Readings for the 24th Sunday after Pentecost, Nov. 15, 2020

• Judges 4:1-7 and Psalm 90:1-8
• 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11  
• Matthew 25:14-30

Harsh Master & Jesus, by Rev. Fred Kinsey
This is the last of the parables Jesus tells, before the big reveal, his stunning conclusion, there in Jerusalem, just before Holy Week is about to start.  Of course, that’s out of cinque for the seasons of our Church Year.  We’re not presently, in the midst of Lent!  But, it does fit with the theme of the end times we are about to enter, in the season of Advent, in two weeks.
 
The stunning conclusion, by-the-way, will come next week – to put it in context – on Christ the King Sunday, with the story of the Son of Man, Jesus, who comes in all his glory saying, “Whoever did it to the least of these – the hungry, the thirsty, the naked – did it unto me.”  Christ is the one who suffers along with the outcasts, the downtrodden, all the marginalized of this world.  Our calling is to address this disparity, that of the favored few in the center of society vs. the vast majority of those left out on the margins.
 
That Christ came to save us from our sin, and the structures of sin that create these disparities, so that the kingdom and will of God, may dawn ‘on earth, as it is in heaven;’ that Christ the Bride, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, prepared for her husband, that is, for us, may come to pass – Jesus came to save us, not just spiritually, but in every facet of our lives: physical, mental, economic, social, and political. 
 
So, in this last parable before the big reveal – in our parable today – we see the disparity of Luther’s Two Kingdoms, in this story of a rich landowner, a point 1 percenter (0.1%).  He’s about to go off to do business with other multi-nationals, wherever they met in those days.  Perhaps Caesarea Philippi, in northern Israel, the playground of the rich and famous that Herod’s son, Philip built in honor of Caesar Augustus.  It was a hotbed of paganism, and a swanky retreat of the privileged. 
 
But this landowner was gone a long time, so perhaps he went much farther: to Babylon in the east, or Rome itself in the west?  He would have gone off to make connections with those who could further enrich his estate.  But before leaving, he has this brilliant idea to give his holdings to his slaves, to see what they can do for him, while he’s away. 
 
To one he gives 5 talents, to another 2 talents, and to the third, one talent.  A talent, in the Gospels, doesn’t have anything to do with our English use of the word as an ability, or gift we have.  But Talent is the largest portion of currency in the Near East that there is, equal to maybe 10 years of wages, a huge amount for them.  When the Master finally returns from his business trip, he is eager to settle accounts with them.  And he lines them up, so they can come one at a time before him, to make a report. 
 
We, the reader, already know what they have done with the Talents, but not how the Master will respond.  So, the one who was given the equivalent of 50 years of wages, the 5 Talents, brought 5 more, he had traded for, doubling the Master’s money.  And the one who was given 20 years wages, did the same, making 2 more Talents.  And the Master commends them lustily, ‘well done, good and trustworthy slaves, you have been trustworthy in a few things, now I will put you in charge of bigger things, so you can make more money for me.  You have brought me great joy – come and join me in my “earthly kingdom.” 
 
Then the lowly one who had only received one Talent came forward, with no little fear and trembling.  He had a different business plan.  But he summoned up all the courage he could muster, to (in all honesty) tell his Master the truth:  ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, procuring your wealth off the backs of others, unaccustomed as you are to the hard work of farming or carpentry; 25so I admit I was afraid, and I decided to go and hide your talent in the ground for safe keeping.  So then, here it is, I return it to you intact, every last penny.’ 
 
You knew! said the Master, that I profited off of others without putting in an honest day’s work, as you say!  Did you?!  Well then, why didn’t you do likewise and put it in the stock market and make me a bundle?!  You’re just like all the other low life’s who can’t lift themselves up by their bootstraps.  I’m going to send you back to the outer darkness from which you came. 
 
Give his one Talent to the richest slave, said the Master.  For the rich shall be richer, and the poor shall be poorer! 
 
And so, what’s most upsetting in the parable of the greedy landowner and his laize faire, libertarian values, is the picture of the third slave, the one fearful of this Master, the one who didn’t ‘get it’ how he was supposed to invest his Talent, and how easy it is, if you were to just deposit it in the bank and gain some interest – probably because Usury was against the Levitical laws.  But, it’s difficult to digest, mostly because this is the character that Jesus’ disciples would have identified with!  Not with the favored other two.  The Disciples were relative beggars, having left family and spouse, to follow Jesus, and depend on the kindness of strangers. 
 
