit, in every episode of all five seasons.  (A great show created by Ava Du Vernay, on Opra’s OWN network.) 
 
The theme’s in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, struck me in a similar way, with its contrast of, grace and wrath, love and sinfulness.  One of the Pauline Epistles penned from prison, Paul knows what it’s like to suffer unjustly, because you pose a problem to the authorities.  As a follower of the Way, a disciple of Jesus, Paul would push up against the Roman Empire in each new city he preached the gospel in the public square.  Christianity was not yet legal, and its members were seen as trouble-makers, something like Ralph Angel was perceived to be, as a young black man growing up in the south. 
 
Paul’s zeal for preaching the gospel in Hellenized cities, far from Jerusalem, put him up against cultures and people who had little or no knowledge of Judaism or its new offshoot of Jesus followers.  They were pagans, not monotheists.  And that put them at a disadvantage, Paul believed.  They hadn’t yet encountered God’s Law – the laws, like in the 10 Commandments, yes – but what he really meant was that they didn’t even yet know, that they were sinners.  The law hadn’t convicted them in their conscience, yet.  They “were dead through the trespasses and sins” in which they lived every day.  They just didn’t know it. 
 
That’s what was in the air, for them.  And that’s what Paul was addressing, when he said: “1You were dead through the trespasses and sins 2in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient. 3All of us once lived among them… and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” 
 
Turns out, “the ruler of the power of the air,” that Paul mentions, (I had to look it up!) was the ancient belief that evil spirits lived in the air, one of the four basic elements of, earth, water, air, and fire.  And air, they believed, was the murky, polluted region between the planet earth and the moon in which the four elements are mixed.  Air, is where both, good, and evil, angels dwell.  (NIB, Pheme Perkins; pg. 390) 
 
Something was in the air, alright, the very air they breathed.  And they didn’t know what it was until Paul began to teach them that there was a standard, a law, that God had set up that they were ignorant of – and thus, they were dead in the lives they were leading.  They didn’t even know it – they didn’t know the God who was One.  Jesus had summed up the Law and the Prophets into one standard measure: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.  That was a universal truth, a rule that everyone could learn and agree to live by.  And yet, knowing it, still, we fail.
 
And, says Paul, that was me too.  No one worked harder than me to obey the law, and love the LORD.  And what did I do?  I persecuted the followers of Jesus, helped throw them in jail, and approved the stoning of St. Stephen.  And that’s when the Word of God in Jesus, finally came to me.  It’s not that the law has been abolished, but something else entered the world, God-sent, that lives in the very air we breathe.  For, “God who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made me -us- alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” as Paul wrote to the Ephesians, from his prison cell.
 
This, is the good news, that’s in the air!  The One God, who has created the world and everything in it, loved us even when we were dead, even when we didn’t know it, even when we tried our best and failed, even when we did nothing wrong and were treated as second class citizens or less-than human, even when we don’t like ourselves – even then, God loves us.  This, is the grace of God.  Let it wash over you, and let your former life go – turn around, and follow the Messiah, Christ our Savior, God’s Son, who was sent into the world to reveal God to us. 
 
“The ruler of the power of the air” has been conquered by the power of grace.  The polluted spaces, and invisible viruses, have been met by the mightiest vaccine of them all, the power of the cross, and the gift of the Holy Spirit (the true ruler of the air).  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, in the same way the son of man had to be lifted up, so that everyone who trusts in him may share in the life of God’s new age.” 
 
Good or bad, can happen to us, whether or not, we, are intentionally, good or bad.  But, in the love and grace of God, we too can live a life of forgiveness and love for our neighbor.  Both powers, are in the air.  And God, in Christ Jesus, has already won the decisive battle. In Lent we learn to turn around and go in the direction of our merciful Savior, knowing that nothing can compare, as Paul says, to “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness, toward” us, that we have found “in Christ Jesus” – our love, that’s in the air!   

