Readings for St Francis of Assisi Commemoration Day, October 4, 2020
Genesis 2:18-25 ‘Animals created as partners’
Psalm 148 ‘All creatures praise the Lord’
Revelation 5:11-14
Matthew 6:25-29 ‘How God has made creation beautiful’

Threads of Life, Rev. Fred Kinsey
Why did he do it?  Francis of Assisi had everything.  He was born into wealth and privilege.  His father was a very successful merchant of cloth, who married a woman from a wealthy family from France.  They had made sure Francis was educated at all the best schools, and groomed him to become a leading man in Assisi, to carry on the family business, and do even better than his parents.  But none of that was to be. 
 
How did this heir to a family fortune, end up changing the world, as creator of an Order, based on vows of poverty?  Did it start with the kiss of a ravaged leper’s hand, when giving him his cloak just didn’t seem like enough?  Or perhaps it started before that, when Francis was captured as a prisoner of war? 
 
Francis was about 19 or 20 when he joined the battle of his home town, Assisi, against a neighboring city, Perugia.  But despite the exuberance of valor, and the protection of his armor, Francis was captured and spent nearly a year, helplessly waiting, until ransom would finally arrive.  Then in his release, a debilitating fever overwhelmed him.  He received no warriors’ welcome back home, only convalescence.  Like soldiers who miss the danger and risk of war, Francis intended to enlist again as soon as he recovered.  But his ambitions of knighthood were reoriented unexpectedly by a vision or dream, which bid him to return to Assisi and await a ‘call’ to a new kind of knighthood.  Very mysterious!  But Francis took it deadly serious.  Was this what transformed him?
 
As Francis awaited the call, he didn’t do nothing!  He dedicated himself to solitude and prayer.  He searched all the way to Rome, where outside the Vatican he experienced the poverty of beggars, and even though he had feared lepers, he was moved to minister to one, giving alms and kissing his hand.
 
Or was it, as his biographer claimed, the incident at the ruined chapel of San Damiano, just outside the gate of Assisi?  There Francis heard the crucifix above the altar command him: “Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see, is well-nigh in ruins?” 
 
So, was this it?  Was this his new knighthood?  Whether Francis knew it or not, he was slowly but surely becoming alienated from his upbringing, his family, and the wealth of the kingdom of this world.  This pleasure-loving cloth merchant’s son, was becoming disoriented from all he had been taught, and reoriented in his understanding of the ‘threads’ that hold together the basic goods of life.
 
At first, thinking he was supposed to physically rebuild the old chapel, Francis started selling off his family’s warehouse of woven goods to finance the project – before his father called the cops on him!  And taken to trial before the bishop in the public marketplace, Francis admitted this expropriation of goods, and promptly returned his father’s money.  But then, in front of the whole town, he started stripping off the rich robes, the fine threads of a privileged cloth merchant’s son he wore, handed them to his dad, and, stark naked before the townspeople claimed, “Hitherto I have called you father on earth; but now I say, “our Father, who art in heaven.”  In shock, the bishop hastily covered Francis with a peasant’s smock. 
 
In time, Francis would add only a cross to make the transformation complete.  As a person of privilege, Francis had taken up the cross, that the poor and powerless already carry, and now stood with them utterly dependent in their prayer for “daily bread,” deliverance, and resurrection joy.  His renouncing of human wealth and power, and his new open-air lifestyle, first attracted ridicule, but gradually other young men and women (Clare of Assisi) also became radicalized, and the Franciscan, and Poor Clare movements, were born.
 
As a deacon of the church, Francis embraced material poverty as the way of Christ toward a rich and sacramental connection to all living things.  This included the rejection of violence as an offense against the Gospel’s command to love – antithetical to the reverence and wonder, due all living things, as a reflection of their Creator’s love.  The Orders of Francis and Clare kept to this simple rule of love for all creation, but had an especially tender heart, for all things dependent on God’s love and care, and our reflection of that love and care, in service to these creatures, in the web of all life.
 
I wonder if Francis’ realization of his essential nakedness, and his deliberate embrace of dependence on God as the path to joy, is at the heart of his sacramental awareness of the gift of all the small creatures, so that he might call them sisters and brothers?  Today, we bring our animals, these siblings we love, to be blessed, in honor of St. Francis, recognizing in them, and in their companionship, a loyal love and a tender dependence on us, that puts us in mind of our life in God.
 
In our Gospel, Jesus says, 26Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 
 
In this, Jesus encourages and teaches his followers to not lose heart, in our path of discipleship.  This was the task of the Franciscans who took up a life of poverty, so that the rest of us could learn the gospel message and become followers too. 
 
I am reminded of that popular image of St Francis, the statues found in gardens everywhere, of the robed saint with hands outstretched, to welcome the birds he is said to have preached to.  When we lived in the UP, one of our cross-country ski trails had a shelter with a fireplace to stop and warm yourself at.  Someone had also stored a bag of sunflower seeds there.  Because, if you filled your hands with the seeds and stood out in the snow with your hands outstretched, the chickadees would find you, come lite on your fingers, look you in the eye, and grab a seed or two, before flying off.  I don’t know if we were preaching to the bold little birds as much as they, in their clerical black and white feathers, were reassuring us that we are cared for by our Creator God!
 
“Therefore I tell you,” said Jesus, “do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”  
 
For Francis, the clothing that created his privilege from the riches of his father’s business, were not nearly as attractive as the simple threads of his Franciscan robe that connected him with the kingdom of God, and the spiritual riches of the web of life.  Francis teaches us what is important in life, and what to prioritize. 
 
