– The Rev. Zach Sasser
I want to start with a little game today. Don’t worry though,
you don’t have to do or say anything out loud. I’m just going to give you some
categories, and I want you to think very honestly and sincerely about the first
word that comes to mind. I don’t want you to say it. I just want you to think
about it. This is between you and God.
Christians are ________.
Muslims are ________. Latinos are ________. Black people are _______.
White people are ________. Immigrants are ________. God is ________.
What you thought of is between you and God, but I will
confess to you that my initial responses to these categories of people were a little challenging at first. They were challenging because my brain – and I’ll
bet many of yours as well – has had a lot of conditioning through the years
that results in biased assumptions of others.
You may not have had to sort through those biases just now,
because you’re in church. Hopefully, your default position in church is to think
of others as children of God, all equal in God’s sight, but that’s not the way
we act and think outside of these walls. At least, that’s not the way the world
that we participate in outside of these walls acts.
We’ve all grown up with these divisions. We used to talk
about “isms,” you know, racism and sexism. Those were the biggies. In seminary, we even talked about “age-ism,” discrimination against the old or the very
young. Maybe it was just that I had never heard of it before, but I also
remember talking about “oppression” for the first time in seminary.
It was a new idea to me that there might be those in our
nation that are willfully denied certain rights and privileges that others
have. Not only that, but the idea that our actions as a nation has caused, and
still does, oppressive conditions in other countries. Then that led to a
discussion about the way in which those who are oppressing others are limited
through the act of oppression. Neither the oppressed nor the oppressor are able
to be fully human due to the fact that each is being limited through
relationships that depended on inequality.
Now it seems that I hear people talking about rights. I hear
about the pink tax on women’s products and unequal pay. I hear about service
providers that refuse service to those who are gay. I hear about those that cry
out because giving rights to someone else feels like having their own taken
away! I hear these things from my Christian brothers and sisters, and I wonder
the same thing that I bet some of you are wondering right now. What does this
have to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and particularly our readings
today?
Well, unfortunately, nothing. By “nothing” I mean that the
justifications that we give ourselves to feel be uninvolved in the oppression
of migrant workers; or the reality that there is unequal pay for women; or the
fact that our state has the highest incarceration rate, the greatest
suppression of voter rights for those who have been in prison, and an economic
system that gives away more revenue than it gets from the corporations that use
our resources for their gain to the great detriment of our communities are all
things that have nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I know that some of you don’t like it when I say things like
this. I know that some of you don’t like it when I don’t say things like this.
The elephant in the room is that Jesus does not appear to be involved in any of
these things.
He does not appear to be involved in these things, because
none of these things are connected or reflected in the idea that all might be
one. That is what he prayed for. This whole “cu-cu-ca-choo Come together over
me” prayer reflected more than a hope or an ideal. Nor was it an anxious,
unsure prayer in the garden. This was the prayer of someone who prayed down
deep – with every fiber of his being – under the expectation that we might all
tap into the sense that God is active and present in all things.
Out of this deep abiding sense of God’s presence, a tradition
emerged that expected healing to come to the nations through the river of life
and the tree of the fruit of life.
The healing of the nations is part of what we have to look
forward to as people of faith. Hope in the healing of all nations is a
dangerous hope, but it is real and good and true. It’s a hope that requires us
to recognize the humanity of others before their nationality, in fact before
even our own!
It’s a hope grounded in the Messiah, the son of God, who was
called to sacrificial love and tells us that we are loved by God in the same
way. Yes, the sacrifice for our sin has been made. Yes, the love we have
received will call us to respond sacrificially. That means letting go of
territory and rank. It means seeking a vision of our full humanity by seeking
to see others as fully human, beyond categories, yet not in denial of their
unique and beautiful differences.
Becoming fully human together through the tender mercy of God
is where all this stuff connects with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. John’s
version of it tells us again and again about the unity of God and Jesus, and
through that union invites us to be united as well.
I’m pretty sure I preach about that a lot, but I have to say
that I experienced it in a whole new light a few weeks ago in Cuba. It’s not
because we did something for them, because we didn’t actually do something for
them. We did something with them. We did something with them and with partners
from across the nation.
When all of our efforts came together and we saw the joy of
the teachers and the pride of the operators and the hope expressed by their
community, I had a profound sense of standing squarely in the midst of The Kingdom of God.
On the day before the final system check I remember being
full of joy – just right up to the brim – but nothing could compare to what
came next. I was looking over the system, and I saw that our driver, Orestez,
was drinking from a bottle with a Myers Park Presbyterian Church logo on it.
None of you know this, but there’s a minister at Myers Park
who was a seminary intern at my home church when I started out in youth
ministry. She’s someone that God has placed in my life over and over in times
of distress and times of joy, and it always confirms that I’m on the right
path. Honestly, I was a bit shaken up by it, but I took it as a sign that we
are all bound in the same gracious love that moves us from suffering to joy and
even into self-offering over and over again.
The next day the water system was finally ready. We decided
that Mercedis, the member who came to the states in 2000 to establish our
covenant should have the first taste. She is 89, and she has been cooking meals
for the “elderly” in her community for the past 25+/- years. We toasted. We
tasted. We sang, “Dios está aquí.” Then I offered to pray, and just as I was
asking our translator to translate for me Mercedes had already started.
You want to talk about somebody praying with every fiber of
their being? Whew! She prayed with thanksgiving. She prayed for God’s blessing.
She prayed for healing and health so that they might be better people. Let me
tell you when an 89-year-old woman who lives in poverty but still takes care
of others recognizes that she could still be a better person… that’s humbling.
Between that, and the water bottle, and a thousand other
stories yet to be told, when it was time to go, I just told everybody to get on
the bus before I lost control and went into a full sobbing ugly cry. I mean I
didn’t want them to think I’d totally lost it, but I kind of wonder if I
shouldn’t have.
In some ways, I kind of did lose it. I lost the
pretense of thinking the Kingdom of God is gold and shiny; or that it looked
more like what we already have only nicer; or that it’s really far off and
unattainable. I lost the belief that language separates us. I lost the sense of
them and us.
That’s the loss that this table invites us into
today. It invites us to celebrate the risky hope of being the Body of Christ
that is broken for the world. So, let all who thirst for the Kingdom that is
both present and yet to come; let all who thirst and hunger for righteousness;
let all who long for the healing of the nations above and beyond nationalism;
let all who thirst come. For even as we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.” His very real
presence is in our midst, even here, even now. Amen.
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