Readings for Third Sunday in Lent | March 7, 2021

• Exodus 20:1-17  
• Psalm 19  
• 1 Corinthians 1:18-25  
• John 2:13-22

Direct Action, Rev. Fred Kinsey
On our walk the other day, down Milwaukee Avenue – a beautifully clear day, for a change – Kim suddenly caught sight of the skyline downtown.  Look, she said wryly, it’s Emerald City!  I understood the joke immediately.  We haven’t been downtown for, at least a year now, because of the pandemic.  Haven’t been on the CTA Blue Line, once.  So, it almost seems like the fabled Chicago skyline, is a distant mythological façade.  Is it, really, real?  We hope so, because, it is, something to behold, and with any luck, we’ll visit again, some day soon! 
 
It also symbolizes, I think you could say, an elite, upper-class life-style, and perhaps even, like it or not, the corruption that plagues our city.  Chicago was recently named the #1 corrupt city in our country. Again!  But still, it doesn’t cost anything, to gaze at the magnificence of our, Emerald City! 
 
Something like that was going on in Jesus time, in the city of Jerusalem.  Both, the outstanding beauty of the Second Temple, recently rebuilt by Herod the Great, and also, in the corruption of Jerusalem’s elite: its Roman overlords, and the scribes and other elites who benefited from their patrons.
 
If you visit Jerusalem today, of course – which Kim and I did in 2005 – the beauty which adorns the ancient Temple Mount is the 7th century Islamic, Dome of the Rock, with its shining cylindrical gold crown.  The Second Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70A.D., just a few decades after ‘Jesus was killed, and on the third day rose again,’ so that, only the western wall of the Mount was left standing, or what’s affectionately called today, the Wailing Wall, where Jews, and others, go to pray, converse, and imagine how it once was. 
 
And, it was, magnificent!  It was rebuilt to the detailed biblical specifications in 1 Kings, and at the time of Herod’s rebuilding project, was the largest Temple in the Ancient Near East.  And like the Dome of the Rock, it too was glittery with gold trim, reflecting the sun’s light for miles around, though structurally, in traditional squares and rectangles, instead of the rounds and circles, of the Muslim shrine.  (You’d have to ask Rodrigo what the proper terms are!) 
 
Our gospel reading today has long been called the “Cleansing of the Temple,” as if Jesus had come to purify, and scrub clean, the holy building, from any visible form of money, ever again.  For a long time, churches seriously prohibited holding Bake Sales, based solely on this passage.  But no one – not Jesus, or any of the pilgrims coming to the Passover festival from around the known world wherever Jews lived – was scandalized that you had to convert your local currency into the Temple’s currency, in order to buy your sacrificial animal or jug of oil.  Money in the Temple was not the problem.  Animals were not the problem.  Jesus was after something much deeper and more fundamental.  It wasn’t a Cleansing of the Temple.  It was a Symbolic Direct Action, on the Temple!
 
The first clue we get, is Jesus’ deliberate reconnaissance, the day before.  If you backup 4 verses from our text today, and read verse 11, you notice Jesus did what all good organizers do in preparation for a direct action.  They scout out the building, plaza, or Temple where you’re planning it, and get the lay of the land.  When the right people, or wrong people, are around, who controls the doors, what’s considered public, and what’s private, etc.  Verse 11 says, “Then Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.” 
 
Jesus scoped it out!  He looked around, at ‘everything,’ says Mark.  Then, because the sun would be setting soon, he went to Mary and Martha’s home in the nearby suburb of Bethany, with the disciples. 
 
!Not sure how well Jesus slept that night, but the next day, he gathered the disciples and headed right back, to the ‘Emerald City.’  They snacked on figs on the way, and ‘immediately’ upon entering the Temple he began to enact his well-constructed, plan, designed to shock and gain attention, and to show who was in control (God).  No people or animals were harmed in this active non-violent, Symbolic Direct Action. 
 
Jesus had two immediate targets: the changers of money who sat at their tables, or “banks,” and symbolically represented the larger banking industry that was profiting off, the mostly poor pilgrims.  And, the “sellers of doves,” the sacrificial animals that the pilgrims were required to buy to make an offering. 
 