Or as Emerson Powery says: “God will take care of you ... so take care of God's justice in the world.  There is more to life than concern for daily needs, though this may be difficult for some (cf. 6:11). But Jesus expects his followers to put forward energy into things that give more meaning to life.  We must strive to discern how God is working in the world (i.e., "God's kingdom") and how to participate in acts of justice on God's behalf (i.e., "God's righteousness" [vs.33]).  Beyond that, everything else will take care of itself.  [workingpreacher.org]
 
And finally, from our 2nd Reading and Psalm today, words and belief’s St Francis himself, it seems to me, could easily have penned:
(Psalm 148)  10wild beasts | and all cattle,
  creeping things and | flying birds; …
 13Let them praise the name | of the LORD,
  whose name only is exalted, whose splendor is over | earth and heaven.
 
(Rev. 5)  13Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing:
“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” 14And the four living creatures said, “Amen!”
 
May we, with Francis, have such joy, humility, and trust in God.  May the threads of our lives be woven into the fabric of the kingdom of God, as we await the day of righteousness and renewal.  

Fourth Sunday in a Season of Creation: River
​September 27, 2020
 
First Reading:                  Genesis 8:20–22; 9:12–17
After the flood, God promised that Earth and all of life on Earth will be preserved by God, in spite of the sins of human beings.
 
Psalmody                          Psalm 104:27–33
The psalmist celebrates how God sustains all life on Earth through the Spirit and calls on God to rejoice in God’s own creation.

Second Reading               Revelation 22:1–5
When creation is restored, a river will flow directly from God with trees of life growing on either side to bring healing to all nations on Earth.
 
Gospel                               Matthew 28:1–10
The resurrection of Christ was also celebrated by creation. An earthquake accompanies the advent of the angel and the rolling of the stone.

River of Life, sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
The river of the water of life, that flows through the heart of the mid-west, was formed, as we know it, at the end of the Ice Age, about 5,000 B.C.  The Ojibwe native Americans named it the Misi-ziibi, and lived mostly as hunter-gatherers, but some, such as the Mound Builders, formed prolific agricultural societies, alongside its beautiful banks with its life-giving trees, until the first French and Spanish explorers arrived less than 500 years ago; and everything changed. 
 
The Mississippi River, as the European colonists came to pronounce it, flowing 2,320 miles from Minnesota to the Mississippi River Delta in the Gulf of Mexico, is the second-longest river in North America, and the country’s largest drainage system.  With its many tributaries – the rivers flowing east from the Rockies and west from the Appalachian Mountains – the Mississippi collects the waters of all, or parts of 32, of the lower 48 states.  
 
About 200 years ago, in the time of Mark Twain, the Mississippi’s waters’ began to serve the Economy of the expanding young nation, tying north to south, and east to west.  But not without an ominous warning.  At the launching of the maiden voyage of the New Orleans, the Fulton steam-boat built in Pittsburg, in 1811, the largest earthquake east of the Rockies, the New Madrid, struck near St. Louis, causing massive flooding, and a sudden relocation of the Mississippi River’s main channel sections, which put the passage of the New Orleans in doubt. 
 
But despite this portent, the progress of American commerce pushed on, and a couple of decades later, thousands of steamers flooded the Mississippi.  Its flourishing was so prolific that it became cheaper to ship cargo from Ohio to ports on the east coast, via the Mississippi thru the Gulf, and all the way around the tip of Florida in the sea, than over the Appalachian Mts, even though the route was 10 times longer! 
 
But bigger changes were in store for the Mighty Mississippi than that.  By the late 20th century, post WWII, as family farming was increasingly pushed out to make way for agri-business, and technology created chemical fertilizers, nitrates and other pollutants, were flowing down it’s once, bright as crystal waterways, all the way to the Gulf stream waters. 
 
Today, the toxic bloom off the coast of New Orleans, which warms and starves the water of oxygen, is killing off fish, shellfish, and other life, at alarming rates.  A number of false starts to clean it up, have all fallen short.  If, and when, it finally begins, it would take a minimum of 3 decades to restore. 
 
Meanwhile, life in the Mississippi River and the Gulf continue to suffer.  And the portents of the New Madrid earthquake, echo in our ears.  Like the earthquake that shook the door open to Jesus’ rock hewn tomb, the quake in the heart of the Midwest 200 years ago, seems to be telling us something – or should I say, yelling to us. 
 
How can we have called the Ojibwa, not to mention the Cheyenne, Sioux, Potawatomi, Ho-Chunk, Fox, Kickapoo, and Chickasaw, uneducated savages, when for thousands of years they lived in relative harmony with the Mississippi, and we have endangered its life, in only a couple hundred.
 
In our First Reading today, when Noah came through the Flood – the only family to survive – the first thing Noah did when he was back on dry land was build an altar, and give an offering to the Lord.  And, in the anthropomorphic portrayal of God in Genesis, the LORD smelled the fragrant odor of Noah’s burnt offering – and it was very pleasing!  But unlike the beliefs of Israel’s contemporary pantheon of gods in the influential Mesopotamian Flood story, the monotheistic Hebrew God is not dependent on people’s offerings, for food.  The LORD does not eat Noah’s burnt offering at all, while the neighboring gods of their primordial text, are said to need the food that is offered, for their survival, and are drawn to it, “like flies,” fallible and dependent. (cf. Robert Alter notes) 
 
Yahweh freely enjoys the offering of Noah, but does not need it.  Rather- the LORD said in the LORD’s heart, telling us, the reader, what God would do: ‘It’s really not worth damning the earth like that again,’ muses God, because, ‘the devisings of the human heart are evil from youth.’  And to Noah, God says aloud, ‘I will set this rainbow in the sky as a sign of my covenant with me and you, and every living creature, for everlasting generations.’ 
 