From the very beginning of his gospel, Matthew has plainly shown how Jesus is a part of the marginalized, the 99% of society that God sent him to name blessed.  Jesus was born in a barn, raised in poor Podunk Nazareth, wandered as an itinerant preacher and healer, and reached out to lepers and prostitutes, fishers and tax collectors.  He was faithful to his religious traditions, but he also spoke (a heavenly) truth to power, against the worldly corruption in high places in Jerusalem, both to rulers in his own Hebrew house, and to the Roman overlords. 
 
Jesus did not subscribe to the kingdom of this world that reinforced the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.  Neither did he come to claim power by a military coup, though many of his followers, awaiting a Davidic Messiah, apparently expected him to. 
 
Jesus came to fulfill God’s Third Way, the kingdom of heaven, as Matthew called it, the realm of God, already alive, here amongst us.  He came to suffer the violence of those rulers, who have rigged the system to profit off the backs of subsistence working class families, and who falsely portray it as sacred and ordained by God, though it is only an earthly kingdom.  And he came to go all the way to the cross to reveal how unjust that violence is, distorting the created goodness God intends for all to enjoy as a gift, and hold responsibility for. 
 
How are we called to respond to this kingdom imperative, amidst a world of terror, and terribly unfair violence, and repression?  How do we follow in Jesus footsteps and become disciples? 
 
Jesus didn’t just suffer violence as some kind of nice guy, or 99lb. weakling who didn’t like to fight.  He “decided” to suffer – made the conscious decision to endure, even death on a cross, to reveal, and live-out, and make manifest like never before, the futility and unjust way that the whole world was living, and that he would give up his life, to be God’s change factor, once and for all! 
 
Paul Nuechterlein thinks this illustrates what might be the most important verse in Matthew’s whole gospel, 11:12: “where Jesus straightforwardly tells us that the kingdom of heaven is revealed in choosing to suffer violence, while human regimes are only happy to take it by force.” 
 
The Disciples didn’t want Jesus to go through with the Passion.  They were still caught up in the binary choice of who would rule the kingdoms of this world – them or us.  But Jesus shows us a Third Way, the way that makes a conscious decision, for us, a collective decision, to embody God’s realm, as Jesus’ disciples, to not continue to perpetuate the cycle of violence, that always leads to another regime of injustice; Jesus’ way of suffering violence, that ushers in the reign of God on earth, as it is in heaven. 
 
We see how St. Paul did this by starting new communities, new house churches in Jesus’ name, all across the Roman Empire. 
 
Today, we are one of those communities, called to live the ethic of love for one’s neighbor, an ethic of ‘costly grace,’ (as Bonhoeffer said,) speaking God’s truth to earthly powers, yet ready to suffer the consequences.  For when they call us wicked and lazy, to use the harsh Master’s language, we know we are close to the big reveal!  Because the truth is, if anyone was wicked, it was the greedy landowner; and if anyone was lazy, it was the Master who could take off as much time as he wished, on the backs of his slaves, to venture out to enrich his earthly fortune. 
 
Here then, we see that God is at work in the third slave, exposing the Master as a fraudulent Messiah.  We too must reject the worldly kingdom of unjust vengeance.  But we don’t have to be fearful either, like the third slave was.  For we now know, on this side of the cross, that following Jesus, no matter how opposed that makes us to the world-as-it-is, it is our sacred journey that leads to true joy, and a fulfillment of God’s kingdom and realm that we are called to.   
 
In these dark times, the need for true disciples and followers is greater than ever.  Let us be followers of Jesus, that we may reveal the kingdom and realm of God.  

Readings for All Saints Sunday, November 1, 2020

• Revelation 7:9-17 and Psalm 34:1-10, 22  
• 1 John 3:1-3  
• Matthew 5:1-12

The Crossroads, Rev. Fred Kinsey

​“… Blessing and glory and wisdom
 and thanksgiving and honor
 and power and might
 be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”
 
That’s the song being sung in the new age, the age that is already coming, where all the redeemed, that God names, have assembled before the Lamb and the Shepherd, as envisioned by John. 
 
We sing it in our ELW as the Hymn of Praise: This is the Feast of Victory for Our God! 
 
It was the vision John had! that was a reversal of the tribulation, so many believers were living at the turn of the 1st Century, especially under Emperor Nero, a time of persecution for the radiant and aspiring movement of Jesus followers, who were starting to gather as worshiping communities all across the Roman empire, before they were legal. 
 
