Readings for the Eight Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12), July 26, 2020

• Genesis 29:15-28 and Psalm 105:1-11, 45b 
• Romans 8:26-39  
• Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

"Leaven of the Kin(g)dom," sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.  I love my very basic and simple Honey Whole Wheat Bread recipe, better than any other!  It’s not fancy.  Just whole wheat and honey, milk and shortening, a pinch of salt – oh yes, and yeast!  Mix it all together, and knead it into a dense, nascent, lump. 
 
It’s a recipe Kim taught me when we were first dating in seminary.  I didn’t even know how to knead bread. Had never done it before!  We made it a lot in the beginning, but over the years, it seemed harder, to find the time, to be home, to do it.  You can get quick rise yeast, but, the quality isn’t the same.  So, we haven’t pulled out the recipe, which is on the first page of the More with Less Cookbook, since we moved to Chicago 14 years ago.  But now, in these pandemic, shelter-at-home days, I looked it up again, and I’ve been making it, pretty much every two weeks, or so.  It’s one of the things that cuts down on having to run to the grocery store, so often. 
 
The woman in Jesus’ parable didn’t have Red Star, packets of yeast, like we use.  The dried kind we buy now, is even smaller than what she had.  But it’s the same, once you get the dough kneaded into a nice round ball, and put it in a greased bowl, and leave in a warm place.  That’s when the miracle begins!  You can’t see it rise, if you were to stare at it, but after about a half hour you can tell it growing, and at 45 minutes to an hour, it’s now double the size it was, a most pleasing surprise!  And now the fun-est part comes – you punch it down.  Punch all the air out, put it in loaf pans, and you let it rise again, before the final step of baking. 
 
It was after the mustard seed parable that Jesus told them this simple, one verse, parable: “The kin(g)dom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
 
Though the description is small, the three measures of flour, was an awfully large batch!  That’s more than a bushel of flour, which is something like 144 cups.  You’d probably need a, 100-quart Mixer, with a dough hook as big as your leg!  This isn’t the usual, feed your family example.  Jesus is exaggerating, to demonstrate how a little bit of yeast can make enough bread to feed the whole village!  Everybody! 
 
And it happens invisibly.  The exponential growth is silent and unnoticed.  But it’s transformed into something amazingly large.  That’s what the kin(g)dom of heaven is like, that Jesus invites us to! 
 
And the heroine is also, barely noticeable – a mother, house-wife, or a single woman – she belonged, either to her father, or her husband.  Women were not regularly thought of as the focus of leadership in the public square.  They weren’t Rabbi’s or soldiers, Scribes or tax collectors.  But Jesus changes that.  He calls BS on it.  Jesus lifts up this un-named woman, as a player in, and deserving of, the kin(g)dom of heaven.
 
‘God’s kin(g)dom is like yeast that a woman works into the dough for dozens of loaves of barley bread – and waits while the dough rises,’ as the Message translation renders verse 33.  It grew from a tiny measure, and it made some 52 loaves!  Or, about 416 PnJ sandwiches, calculates Fr. Dominic Garramone, aka, the Bread Monk! 
 
And all the parables in today’s reading about the kin(g)dom of God, feature similarly, subversive, examples;  and, I think we could say, involve, “essential workers.”  This woman baking bread, a farmer sowing seed, a small business owner, and a commercial fisher.  They are not Caesar’s or Herod’s elite friends; not the well-off Sadducees or members of the Sanhedrin.  They are struggling laborers, working at low-wage jobs with no benefits, no sick days or child-care, but make sure that we are fed, sweating in the fields, and the bakeries, casting and pulling up the nets of fish for our meals, paying bills to keep their shops open, all so we can go to market and choose what we want, and need, for our daily bread.   
 
Jesus lifts them, and their work, up, as examples of the kin(g)dom of God. 
 
When will essential workers finally receive their due?  When will we not only thank them for their truly essential work, but pay them as if they are workers, at least as important, as bankers and doctors – and reflect, that Jesus lifts them up as examples of kin(g)dom of God!
 
The surprise of the mustard seed growing into “the greatest of shrubs and becoming a tree so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches”; and the yeast that silently, but exponentially, expands into enough to feed a village – all enabled by poor essential workers – is vintage Jesus. 
 