Like a parent coming to realize that the teenager must become an adult and make their own decisions – to live and learn from them – God must not be so overbearing, to intervene, micro-manage with reward and punishment, in teaching humans.
 
Which means that, we’ve been given a responsibility – just like in the creation story, we are to be the care-takers, for the forests, the land, the wilderness and the rivers. 
 
The river of the water of life, in Revelation, is a vision that was shown to John by an angel.  This visionary hope of the eschaton, which reaches back into our world already, a promise for the redemption of the world, is the age when God will redeem, not just us, the crown of God’s creation, but all of this very good earth. 
 
In chapters 8 and 16 of Revelation, leading up to this vision, the world as they knew it, is full of poisoned rivers, desecrated by Roman rulers who prioritized profits over people and planet.  John urged his 7 churches to resist the Empire’s idolatry all around them, even in the face of arrest, or worse, and God would bring them to the new heaven and new earth of the vision of crystal-clear waters flowing from God. 
 
They should resist the desecration of their local congregations, which John compared to the plagues God sent to Pharaoh in Egypt: “The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch,” says 8:10, “and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water… A third of the waters became wormwood – that is, blood – and many died from the water, because it was made [poisonous],” John says.
 
Over 97% of all the water on Earth is salty. More than 2% is frozen in the polar ice-caps. The rivers, lakes, and water tables underground then, hold less than 1% of all earth’s water, the fresh water we need for drinking, cooking, washing, and industry.  Those who are polluting and destroying this precious resource are endangering, all of us, and this beautiful ecosystem God has created. 
 
We have the scientific evidence.  What we need now is a spiritual renewal, a passionate, prophet call, to conversion.  Jesus spoke up directly to the political leaders of his day, pointing out their idolatry and warning them to turn around and change – to follow the Son of Man, God’s anointed, or all they held precious would be torn down. 
 
This is the same message John of Patmos preached in his letter, we call, Revelation.  If we are faithful, God will restore our world again: the city of God will dwell on earth – and “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, [will flow] from the throne of God, and of the Lamb, through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, [a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations.  Never again will anything be cursed*],” John proclaimed.   (*The Message translation, Rev. 22:1-3)
 
As we say in the ELCA, “God’s Work, Our Hands!”  God will restore all things, including the mighty Mississippi.  And we will be the conduit, the many hands, through which God works.  
 
How do we live, so that the rivers of the water of life, may flourish and be restored?  How do we become the hands of our God, that we may be a pleasing offering to our LORD? 
 
Let us pray with the Psalmist: Send forth your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth – that we may sing to the Lord as long as we live; and praise our God while we have our being. 

Readings for the 2nd Sunday of Creation, September 13, 2020
This Sunday gives us the opportunity to worship with the land, soil, and land creatures. Scripture proclaims Christ as the second Adam who came to overcome the sin and death caused by Adam, including the curse imposed on Earth.

First Reading            Genesis 3:14–19; 4:8–16
Because of the sin of our primal parents, God pronounced some curses. The ground of Earth bears the curse for humans, and from the ground Abel’s blood cries to God. At their death, Earth welcomes humans home again.

Psalmody             Psalm 149
Psalm 149 is a song of thanksgiving. God turns the tables: the humble will be victorious, kings are now bound in fetters; God is now Maker and Monarch.

Second Reading     Romans 5:12–17
Christ is the second Adam who came to overcome the sin and death caused by Adam, including the curse imposed on Earth.

Gospel               Matthew 12:38–40
In death, Jesus too is connected with the ground. He was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

"The Earth Swallows," sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
Sometime since the pandemic started, Kim and I binge-watched, “Six Feet Under,” because when it came out in 2001, we didn’t have access to HBO up in rural Michigan.  Six Feet Under is the story of the Fisher family, who lives in the residence of their family business, an old-time Funeral Home in the L.A. area.  David, is the faithful son, who stays home to work with his dad, in the business, and Nate is the prodigal, wandering son, who comes back, and though, never intending to, ends up joining his brother in the business, after the father suddenly dies in a car accident.
 
One of the more emotional episodes, is the burial of Lisa, Nate’s wife, who dies much too young, under mysterious circumstances.  When it comes time to make arrangements, Nate ends up arguing with Lisa’s parents about the burial.  Her parents want a traditional service in the Funeral Home, and final resting place for her ashes, in the family columbarium back home.  But Nate insists she be buried naturally, no embalming, no casket, simply put in the ground.  Earth to earth; ashes to ashes.  Nate had had a conversation with her about it just recently.  She was clear about her wishes, and Nate feels obligated, as her grieving husband to fulfill this promise to Lisa.  But the parents just can’t accept a green burial. 
 
After the Fisher funeral for Lisa, we watch, as Nate hands a box of cremains to Lisa’s parents who are getting into their car to go home.  Is the quarrel over??  Did Nate really give in to the parents?  They all look pleased as they say their good-byes, though for different reasons.  Only then that we learn how Nate has given them, a random box of ashes, taken from a shelf in the Funeral Home, we had seen the brothers talk about earlier in the season, where many boxed remains were never claimed, by next of kin.
 
Then, in the final scene of the episode, Nate drives to a remote location, one he and Lisa had enjoyed going to together, and he digs a hole in the ground, and puts Lisa’s body in, breaking down in exhaustion and a mournful wailing lament.  He is still sitting there when the sun rises, revealing the beauty of the location, his mind more at ease, now that he has fulfilled his promise to her. 
 