Jesus had already made clear, back in Galilee, that he was opposed to the exploitation of the poor, lepers, and women, by the religious leaders.  Now, arriving on their territory in Jerusalem, at the heart of the cultic system, Jesus demonstrates in protest form, that he is serious, that God is demanding change. 
 
Mark says, “he drives out,” the exchangers of money and the sellers of doves, using the exact same word, ‘drive out,’ as Jesus uses when sending the demons out of people in his exorcisms.  This, is the kind of wholesale cleaning Jesus did!  And then he turned upside down, their tables and chairs.  For this, Mahatma Gandhi once said, “[Jesus] was the most active resister known, perhaps, to history. His was non-violence par excellence.” (Gandhi, Non Violence in Peace and War, Volume I, p. 16)
 
I remember the direct action we planned, against Illinois’ richest citizen, at his building in downtown Chicago, presumptuously called, the Citadel.  He was the #1 donor to Bruce Rainer’s campaign, that helped elect him.  And when Gov. Rauner was refusing to sign a state budget, an unprecedented impasse that lasted over 2 years, our action, with the support of hundreds of local leaders, shut down his idolatrous Citadel, in the middle of the business day. 
 
The media was on hand to capture the dramatic banners and signs, pleading for a corrupt Governor to sign a budget and end the suffering of the poorest of the poor, in Chicago and the state of Illinois.  Police arrived in minutes, but it took a long time to cut us out of the PVC pipes linking the 5 of us together, who had agreed to be taken to jail, giving the rest of the team outside ample time to get the message out.  A direct action that, planned over some weeks, helped end the cynical budget impasse.  Trudy and Michael might remember, being part of this action, too! 
 
When Jesus, literally, and symbolically, turned the tables, Mark says, “he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.”  That is, Jesus shut it down, so that, like in every good action, he could give a defiant speech.  Jesus probably went on for some time, but according to Mark, the heart of it was about overturning the corruption of the whole temple system, which 1) was extracting wealth from the poor, to which he used the words of prophet Jeremiah against them, “you have made it a den of robbers.’  But 2) mainly, this temple is supposed to be, “a house of prayer for all nations,” Jesus insisted, now quoting Isaiah, and that the temple was made for growing the movement of believers, and enhancing the lives of people from near and far that loved their Creator, demonstrated by all the pilgrims flooding Jerusalem. 
 
Ideally, the temple was like a Tree of Life, with branches to the sky, and roots entwined throughout the earth, a symbol of God’s life-giving grace for all, on earth, as it is in the heavens.  All the pilgrims coming to this Passover festival, came to worship their God, who was a God of promise, deliverance and redemption, and who honored them back. 
 
Jesus’ Direct Action plan was Symbolic of what he wanted to accomplish with his whole life.  He was clear that he was not taking over the Temple on this day for more than a few hours.  There were temple guards, as he knew, and he was not aiming for a military coup.  But he was serving notice that, in the tradition and warning of the prophet Jeremiah, the Temple would be “destroyed” if its leaders did not repent from their idolatrous ways. 
 
And if they didn’t, Jesus was offering himself as a replacement for the temple.  It was more explicit in the later edition of the gospel of John.  There, the temple leaders ask for a sign, of his sending out the sellers and overturning the tables, and Jesus says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  And John adds, “he was speaking of the temple of his body.” 
 
But, where are we to understand that the temple of Jesus body is today, after Jesus rose, and now sits at the right hand of the Father?  As Ched Myers says, “The new site [of the temple] is neither geographical nor institutional but ethical; the difficult but imperative practice of mutual forgiveness within the community [is the new site]… The community becomes truly the ‘priesthood of all believers,’ the place of prayer ‘for all peoples.’” 
 
Jesus’ courageous, Symbolic Direct Action, which led to the giving of his life, was orchestrated perfectly, by Jesus – for us.  And now, we, all these centuries later, are the direct beneficiaries of his legacy of justice and love.  We hold his gift gracefully in our hands, literally, and symbolically, in the bread we receive each Sunday, along with his words, ‘the body of Christ, given for you.’  
 
In this way, we are now empowered, to organize, grow followers, and build a city of God, beyond exploitation, oppression, and exclusion, by which, as baptized believers, the power of the Holy Spirit may wash and cleanse the temple of our bodies daily, that God’s kingdom may be revealed. 

Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent | Feb 28, 2021

• Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16  
• Psalm 22:23-31  
• Romans 4:13-25  
• Mark 8:31-38 or Mark 9:2-9

"Quite Openly," Rev. Fred Kinsey
They said it quite openly – all over the internet.  Be there, January 6th in Washington D.C.  It’s going to be wild!  The Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, Jericho Wall, Q-Anon, and numerous state militia groups.  They weren’t shy!  The FBI had been following them, and the press reporting on them.  It was said quite openly ahead of time.  It was a lot like the white supremacist Militia that tried to lynch Michigan’s Governor, quite openly, back in October.  In fact, the FBI had been tracking domestic terrorism on social media since the beginning of the year, in 2020, and noting its rise.  It was all done quite openly, and was not a secret. 
 
They brought zip-ties, (plastic handcuffs), and dressed in military gear.  But, they were surprised when they couldn’t find any of the Representatives or Senators in the Capitol, who had started to certify the votes of the Electoral College, just before they arrived.  Little did they know how close they were to apprehending their targets, as they wandered the halls.  Stop the Steal, had been the cry, and someone set-up a noose on a platform, like a good-olde lynching, still, not yet, illegal, in the U.S.  Two bombs were planted nearby.   
 
Back in the summertime, police were deployed in overwhelming numbers, dressed in riot gear, backed up by tanks, just to protect the Lincoln Memorial from peaceful BLM protestors – Protestors who demanded change and reform from within the system. 
 
The domestic terrorist groups that the FBI were tracking all year were advocating overthrowing our government, quite openly.  Not asking for justice-for-all, but threatening a successionist take over.  But even when they arrived in large numbers, even when the U.S. President fired them up and clarified their target, even then – because they looked like the authorities, no one seemed alarmed – Ironically, though they saw them coming, they couldn’t imagine there would be trouble.  When the window-smashing, bear-spraying Insurrectionists breached the Capitol, some Guards were talking casually, with those who had just broken the law.  Others were seen gently escorting such rioters out, hands full of Congressional papers and property.  Can you imagine if that was BLM!
 
What’s wrong with this picture? 
 
It’s a picture Jesus would have been familiar with, and indeed was, in our Gospel reading today.  31“Jesus began to teach [his disciples] that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”
 
Jesus had been teaching his disciples, all along the road on their journey across Galilee, until this point.  Anybody who was following, would have had a pretty good idea what he was talking about.  But, to be fair, this is the first time he says it in those words, quite so openly. 
 
This was right after Jesus had polled his disciples, asking, who do you say that I am?  And Peter answered, you are the Messiah, which set off a heated discussion, a truly apocalyptic struggle, between Jesus and Peter.  Jesus – though he was the Messiah – asked his disciples to keep it a secret, “sternly ordering them not to tell anyone about him.”  Jesus, of course, had already attracted the attention of the authorities, for his ministry of preaching and healing, and announcing the kingdom, and had been threatened once, early on, with a kind of lynching, a death threat by the most popular party in the country (Pharisees; Mk. 3:6). 
 
That’s when Jesus describes to them the new kind of Messiah he is, just to his disciples for now, ‘on the way,’ at this mid-point in his ministry.  And Jesus uses the same title the prophet Daniel had, calling himself the Human One, and predicts this means he must suffer and die, to expose the truth about this world.  This is not the triumphalist return, of political king-making, ala King David, everyone envisioned – Peter included – but rather, a divine inversion of the corrupt human-made kingdoms of this world, a transformation into God’s kingdom and realm, creating truth and love in every heart and institution.  This is what Jesus said, ‘quite openly’ to the disciples.  The opposite of a wild takeover, it was a subversion of violence, that would enable the justice of God to shine its light on earth, as it is in heaven. 
 
But Peter rebukes him, when he hears that Jesus must suffer and die.  Peter was on the side of, a triumphal Messiah, like David, as most everyone was.  Why not heal, teach, AND attack and overthrow their Roman oppressors? 
 