Which is why it is so equally apparent, that those today, who would manipulate the tiny, microscopic, corona virus, into a huge chaotic mess, an uncaring, and un-necessary, public health crisis, that endangers our safety – the physical safety, and financial well-being of all working people – is so antithetical, to the message of the gospel. 
 
COVID-19 in the U.S., is like a parable, of neglect and excess.  The invisible virus, growing into waves of transmission, spreading like wildfire in states that prioritized the economy, was created by greed and misplaced obedience.  Not obedience to the bringer of the kin(g)dom of heaven, but misplaced obedience to our self-possessed, spiritually dead, Narcissist-in-Chief, who is the polar opposite of the  compassionate and caring, anointed one from heaven. 
 
Which is just what Jesus warned about in the image of leaven, or yeast, that occurs again, later in Matthew, two more times.  In ch. 16, (5-12), and then in his list of Woes against the hypocrites, Jesus warns the disciples of the leaven of the religious leaders of his day, who, with their teachings, he says, "lock[] people out of the kin(g)dom of heaven" (Matthew 23:13). (https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4512)
 
Can it be, that so much remains the same even today?  What is required to disrupt and overcome the yeast of our leaders, who rise up, like so much dough, to become tasteless, and poisonous bread? 
 
Like Jesus, we first of all, need to recognize their behavior, and call it out.  We can’t ignore it or turn a blind eye.  Also, Jesus prepares us, by blessing us.  We, the laborers, essential workers, and supporters, are examples of believers that help to bring in the kin(g)dom of heaven.  We must not sell our selves short.  We cannot give up or give in.  The Lord has shown us the way.  Planting just a little mustard seed can create the greatest of shrubs!  A hardworking woman can use just a bit of yeast, and leaven a bushel of flour! 
 
So it is then, that we are fed and nourished by the simple recipe’s, and the most basic of ingredients, the everyday, tasty, Honey Whole Wheat loaves, that are enough, to join us with the Holy Spirit, Jesus sends us – and empower us, to claim the kin-dom, even now, and begin to live in justice and joy, that with Jesus, we may be masters of our household, and all its treasures.  

Readings for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, July 19, 2020

• Genesis 28:10-19a and Psalm 139:1-12, 23-24  
• Romans 8:12-25  
• Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

"John Lewis, Jacob and Jesus," a sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
He was born in rural Alabama to parents of sharecroppers in 1940.  At an early age, he felt the injustice of the Jim Crow system he was born into.  His parents worked long hard hours, but could only be renters, of their fields of cotton, the tools they used, and the seed they planted.  Making a profit was under the control of the land owners, who made it impossible to get out of debt, or ever become land-owners themselves.  It seemed to John Lewis that they were working hard for nothing. “As soon as I was able to make sense of the world,” he said, “I could see there was no way a person could get ahead as a tenant farmer.” 
 
Slavery had ended 75 years earlier, but freedom was still out of reach.  And John Lewis could feel the injustice in his bones, and in the air he breathed, whether working the fields – or in town, negotiating the separate bathrooms and businesses labeled, Whites Only.  He was 15, when the 14 year old Emmett Till from Chicago was lynched in Mississippi, and it made the national news.
 
So, growing up, there on the farm, John Lewis, had a dream, to become a Minister.  And caring for the chickens with his six brothers and three sisters, just a teenager,  he practiced, by preaching to the captive farmyard foul.  Later, he joked, the little chicks listened better than many of his fellow Congress people!
 
At the age of 17, Lewis enrolled in the American Baptist Theological Seminary in Nashville, and immediately, he got involved in social movements of the time.  One evening, he heard Pastor James Lawson discuss the philosophy and tactics of nonviolence at his church, and Lewis felt like “it was something he’d been searching for his whole life,” he said.
 
At 23 he was the youngest of the speakers at the March on Washington, where MLK gave his, I Have A Dream speech. 
 
But, it was the first day of the March for Voting Rights, from Selma to Montgomery, where they would also protest the killing of a black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, in 1963, that Lewis would gain his renown – when some 600 hundred peaceful, mostly black, demonstrators, were beaten and tear gassed by the racist Selma police department, and John Lewis had his head cracked open, and was dragged to jail, in full view of a shocked, national television, audience.  It was the George Floyd moment of the 60’s, if you will, and it revealed the evil of the oppression embedded in Jim Crow, and the racism that kept black bodies in bondage.  And soon after, it led to President Lyndon Johnson, signing the Voting Rights Act into law. 
 