But like Cain and Abel, nature itself rises up to reveal Nate’s sin.  It’s not the soil that cries out to spoil his secret.  Murder is not Nate’s wrong-doing.  But when the parents take the cremains to be put in the family columbarium, the undertaker feels a moral obligation to inform them.  These cremains are certainly not Lisa’s, he says.  These cremains are from a past cremation practice, many years ago.  The dust of the dead can tell their own story, just like the blood Cain spilled in the soil of his field, from his brother Abel, cried out.
 
From Adam and Eve, to Cain and Abel, in these first four chapters of Genesis, we learn the history of our own jealousy, envy, covetous desires, blindness towards God’s grace, and lack of responsibility for our freedom to choose good over evil. 
 
The story of Adam and Eve and their first children is not so much a story of original sin, as it is about our common human condition; the situation we’re in, in our own lives, living in the world every day.  We inherit brokenness.  Not just the brokenness from Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, but from all people in whom we are in relationship with; from our next-door neighbors, to our fellow citizens, in city, state, country, and world.  But that’s not all.  In this Four Week Lectionary in September, we’re also rediscovering, and recovering our relationship with, and to, the earth, land, desert, and rivers. 
 
And we see this clearly in Genesis, chapters 3 and 4.  There is enmity between people and animals.  And, the soil shall sprout thorn and thistle, making it hard work for us to eat from the plants of the field: in verse 19, “by the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, till you return to the soil.” 
 
And most disturbing, and yet at the same time, so revealing, is the relationship of the soil to Cain’s brazen murder of his brother: ““What have you done? [God] question’s Cain, Listen! your brother’s blood cries out to me from the soil! 11And so, cursed shall you be by the soil that gaped with its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand. 12If you till the soil, it will no longer give you its strength. A restless wanderer shall you be on the earth.”  Cast out of the Garden, there is brokenness between humans and the land.
 
Robert Alter says of this soil that, “The image is strongly physical: a gaping mouth taking in blood from the murderer’s hand.” 
 
So here, the earth, the very soil, is witness to the brazen awfulness of the murder, this blood-letting, that the ground must absorb; the sacrifice of the soil.  The soil chooses, to no longer give of its strength to Adam and Eve.  And God is intimately aware of it.  God feels the pain and the travesty of Cain’s misdeed.  It cries out to God! God empathizes with the work that the soil must do to absorb, and swallow, Cain’s breaking of the 5th Commandment.
 
Today, the soil, the land around the globe, is crying out to us: the erosion of the soil throughout the midwestern breadbasket; decades of soil depletion.  The soil of newly rootless forests, ravaged by fire, along the west coast, and resultant mudslides.  The EPA super-sites, soil choking from dumped chemicals and nuclear waste, waiting to be cleaned up.  The frozen tundra’s and glaciers melting at alarming rates.  We have not respected mother earth as if our lives depended on it; as if we are aware of our intimate relationship with the land and soil, that God loves and listens to, and has given to us to care for. 
 
When Jesus was asked to give a sign to the leaders in Jerusalem, in our Gospel Reading, he didn’t pull any punches: “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, [Jesus says] but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. 40For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.” 
 
Jesus’ ultimate sacrifice, and devastating giving up to his stone-cold tomb, is the best sign of his coming to our world as the Son of God, the anointed One.  Just as Jonah was swallowed up for 3 days in the belly of the big fish, so Jesus will be buried in the heart of the earth 3 days, he says.  Jesus, who was born in the straw of the manger, the innkeepers goat-feeder, close to the earth and the animals, this Jesus, lays down to be buried in earth’s safe keeping, until on the 3rd day, when God shows the world how he is the first-born of the dead, the Second Adam, as St. Paul says, in our Second Reading today, and our redemption. 
 
And so, even Jesus’ greatest sign is not accomplished without our dependent relationship, between earth and humanity. 
 
Today, we are still outcasts from the Garden of Eden, living with Cain in the land of Nod, east of Eden.  One day, in a great reveal, God will restore, rescue, and redeem creation, and, in our relationships with God, neighbor, and land, we’ll be saved and made right again. 
 
It is time we treat the land, as an equal partner on our faith journey, as we come from God, and continue on our way, back to God.  It’s time we treat the land with the same respect God gives to it, for without it, we will die.
 
For now, we are dust, and to dust shall we return, as God told the human, a’dam.  But as we wait, and take on our responsibilities for Land and soil, we also rest in the knowledge of the Psalmist, who today sings: “If I climb up to heaven, you are there; if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.” (Psalm 139:8)
 
God promises to be with us – on the way, all the way, and no matter where.  So let us trust in the Promise of our baptisms, and our death into Christ, who lay “in the heart of earth” 3 days.  That we may also rise up with Christ, and return to God, our creator and redeemer, and be made whole and right again. 

Readings for the First Sunday in a Season of Creation: Forest
Genesis 2:4b–22 “Born of Earth and the Spirit”
Psalm 139:13–16 “Born from the womb of Earth”
Acts 17:22–28 ‘Born to search for God”
John 3:1–16 “Born of water and the Spirit” 

Because We Depend On It, sermon by Rev. Fred Kinsey
Only recently, during our lifetimes I’d say, have we as Christians been recovering God’s understanding of this awesome world we live in.  As Western Christianity became a servant to politics under Constantine, and until the Renaissance, our biblical literacy became more and more divorced from its Hebrew roots.  There is one focus, especially relevant to our message this morning, that has been twisted out of all proportion to God intentions, that I think we should be aware of. 
 