Today, on this All Saints Day, we remember and celebrate, in song and acclamation, in our liturgy and in our hearts, all the saints who have gone before us, and especially those closest to our hearts, our loved ones and family members. 
 
In Revelation, John envisioned a universal choir of people “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne” of God “a great multitude that no one could count!”  Your loved one is included!  God’s grace effects a big yes to all the sinners of this earthly kingdom, we know not how or why, but only that it is so, because God is God.  Now, in this age, Jesus bids us enter by the narrow gate.  Then, in the age that the Lamb has ushered in, God is welcoming everyone from everywhere.  Go figure!  John’s vision is beyond our comprehension.  But by faith, we confidently turn ourselves over to the love and forgiveness of Jesus’ example, that we too might be an example, for our neighbor. 
 
This blessed-conundrum, is not unknown to us, but seems to have come to some kind of a head, this week.  We are at a crossroads as a nation, even as we celebrate All Saints Day, near the end of our Church Season – celebrating with joyful-tears, and anxious-hopefulness. 
 
The election, this week, will define who we are as a country.  Are we a nation of inclusive values, desiring to continue to overcome our early days of white male privilege?  Do we allow people of every race and language to vote and participate in our democracy?  Do we hold one another accountable, when the meek, and the merciful, and the poor, are abused, made fun of, and demonized?  Do we welcome the stranger, the refugee and immigrant, and come to their aid? 
 
On this All Saints, as the church year comes to an end this month, we hear from one of Jesus’ most universal and challenging teachings, the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically, the Beatitudes, or blessings.  Like the Revelation to John, in the gospel, Jesus envisions a world in which all believers no longer suffer a meaningless life, but the world order is reversed.  God’s kingdom is beginning even now in the words and deeds, in the preaching and healing, of Jesus, where the marginalized are blessed, as recipients of God’s kingdom:
         3“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
  4“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
  5“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
  6“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
  7“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
  8“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
  9“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
  10“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

American Lutherans have never been known to especially gravitate to this passage.  We have often rationalized, avoided or shied away from its demands and difficult sayings.  But one Lutheran theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, made it a center piece of his teaching on the Christian community.  In his conclusion to the Beatitudes in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, he said:
"Having reached the end of the beatitudes, we naturally ask if there is any place o[n] this earth for the community which they describe. Clearly, there is one place, and only one, and that is where the poorest, meekest, and most sorely tried of all [humans] is to be found – on the cross at Golgotha. The fellowship of the beatitudes is the fellowship of the Crucified. With him it has lost all, and with him it has found all. From the cross there comes the call ‘blessed, blessed.'”
 
Bonhoeffer, of course, found all and lost all, in Christ.  His earthly battle, even as he stayed true to his faith, was with the Nazi regime.  He could not run away from the call of the cross, and the fellowship of the beatitudes.  He tried rallying the faithful as a leader of the Confessing Church, but many capitulated.  He tried escaping to the United States, but couldn’t remain there with a clear conscience.  Back in Berlin, he aided the secret resistance, and was arrested, even as he wrote this book. 
 
Bonhoeffer met his crossroads, understandably, with great anxiety, but ultimately with great courage.  He preached and taught a costly grace, and lived it too – even by giving his life. 
 
Bonhoeffer knew the Christ of John’s Revelation who was both Lamb and Shepherd.  Jesus, the Lamb of God, gives his life for the sake of the world, the lamb that was slaughtered at the Passover, sacrificed at the high feast, that we, may wash our baptismal robes and make them white in his blood, only to witness Christ lifted up to the right hand of God, exalted and reigning as our king, like king David, the Shepherd who leads us into green pastures, and provides a kin-dom of peace and justice. 
 
Jesus the Christ, is our Lamb, and our Shepherd. 
 
And we are at a crossroads.  Who we choose on Tuesday – and elect, once all the votes are counted – will determine who we are as a country, for a long time to come. 
 
It will not change our faith, or our God, who reigns already from the throne, who our loved ones, we will name, know, worship and praise.  But for us here below, it will make for a crossroads in how we are called to live out our faith.  The cost of our discipleship will likely take on different paths, different shapes, perhaps costlier, choices. 
 
So let us rest in the promise, that, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” who is also our Shepherd, where one day we will join the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”  Let us, the meek and the poor, and all the blessed, be joyful that we have done everything that has been asked of us, at this, and every crossroads of our lives.  Let us rejoice and sing with all the saints!
Alleluia!  Amen! 

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.