John Lewis, acting out his faith, literally helped to crack open a new age of civil rights, along with Dr. King, and others – who were often based in local churches.
 
Up until that moment, the protestors, demonstrators, and all black lives, were seen as the problem, the ‘less-than people,’ who were causing trouble, simply by asking for equal rights.  As humans, we have a problem with blaming and demonizing those who are different than us, and in America, the discrimination is baked into our systems of government, business, medical treatment, housing, banking, and all the rest. 
 
In our Gospel today, the landowners in Jesus’ parable want to cut down the bad weeds, the troublemakers that have suddenly invaded the nice field of wheat.  Where did all these weeds come from, the workers asked?  An enemy has scattered these evil seeds in, when we were all asleep, Jesus replied.  But don’t go and pull them out now, he added, “for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest.” 
 
Which raises the question, how do we know who are the wheat, and who are the weeds?  Most people consider themselves, wheat, of course, and feel they have a pretty good idea who the weeds are, even if they’ve never ever met them before! 
 
Jesus suggests, that all of us have been planted, and naturally grow up together, so closely, that our roots are all intertwined underground.  To pull up one, would also pull up the other.  We are not capable of pre-emptively culling the harvest, without endangering what God will decide, is the salvageable, and good fruit.  In America, you can only keep up an Apartheid system of racial discrimination, as long as you resist, or reject, the notion, that Black Lives Matter. 
 
John Lewis, who didn’t have a hateful bone in his body, lived to meet some of the men who were on that Selma police force at the Pettus Bridge.  Many of them repented of their racist behavior.  Some even publicly apologized.  But not Sheriff Jim Clark, who gave the orders that day.  Until his dying breath, he never apologized. 
 
Can some weeds change their stripes, and mature into wheat?  Repent, and turn around and go in a new direction?  Certainly, repentance can, and has been done!  Just as some wheat, can become infected; learn bad behavior; become as good as weeds. 
 
?But, is it our role to decide which is which, who is who, and start pulling up those we deem to be the weeds?  Especially when the root system is so intertwined?
 
John Lewis lived his beliefs of active non-violence all his life.  As Pastor Lawson and Dr. King had taught him, love is stronger than evil.  Not a sugar-coated love, but a love that looks a Sheriff Jim Clark in the eye, even as he is swinging his club at your cranium, and still refuses to see in him, a person, that is a weed. 
 
“There’s not anything more powerful than the marching feet of a determined people,” Lewis said. “When people are marching together in an orderly, peaceful, nonviolent fashion, that can appeal to all of humankind.”
 
No matter the cause or injustice, Lewis called nonviolent protest an “immutable principle that you cannot deviate from. If you want to have a good end, your means must be good and noble. Somehow, some way, the end must be caught up in the means,” he said. (https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/rep-john-lewis-on-nonviolence-civil-rights-and-the-obligation-of-todays-youth/)
 
It’s easy to see, that weeds turning into wheat, also permeate the biblical stories, as we see in our First Reading from Genesis.  Jacob, whose name means ‘schemer’ and ‘usurper,’ was running away from his family, after tricking his older brother Esau out of his birthright, and his father’s blessing. 
 
His accomplice was none other than his mother Rebecca, the one who had always favored and protected him – Jacob was a mama’s boy and a home-body, after all.  Despite all of this, God comes to Jacob in a dream at Bethel and repeats the promise given to his father Isaac, and his grandfather Abraham, assuring Jacob that his children – and not his older twin Esau – will be heir to the many nations of God’s people.  Jacob the schemer, who has usurped his brother’s birthright, will be the father of 12 children, the foundational 12 Tribes of Israel.  God reveals this to Jacob, this weed, the one who should have been pulled up.  Yet God accepts this younger brother, as wheat.  God is with him, and by his side, in his night time vision of a stairway from heaven, and on it, God promises to be “poised” over his life, from now on, even as he is running away from home. 
 
Jesus too – in the eyes of the world – appeared to be born a weed, born in a manger, in a barn, born a refugee, to poor unmarried parents.  But then, he was visited by Magi from the east, and declared the finest of wheat, a king, who would lead all people to the grand harvest, already dawning in his swaddling wrapped body! 
 