Namely, that in this era of scientific discovery and technological mastery, the interpretation of the creation story from Genesis, in our 1st Reading, has been used to further the narrative that humans were made to dominate the earth, treat it as a commodity – instead of, care for God’s good creation, as if our lives depended on it – because they do! 
 
First of all, I just love this translation by Robert Alter.  Most biblical scholars agree, that even in our relatively new translation, the New Revised Standard Version, or NRSV, that we use in our Lutheran worship, there are, maybe not a lot, but some crucial, inaccurate, word choices in this passage. 
 
In our reading today, this second account of creation, written in a very different style than the first account – which we know for its very orderly and poetic story of everything God made in 6 days, and a 7th Sabbath day of rest – Robert Alter comments, that: “In this [2nd] more vividly anthropomorphic account, God,… does not summon things into being from a lofty distance through the mere agency of divine speech, but works as a craftsman, fashioning [instead of creating], blowing life-breath into nostrils, building a woman from a rib…” transitioning from “a harmonious cosmic overview of creation [in the 1st] and then plunging] into the technological nitty-gritty and moral ambiguities of human origins [in the 2nd].” 
 
And so, in our reading today, God is like an experienced farmer, carpenter, or shepherd; a logger, a gardener, or a botanist.  God, who has already gotten Her hands dirty and figured out how things grow and live, from the life-giving rivers to all the forests in between, is speaking from nitty-gritty experience. 
 
God was there from the beginning, when in this 2nd account, there was only, ‘wetness that would well up from the earth to water all the surface of the soil.’  And it was then, that God fashioned out that swampiness, the ‘shrubs of the field,’ and ‘the plants to sprout up,’ to give root and dimension to the soil of the ground; and then also, the rains to water them.  God was local and invested. 
 
For God already had the intention that people were needed to work with, and take care of, all this stuff that was sprouting and growing up.  So, God gets down on hands and knees, and digs his hands in the ‘humus,’ the fertile soil, and fashions the human; God molds the first earth-creature from earth, and then blows into a’dam’s nostrils,’ like a paramedic reviving the unconscious, ‘and blows in the breath of life.  And [then! says Genesis] the human became a living creature.’  That’s what this fashioning, craftsperson, does!
 
And God wanted to do more, as Genesis 2:8 says:  “And the LORD God planted a garden in Eden, and He placed there the human He had fashioned.”  Now God is really getting excited!  And from the same soil, or humus God fashioned the human from, God causes “to sprout from the soil, every tree lovely to look at and good for food, and the tree of life…” 
 
St. Paul calls this God, our potter, who fashioned us from clay, or mud.  God’s hands are dirty, but delighted, in God’s digging in the beautiful earth, God is fashioning. 
 
And so we are made of the stuff of the earth.  This land is our land.  And in every way, we are co-dependent on each other.  God creates everything, with a value of “good.”  But we are also given the knowledge of what is good and evil, and so have the responsibility to care for it, as if our lives depended on it – because they do. 
 
In our 2nd Reading, where Paul has traveled to the heart of pagan religion, to the Areopagus in Athens, he finds “an altar to and unknown god.”  And Paul uses that to describe YHWH, the One God.  “The God who made the world and everything in it…” the God who “gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. …For in him we live and move and have our being… for we too are [God’s] offspring.” 
 
When our Book Discussion read The Overstory, an American saga of trees, the cast of nine main characters found their lives interconnected, by their discovery of, the interconnectedness of the trees and their ecosystems they thrived in.  Two young 20 somethings, Olivia and Nickolas, not having anything else in common, connected up in their mission to save the last mighty redwoods in California that were being clear-cut by multi-national corporate interests.  They felt so connected to the Forest, they lived in a tall redwood tree for months, so it wouldn’t be cut-down, killed, and hauled away. 
 
Another, famed botanist, Patricia was lauded by the Redwood activists for her book, The Secret Forest, in which she argued scientifically, for what she had felt deep in her humus-fashioned self, since she was a little girl.  That trees communicated with each other, and were helpers – ‘sustainers alongside,’ as Robert Alter says – alongside each other, in their Forest villages. 
 
This theses is no longer just a fiction of a novel writer, but verified by science: That under the soil, the root systems of trees connect to each other, like our brain’s neurons, and share their nutrients with those trees who need it, aided by the soils’ fungi, God’s humus. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSGPNm3bFmQ)  As St. Paul says, ‘When one member hurts, every other member is involved in the hurt, and in the healing.’ (1 Cor. 12; The Message translation)  
 
The Garden that God fashions for the first humans, is not the garden we usually think of, a mid-western garden, with rows of seedlings – of lettuce, beans and corn.  “The Lord God [in Genesis 2:9] caused to sprout from the soil every tree lovely to look at and good for food…”  This was a Forest, a garden of trees, sprouting from the humus, for the humans.  And it was aesthetically pleasing, full of fruit trees, from olives to avocado’s, mangoes to figs.  The people, plants, and trees, are intertwined and dependent on each other for their life.  The Garden of Eden was an ecosystem, thriving, because of God’s fashioning of all living things, in this harmonious and awesome way.
 
And so, clear-cutting whole Forests, instead of selective cutting, not only leads to mudslides, but reveals our sinfulness, a separation from God, in the eyes of the Creator, the fashioner of our humus-soil.  We have not acted as if our lives depended on the earth, the soil from which we are fashioned.  For example, we have extracted far too much oil from beneath the earth, and consumed it far too fast, for the air of our ecosystem to in-turn, continue to care for us, much longer, as carbon build-up in the atmosphere, changes our climate, breaking down the systems that naturally work together.  Trees, we know, which helpfully consume CO2, are working overtime, doing their best to help, even as we cut them down. 
 