But Jesus quickly pulls Peter aside and rebukes him!  “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 
 
Rene Girard, explains well how Peter is a threat to Jesus, and his mission as God’s Son, the Messiah, and how we are and can be, as humans, at least to the extent that we are part of the worldly powers:
Peter is a good example [says Girard]. When Jesus first announces that he will suffer at the hands of the people, Peter is scandalized. His ideal is the same as ours, worldly success, and he tries to instill it into his master. He turns his own desire into a model that Jesus should imitate. This is how Satan operates, of course. Hence the famous words: “Move behind me Satan, because you are a scandal to me.” If the scandalized disciple had succeeded in [mimetically] transmitting his own [mimetic] desire to his master, he would have scandalized Jesus straight out of his divine mission.
 
So, having retaken his authority back, from Peter, Jesus then calls the crowds, along with his disciples, to teach them all about being part of his movement, and becoming a follower.  Just as I must take up my own cross, you must take up your cross… ‘for what will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit your life?  Indeed, what can you give in return for your life?’ 
 
In being candid, and quite open about what kind of Messiah Jesus was, he risked losing his following.  He came quite close that day in Caesrea Phillipi with Peter and the disciples.  It was a spiritual battle, and for Jesus, as the Messiah, there could be no compromising with the powers of evil, and ruler of this world.  It was the battle he was waging throughout his ministry, and for which, to win the war, he came to give his life for. 
 
One of his sharpest weapons in such battles, was his Word.  His Word was truth, but as we saw, it created scandal in those who were possessed by their own human desires for power and control.  And so, Jesus didn’t start in Jerusalem with his spiritual opponents directly, but started in Galilee, where he could gather followers and believers, first.  Speaking the truth, the Word of God, out in the open, will attract some evil stuff!  Jesus knew that.  And that’s what we see in this passage, mid-way in Mark’s gospel.  Even his closest most passionate disciple, Peter, almost turned against him, when Jesus said quite openly, that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected, and be killed. 
 
When BLM led protests over the murder of George Floyd last summer, this time they weren’t quite as alone or so easily exploited.  Lots of white folks joined in, exceeding even the scale of the 60’s civil rights movement.  Quite openly, America was saying enough, they could see the truth of racism, and they were now going to be part of telling the truth and not backing down.  They were, many of them for the first time, going to rebuke the powers aligned against them. 
 
Q-Anon, Proud Boys, Militias, etc. are organizing from un-truth, from wild conspiracies.  But their backlash, their reasons for Insurrection, are real.  They are opposed to the now, open truth, that white supremacy must be rebuked and made to stand down.  They will try to cloak it, in any, and every kind, of wild conspiracy and half-truth.  But they are reacting to, the spiritual truth, which is now quite open, that we are moving toward a new creation, a multi-racial society, marked by the fact that, people of color are becoming the majority, and the Caste system that has ruled since 1619, is slowly, but surely, being exposed and renounced. 
 
As Christians we have a stake in this spiritual battle.  We have no doubt that the war will be won, by Christ, who has risen from the dead and sits at the right hand of the Father.  But Jesus calls us to live as if the realm of God is already here.  We have fought and lost many battles, back and forth, since Jesus spoke quite openly about who he was.  And the backlash to the truth is enormous.  But we know God sees no division, black, white, and brown, in this created order.  And despite the danger, Jesus, God’s chosen Child, spoke and worked openly on our behalf to include the meek and humble, the poor and outcast – to level the playing field, bringing down the mighty and lifting up the down-trodden. 
 
Every day, as followers of Jesus, we are in a battle with the powers of this world, that come disguised, often looking just like us.  This moment in time, in our history as a country, seems closer to winning, or losing, something important, more than ever. At stake, at the heart of the matter, is the battle for the truth.  That God, in the life and death of Christ Jesus, is the only realm, that can pull us forward, toward justice and love. 
 
And so, we know that, in the kingdom and realm of God, there is no room for white supremacy.  Jesus was willing to suffer and die, to get this truth out.  He said it quite openly.  And after three days, he rose again – where he sits at the right hand of God, now, and forever.