John Lewis, born into sharecropping, but who escaped his farm, became a grand wheat among men!  He was despised, merely for his black skin, but today, ‘shines brightly, like the sun light.’  Which fits well with the transcendent beauty of our Psalm today:

“If I say, “Surely the darkness will cover me,
  and the light around me turn to night,”
 darkness is not dark to you [O LORD]; the night is as bright as the day;
  darkness and light to you are both alike. 
 Search me out, O God, and know my heart;
  try me and know my restless thoughts.
 Look well whether there be any wickedness in me
  and lead me in the way that is everlasting. 
 
With a fierceness, as strong as the spirit, mind and mission of John Lewis, we too lean into the kingdom and realm of God, that is dawning in the message and gracious gift of Jesus, who, poised by our side, guides and keeps us in our work here on earth, and reaps for us, the harvest of his heavenly parent – where all, will “shine like the sun!”  
-Amen 

Readings for 5th Sunday after Pentecost, June 28, 2020

• Genesis 22:1-14 and Psalm 13  
• Romans 6:12-23  
• Matthew 10:40-42

"Faith: Act 3," sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
One way to describe, Original Sin, is our human capacity to sacrifice our neighbor – their reputation, their money, or, God forbid, their life – in order to save ourselves.  Especially when it’s our reputation or money, our freedom or life, that’s on the line.  Jesus came to give us the anti-dote – the vaccine, if you will – and taught us, to love your neighbor as yourself; and to start by reaching out to the least of these, the little ones.  That’s how we will overcome the evil, sinful, and sometimes, bloody, sacrificing of one another.
 
And so, I don’t want to skip over our First Reading today – this narrative of the sacrifice of Isaac, or should we say, the near sacrifice of Isaac. 
 
But first off – OMG! – this story is un-nerving, to say the least!  We have to get that out there, right away!  On its face, it’s horrifying – that Abraham would plan to kill his son as an act of faith – and that God would command it.  This is not the God we know and worship today.  I mean, which is worse – that God tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, or that Abraham seemingly complies without protest. 
 
Most scholars and theologians of our time, use Phylis Trible’s term, “texts of terror,” to refer to stories in the bible like this. 
 
Robert Alter, says, “The abrupt beginning” of this passage, “and stark, emotion-fraught development of this troubling story have led many critics to [also] celebrate it as one of the peaks of ancient narrative.”  (Alter, notes from his translation, Gen. 22:1.)
 
It is certainly shocking – terrifying – to our modern ears.  But it resonates as a story that is saying something keenly important, from ancient times, about who we are, and who our God is. 
 
Abraham and Sarah, lived some 25 centuries before Jesus, in a time when human sacrifice, was not, uncommon.  Gil Bailie concludes:
Far more than we moderns generally realize, human sacrifice was a fact of life among the peoples of the ancient Near East, in tension with whom Israel first achieved cultural self-definition. Israel’s renunciation of the practice of human sacrifice took place over a long period of time... [but] No biblical story better depicts how the Bible is at cross-purposes with itself on the subject of sacrifice than does the story of Abraham and Isaac. . . . What we must try to see in the story of Abraham’s non-sacrifice of Isaac is that Abraham’s faith consisted, not of, almost doing what he didn’t do, but of, not doing what he almost did, and not doing it, in fidelity to the God in whose name his contemporaries, thought it should be done. (Violence Unveiled, p. 140)
 
In other words, child sacrifice, usually the sacrifice of the first-born, was common.  Abraham does what God commands, not sacrificing Isaac, and instead sacrifices a lamb in his place –which marks the beginning of the end of human sacrifice, and substituting the alternate practice of animal sacrifice.
 
Paul Nuechterlein says that, there are two names for God in this text.  In the beginning, the God who tests Abraham, is the God of Israel’s past, Elohim.  But the God of their future, the God of the covenant, is Yahweh.  And Abraham names the place YHWH-Yireh, which means, “On the mount of the LORD there is sight.”  (http://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-a/proper_8a/)
 
So what insight does Abraham have there?
 