And so, I believe our sacred scriptures, this chapter 2 of Genesis, has much to teach us about our lives today.  In it, we find the desire and will of our Gardener-God, still speaking to us: We are made to connect with the trees, and are made to live as fellow travelers with the redwoods, and the maples, and apple orchards.  Live with them, as if our lives depended on it – because they do. 
 
And, without them, we have a more difficult time connecting up with our God, ‘in whom we live and move and have our being.’  Let us dig-in to our task; let us humans, dig into God’s humus, our life-blood, the stuff of who we are, fashioned by our God.  

Readings for August 30, 2020

• Exodus 3:1-15 and Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45b 
• Romans 12:9-21 
• Matthew 16:21-28​

Exodus Fire, sermon by Rev Fred Kinsey
In this Year A of the semi-continuous readings from the Old Testament, we’ve had opportunity to read our way through Genesis, hearing the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel: Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and, well – there were three women, who were the three mothers of the 12 sons of Jacob -- Leah/Rachel/Zilpah.  Most notable was the youngest son, and favorite of Jacob, Joseph, who wore the flashy robe his father gave him, which drove his 11 brothers wild, and made them almost kill him, but instead, only sell him off, to slave traders, who took him to Egypt.  There, Joseph went from the bowels of prison, to the Pharaoh’s right-hand-man, saved his family and many Israelites from famine, and then reconciled the family, before his father Jacob’s passing.
 
After Joseph died, and a new king arose, the story of Joseph, in Egypt, died too. But there arose another Israelite who was born to save his people.  Moses, whose story makes up the book of Exodus.
 
The new king of Egypt was alarmed that these foreigners among them had swelled into a people more numerous than they!  And Moses is born under an edict of infanticide.  Baby Moses is hidden, and then plucked out of the Nile River and saved by women, obedient to God, not the Pharaoh.  Moses is adopted by the Pharaoh’s wife, who hires Moses’ mother, to nurse him.  Moses grows into a kind of superhero protector, fiercely and innately, defending justice, as when he protects his Hebrew brothers against the Egyptian Police using excessive force, striking the officer down.  He also intervenes between his own brawling Hebrew brothers, to keep the peace.  But the one in the wrong, out of his guilt, taunted Moses, “Do you mean to kill me like you did the Egyptian?”
 
So Moses, knowing the cat’s out of the bag, and anticipating the wrath of Pharaoh, runs away to dwell in neighboring Midian.  Resting by the town watering hole, he again finds himself in his protecting role, this time when seven Midianite sisters are bullied by some shepherds, who also come to water their flocks.  Moses drives them off, and courtly draws water for the sisters’ animals.  So, not unlike, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, who long ago fell in love with each other at the town well, Moses finds his mate, and marries the sister, Zipporah.  Together they have a son, who Moses calls, Gershom, which means, “A sojourner have I been in a foreign land.”  Thus Moses, the insider/outsider, royalty/slave, protector/outcast, was born, raised, and found a home.
 
Working for his father-in-law, Jethro, he takes up the life of a shepherd, in Midian.  A wonderful, pastoral, kind of life.  Living the middle-class dream.  Until one day, everything changes.  God finds Moses, wandering in the wilderness, and calls him.  Calls Moses out of a burning bush!  Not a California wildfire in the forest, just a single bush in the desert. 
 
Moses had been shepherding his flock, deep into the wilderness.  And at Mt. Horeb, also called Mt. Sinai, the theophany occurs.  He could have turned away.  It wasn’t like there was a danger of the fire spreading.  In fact, in this case, because it was God calling, the bush wasn’t even consumed!  No fossil fuels were used in the making of this fire!  Perhaps that’s what caught his eye.  Perhaps, he had been alone too long, was tired, and seeing an apparition.  But he had to check it out. 
 
And it’s almost as if God would have let Moses go, if God had not caught the eye of Moses.  For only then does God call out to him from the midst of the bush, “Moses, Moses!”  And Moses said, “Here I am,” that quintessential response, of the prophet.  “’I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.”  And because, there are expectations for the follower, who has been addressed and called by God.
 
Everything, was about to change for Moses.  His wandering life.  His pastoral life.  His running away from his people.  All that will be like a dream, after God’s call, from the burning bush. 
 
“7Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey’…”  The LORD has come down from Israel, to bring God’s people back up, again.  But how will this rescue take place?  What kind of miracle will God perform, after the burning bush, to unburden the people, suffering under the iron grip of Pharaoh? 
 
“9The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10So come,” God says to Moses, “I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
 
That’s God’s plan!  Send the outcast, Moses, to the great Pharaoh.  Moses, the lost shepherd, will go and perform this unimaginable task! 
 
If we put ourselves in the Moses’ sandals, how would we feel?  Are we up to the task?  Are we ready for that adventure?  Later, Moses asks for some protection, some equipment that will give him a fighting chance against Pharaoh.  And God says, you’ve got your shepherd’s staff.  That should do it!  Really?  Against all the chariots and firepower, of mighty Egypt?! 
 
When God calls us, are we ready?  Probably not.  At least, it doesn’t seem like a fair fight when God sends us out into the world.  A world that is increasingly more out of control and chaotic than it was yesterday, or a month ago – or four years, or four decades ago. 
 
Our world has Pharaohs’ and Egypt’s in it, too.  Our people are being oppressed too.  We are morally challenged.  Our leaders have twisted the faith.  Our country seems to be turning, to use its power in oppressing its own people, to consolidate control for a few rich rulers. 
 