Abraham and Sarah have been pursued by God for some time now.  And it’s mostly been about their progeny.  God has promised them they will be the parents of a great nation, who will be more numerous than the stars of the sky, and the sands of the seashore.  And it has been more or less, one long test all along the way, as they moved from Haran to Israel.  Yes – they agreed without complaint, in the beginning, and immediately went.  And midway on their journey, in Genesis 15:6, “Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness,” St. Paul’s favorite text. 
 
But in between, Abraham and Sarah often waver in their faith, even resisting God’s call, unhappy with their situation, even at times, openly disobedient:  Abraham passing off Sarah as his sister to the Pharaoh who takes her to his bedroom; and Sarah impatient with God’s promise of a child, giving Abraham to her handmaid, Hagar, producing Ishmael – huge complications in their relationship with God.
 
So, this story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac, is a turning point in the whole narrative of Abraham and Isaac.  Something, happens here! 
 
That Abraham would be called on to make a child-sacrifice, was not the scandal of the story, to its original hearers, some 4 ½ Millennia ago.  ‘The arc of the moral universe is long,’ and that, this story is repugnant to us, is a testament to its ‘bending toward justice,’ some 4,500 years of human history later. 
 
As they go, Isaac raises the only question, the only shadow of a doubt.  “Father,” he says, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  He is not innocent of what is possible!  For this last leg of the journey, Abraham even took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on the back of his son Isaac, ‘the wood he had earlier split, early in the morning, wielding his axe,’ now in his hand.  But Abraham is all unwavering trust in God.  He replies to Isaac, “‘God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son.’ So the two of them walked on together,” says the text.   (Alter translation and notes)
 
When they arrive, and Abraham is preparing the altar, even laying Isaac upon the wood, now, we hear no further peep from the ‘son, his only one, whom Abraham loves – Isaac!’ 
 
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the cleaver –
-- and YHWH’s messenger called out to him from the heavens and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” And the messenger said, “Do not reach out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God…  And Abraham raised his eyes and saw and, look, a ram was caught in the thicket by its horns…”
 
And, so the sacrificial animal was given.  Abraham sees it – just as Abraham promised his son as they walked together, that God would see to providing the sacrificial lamb, there on YHWH-Yireh, or, ‘on the mount of the LORD there is sight!’ 
 
Abraham – finally, completely, now in his old age – trusts in YHWH, the LORD.  He knows that God sees, and will provide.  Abraham is not in control, his God is!  The wrestling match between the two is, over and done – it’s a win/win, for both God, and Abraham. And for us, we see that historically, and theologically, the sacrifice that God requires, is not human sacrifice, but here, turns and transforms to animal sacrifice – a definite upgrade – until when the prophets, 2 millennia later, will again reshape our offerings to God, requiring not animal sacrifice, but mercy. 
 
And finally, at the end of all the ages, as it says in the letter to the Hebrews, is when Jesus reveals on the cross, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that he is marking the end to sacrificing, once and for all, and instead – being redeemed by God on the 3rd day – we are able to look up at the cross to see, and our eyes are opened, to the free gift of Grace, to love our neighbor as ourselves! 
 
And yet, as we know, sacrificing our neighbor, raises its ugly head in new ways all the time.  And it sticks up now, in this time of the virus of COVID-19, in the midst of the virus of 1619, more obviously.  Those states, for example, that are disregarding protocols for reopening business, and laying it on the sacrifice, essential workers are making, like so much firewood, is insidious.  To claim it is a choice between the economy and our freedom, is an un-holy sacrifice.  The movement to do this a month or two ago, came after the White House realized it was disproportionately black and brown and poor people, who bear the brunt of contracting and dying from coronavirus.  And the callous disregard for hospitals, over capacity now, is apparent for all who have eyes to see.  Pushing for this sacrifice, like it is acceptable collateral damage, puts our nation’s Original Sin, on full display. 
 
Finally, in our gospel, we are given eyes to see, when [Jesus said to the twelve:] 40“Whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me; 42and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” 
 
In the Kin-dom of God, we are able to raise our eyes and see the sacrificial lamb on the cross, who died, so that we can see and understand, that sacrificing our neighbor, is not sanctioned by God, or any moral authority – and that, ‘loving our neighbor,’ is now, the journey we are all called to be on, and fulfills the realm of God on earth, as it is in heaven. 

Let us listen and live by the call of God!