But if we learn nothing else about the fidelity of God, here in Genesis and Exodus, certainly we have learned that God has created the world for all to enjoy, equally, and God will stand with the poor and the oppressed, when things go bad.  God hears our cries, God sees our misery, God knows the suffering of God’s people, as Exodus reiterates.  And God promises to lead us out of Egypt’s bondage, “into a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.” 
 
But first God calls to us, like a burning fire, of love and concern.  I am sending you to the king, says the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses – to the seat of power.  I know you don’t want to go.  I know your faith has not been tested in this way, and you don’t think you can.  But the only way to the Promised Land, is to wade through the Red Sea, with the chariots of Pharaoh, nipping at your heels.  The only way from here, to there, is to go straight through the powers that oppress, standing up to the false gods, who do not have my permission, says God, to rule here, any longer.  Therefore, I call on you! 
 
Of course, when you encounter them, they will not be reasonable, or morally grounded.  Here in our country, which is still structured in unequal ways, delineated simply by the color of our skin, the examples of inequality seem, to me, so clear.  A man who is stopped by the police can end up dead or paralyzed, if he is black – [where if he was white, he would be sent away with a warning].  A white man who is under-aged, carrying an automatic rifle into an already tense BLM demonstration, who kills two people, can walk home freely and wait for the authorities to come and politely arrest him, and then give him a month to mount a defense. 
 
There is nothing you can do about this, they tell us.  At best, they calmly explain, you are being unreasonable, please don’t get involved, we’ll handle it.  At worst, you are told, you deserved to be paralyzed, and our streets, obviously, need more law and order, that is, more over-policing, especially of majority-black neighborhoods. 
 
But BLM, and more and more supporters of all colors, (like Moses) are not backing down.  This little dance, for far too long, has become a broken record, and we are tired, exhausted.  So, protestors continue to hold the streets peaceably, in the face of authorities using teargas, guns and tanks. 
 
You and I are called to respond, too.  Not necessarily, take to the streets.  But we can’t be neutral either.  Being neutral is really just like being a supporter of the status quo.  Walking away from the bullies at the Midian town well, was not an option for Moses.  Neither can we remain silent about racism in our world.  Ibrahim Kendi says, the choice is not between being a racist, or not a racist.  We all must be anti-racist – as in being actively engaged in working against the tidal wave of oppression, that is the status quo in America, based on race.  All of us deserve to be free, to escape the slavery of Egypt, in our lives. 
 
The faith of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob – and Moses – was not just a belief.  It was faith-active-in-love.  Abraham gave up his cushy life in Haran to move to Canaan and start all over in his old age.  Rebecca craftily setup Jacob to receive Esau’s birthright and Isaac’s blessing, and raise-up Israel’s best hope for the future.  Jacob wrestled with God all night, to a draw, to secure that blessing for his 12 sons, the 12 tribes of Israel, and Joseph the last and rejected son, kept the hope alive in Egypt, until Moses could bring them home again.  Egyptian and Hebrew women, right under Pharaoh’s nose, ignored his edict to kill all the baby boys, and in faithful defiance, saved Moses.
 
There is nothing passive about the life of faith, believing in God, our creator and redeemer.  With Moses, we may complain, “Who am I that I should go to [someone like] Pharaoh” and stand up for justice and the realm of God?  But, we are the people of God, for this time.  God has called us, like a fire of rebirth, and God assures us, “I will be with you!” as we go.  
 
In baptism, Christ has called us to die with him, that we may also rise with him.  The only way through, is to face the oppression and fears we have, and know that God is by our side, as we continue our journey – as we carry our cross, and walk wet, with all our siblings in the faith.  We pray: God of the Matriarch’s and Patriarch’s; God of Moses and Jesus; God our creator and redeemer; God be with us!  

Readings for August 23, 2020, the 12th Sunday after Pentecost

• Exodus 1:8-2:10 and Psalm 124  
• Romans 12:1-8  
• Matthew 16:13-20

Peter's Correct Answer, a sermon by The Rev. Fred Kinsey
But who do you say that I am? Jesus asks his disciples.  Peter spoke up, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And with that, Peter has given the correct answer! 
 
Though, as a side note, Peter will go from model student this week, to flunking out in next week’s gospel.  From ‘blessed,’ to cursed, in a very short time!
 
Jesus has taken the twelve to the northern most city of Israel, to a pagan town, where Jews don’t usually visit, much less live.  Caesarea Philippi was so named to honor Caesar, or King, Augustus, and Philip, who was a son of Herod the Great, and its appointed ruler.  Philip’s region bordered Galilee, just to the south, and the territory east from the Jordan River. 
 
Before Philip, it was just a nice Roman resort town, known mostly for its shrine to the Greek god Pan, the herdsman.  Yes, that one!  The half-goat, half-man, god.  The god who had horns and a tail.  The god of nature – god of the woods.  He is often depicted in art with a flute.  Thus, Pan’s flute!  Sort of reminds me of David who was a shepherd and played the flute.  Pan was thought to be very strong, though unlike the ruddy David, not very attractive.  “The story of [Pan’s] birth says that his mother was so distressed by his unusual appearance that she ran away…” (<ahref="https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net/gods/pan/">Pan: https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net</a> - Greek Gods & Goddesses, February 7, 2017)
 
The town, originally called Paneas, was at the base of beautiful Mt. Hermon, and springs from the mountain snow run-off bubbled up creating a tributary that fed the Jordan River.  The spring that created the headwaters, came from a grotto in the rocky hillside of Paneas, and that was where the marble image of Pan was displayed.  Other gods were also there to be worshipped, as was the Roman practice.  Not a very useful place for Jews to feel safe to gather.
 
When Philip received this gift, willed from his father, and agreed to by Augustus, he decided Paneas would be an excellent location for his regional headquarters, and he made the city into a thriving Roman stronghold, rivaled only in Palestine by Caesarea Maritima, the Roman port city his father built on the Mediterranean coast to connect the eastern end of the empire with Rome itself, which in Jesus’ lifetime, became Pontius Pilate’s headquarters.  Caesarea Philippi became more the resort area, and Philip’s domicile.  Sort of a cross between Springfield, Illinois and Mar-A-Lago, I imagine. 
 
Not many resources have been devoted to uncovering the ruins at Caesarea Philippi yet, and when I visited in 2005, all you can really see is the Grotto, the tributary flowing out, and some square pools of water diverted from the spring, where the statues of other gods perhaps stood, a public gathering place. 
 
Mark and Matthew have very similar accounts of Jesus and the disciples arriving here.  They both recount how Jesus pointedly circles his closest followers in the middle of this pantheon of gods, to ask them about his identity and purpose.  “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  Jesus self-identifies as, Son of Man, more than with any other title, an ambiguous, and mostly unassuming title.  It means both, a generic man without a home, and also, as the prophet Daniel predicted, One who comes with power to judge, and gather, at the end of the age.
 
The disciples have heard many titles for Jesus being bandied about.  Some of the more prominent ones are, John the Baptist, who Herod Antipas has beheaded in Jerusalem, and then thinks he sees John’s ghost in Jesus, at his trial.  Others thought John the Baptist was a return of the prophet Elijah, the greatest prophet of northern Israel, in a time of famine during a string of corrupt and unfaithful kings.  Some say Jesus is Jeremiah, the prophet who unfailingly told the truth God called him to proclaim, even when his own people rejected him.  Each of these certainly captured a portion of who Jesus was.  But were not totally revealing, as to his true identity.  
 
Jesus acknowledges that these are many of the guesses he’s heard too.  So, digging a little deeper, he redirects the question to his closest followers.  “But who do you say that I am?”  And that’s when Peter pipes up.  Peter is often the spokesman of the 12, outgoing and unafraid, like he was the day he asked to walk on the water, and come out from the boat, to meet Jesus! 
 
“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” says Peter, the rock.  To call him Messiah, or anointed one, is to acknowledge that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the peoples hopes for their redemption.  He’s the expectation of the anointed leader, who will be like David, maybe a little bit of Moses, a national hope that was never more anticipated in the life of Israel’s people.  The Messiah was expected to usher in a new age of glory for Israel, and the whole world.  
 
And to call Jesus, God’s Son, was to echo his baptism, in which the voice of God names Jesus, his beloved Child.  In contrast to the statues all around them, Peter identifies Jesus as a living God, and the long-awaited Savior.
 
“Blessed are you, [Peter],” says Jesus.  Human knowledge hasn’t revealed this to you.  Only Yahweh, our One God, One LORD, could have informed this answer that you have given. 
 
Hopefully Philip, or any of his minions, weren’t in earshot, at that moment, as Peter uncontrollably blurts out this, anti-empire message!  Yet, that is the point.  Jesus has brought them to the heart of Roman power, in northern Palestine, there amongst the statues of their lifeless gods, to pre-announce to the world, and pantomime the post-resurrection good news, who the real Messiah and Son of God is! 
 
It was anti-empire and risky because, Caesar Augustus claimed this status for himself: A Son of the god’s; and bringer of Pax Humana, peace, to the whole world.  But Jesus calls BS on this - as the high school kids from Parkland, FL say.  Jesus brings and announces God’s justice and peace, and the promise of Jubilee.  Emperor Augustus – as Jesus will make clear when he arrives in Jerusalem – brought uncompromising subjugation, slavery, and tyranny of religious choice.  And, for a few, sure, those famous good roads and aqueducts.  But even as we see today – anyone in power claiming to be chosen, and kingly, especially in a democracy – is not Jesus the Christ.
 
Peter, when he blurted out, ‘you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,’ gave the correct answer.  But it’s not about passing a written or oral test.  This is about giving allegiance!  It raises the question: Who do you trust?
 
Audrey West has said: “In what, or in whom, will the followers of Jesus place their trust [at Caesarea Philippi]? Will it be in the privileges deriving from access to opportunity and wealth? In the worship of a prevailing culture’s latest idols? In allegiance to the dominant power of earthly rulers?  Or will they trust, instead, in the One whose life, death, and resurrection reveal the mercy and justice of the living God?”   
 
If we agree with Peter, and want to give our allegiance to the anointed One of the living God, how might we help each other, to see and know, God at work in the world?  How might we as the church, model the truth of Peter’s confession to all the others we know and love?  What kinds of “experiences of Jesus” have we had, that we want share?  
 
Apparently, Philip and his loyal elites were not around to hear Peter’s confession, because right after that, Jesus “sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.”  A secret for now, at least.  His time had not yet come.
 
But the cat is out of the bag for his disciples.  All they have left to do, is decide if they believe, and if they will follow. 
 
The odds against them, look grim.  But in the end, they know too much.  The evidence is overwhelming.  They realize there is no other choice. 
 
We choose life.  We choose the Messiah, the Son of the living God, who is transforming us and renewing our world.

Readings for Sunday August 16, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

• Genesis 45:1-15 and Psalm 133  
• Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32  
• Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28

Click on link below to view sermon: 
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nY6OKZvRuBumbOJFaV_NOUklfmvB87_B/view

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!