June 17, 2018: May God’s words alone be spoken, may God’s words alone be heard.  Amen.

So, it’s been an interesting news week, right? Good Lord.

I was watching ‘Morning Joe’, a daily cable news show the other day, when Joe Scarborough, the host, who you may know had been a Republican Congressman, was talking about the administration, specifically Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General and Sara Huckabee-Sanders, the Press Secretary, who used the bible this week to defend current immigration policies being carried out that involve ripping nearly 2,000 children from the arms of their mothers and fathers at the border (and yeah, if you weren’t keeping up with the news – that is happening, and they did quote the bible to legitimize their actions). Anyway, Joe started ranting about the horrors of this policy and using the bible in this way, saying “The sermon writes itself, and you can even be out in time to have 14 stanzas of ‘Just As I Am, and get to Morrison’s cafeteria by 12:05.”  Well, alrighty then… so, I opened my computer and waited.  Rats.  It didn’t write itself.  Oh wait, that was a metaphor? 

Now, as I mentioned at the start of this sermon, right now, our government is attempting to use the bible, specifically Romans 13:1, to justify the horrific actions at our borders. That verse says “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”

They quote the bible to justify actions like what happened to this mother, as reported in Time magazine: 

 “[…]a young Honduran woman named Mirian gathered her 18-month-old son into her arms and walked across the bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas, where she presented herself to U.S. border agents to ask for asylum. Mirian and her son spent the night in a detention facility. The next day, officials told her to put her son into a car seat in the back of a government vehicle. Her hands shook as she buckled him in. The officials wouldn’t tell her where they were taking him, […]only that she would not be allowed to go with him. As the car pulled away, she could see her baby looking back at her through the window, screaming.  For the next 2½ months, Mirian was detained at an immigration center, unable to speak with or visit her son […, and she] wondered if her son would forget the sound of her voice. […] Mirian and her son were eventually reunited, but a version of her parental nightmare has now become U.S. policy.”[1] 

In fact, CNN and others reported that the parents, many who are fleeing rape, murder, kidnapping, and other horrors directed at them, are presenting themselves for asylum – a legal process recognized in the United States and just about all countries – and they are told that their children are being taken to get bathed… only they don’t come back. This is the United States of America – we are not about that, are we?

And those in charge have the audacity to quote our sacred text to defend this? We are Christians – we are not about that, are we?

Honestly, these days it feels like our nation’s leaders are offering up sermon fodder alright, but I wish it were for a different reason.  Now, I do believe in the separation of church and state, which is one of the reasons I will not tell you how to vote, or whom to support.  It is not my place to do that, and God is neither Republican or Democrat, or even American for crying out loud. However, it is not only my place, it is my responsibility, and that of all of us as Christians, to stand against injustice, and to remind everyone that, as our Presiding Bishop likes to say “If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” 

So, let me make one thing very clear – when folks decide to use the bible to justify their actions against the least of these, I will stand in this pulpit and declare that the bible is clear that immigrant, the stranger in our native land (which, by the way is NOT native to anyone other than Native Americans) “shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” 

I will stand in this pulpit and proclaim that God commanded us to never bear false witness against our neighbor, so if you are really into law and order, the pervasive lying and creating a fake media narrative is breaking one of the big 10 laws of God.  

I will stand in this pulpit and proclaim the gospel message of Jesus, who called us to care for the poor, the sick, the stranger, the hungry, the imprisoned, the widow, the orphan… 

And I will stand in this pulpit to address those who respond to these actions with their own hate, reminding them that in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”  Hmmm….maybe this sermon did write itself afterall. 

But here’s the thing – pulpits aren’t just these wood structures you find in churches.  As John Wesley famously said “The world is my parish,” so too for any person of faith.  I knew I had to speak out and reach folks who might actually believe that Christians think this way – that we would support this reading of our sacred text – and so I posted a long response on our church Facebook page.  It was a just a small start, just a tiny little action, but then  several interesting things happened.

The next day a woman approached me and thanked me for the post.  She is part of a family that migrated here, and it was clear to me that she was unsettled by the rancor and the policies of our government of late. She needed to know that the church did not believe this, and that someone would speak out, where she could not. 

Another person shared the post, and challenged other churches to also speak out – declaring that any church that is silent is complicit.

Another posted in response “Just what I needed to help me feel that I am going the right way about how I feel and believe.”

But another commented that Ms. Sanders was not human.  I thought about that for a bit, and knew that I could not let that stand.  I replied that to deny another’s humanity, even on moral grounds, is a slippery slope toward being what we despise.  I was told to “save it for Sunday.”

“Save it for Sunday.”

Folks, what is church then, if we just box the gospel message of love to 2 hours on a Sunday morning?  I will tell you that if we do that, the gospel is dead in us.  Look, I know that being a person of faith is not easy, but sometimes I am startled by how quickly we can forget that everyone is a child of God – the person I agree with, and the person that makes my blood boil. Everyone.

Lord knows, I have to pray hard to get there (particularly since the election in 2016), and I often fail, but if we respond to hate with hate, we are lost.

We can hate the injustice – and we must.

We can speak against it – and we must.

But, if we are to love one another as Christ loved us (for those who are part of the Jesus Movement), we must not hate the person who opposes us. We will, of course, from time to time, which is why we need to pray without ceasing, and why we need our confession each week, if we are to be released from this sin.  And we need to be released from it, because when we hate, it kills us – not the object of our hate.  And, it doesn’t work anyway, which is why Jesus was clear that is not how we are to live. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that.  Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

So, why am I telling you all of this?

So, why am I telling you all of this?  Well, one reason is to make it clear that evangelism does work, but it needs to be about the gospel, not about conversion.  And the other is for the same reason Jesus is joking about invasive shrubs.

In the gospel we heard two very familiar parables about growing things being like the kingdom of God. Today, I want to focus on the one about the mustard seed growing into some great shrub.  This, of course, was ridiculous and Jesus did not ever mean for it to be taken literally.  Instead, like Joe Scarborough the other day, Jesus was using a metaphor to make a point about empire and God.

As you already know, most of you, from past sermons, the mustard plant was to Jesus’ audience as the pesky Russian Olive shrub is to NJ homeowners.  No one would ever plant it.  In fact, if you were a Jewish farmer, it might be unlawful biblically to do it – if you would be planting two different crops side by side.  But, why would you plant it anyway?  Those stupid mustard shrubs were invasive – they exploded everywhere and got into everything.  So, to the folks Jesus was speaking to, this was a riddle – a joke – like Jesus telling you to plant dandelions in your yard.  Crazy, right?

Let’s listen with new ears to what was being said, because it is vitally important to us today.  In Jesus’ day, empire, power, rulers, and God were symbolized by the mighty cedar.  We heard that in the Psalm today, right?  Jesus is turning that on its head.  He is saying there is power, and there is authority.  Earthly kingdoms have the first, but God’s kingdom has the second, and that was news to folks, because they had always thought of God as being like the cedar of Lebanon. And if you think this is about some far off kingdom, Jesus was clear about that too – it is here, now – always present, and it is like the mustard seed. 

Why would he say that?  Well because like any invasive weed, the mustard plant, will spread incessantly once it takes root.  Weeds are like that, as any gardener will attest.  For instance, a single dandelion will cast off loads of seeds, which make it difficult to control.  So, Jesus is telling us that the kingdom of God like a weed that will not be stopped, cannot be controlled, and will spread far and wide to nourish others, to the annoyance of some, if only a single seed is dropped.

So what has this gospel to do with what is happening here in this country of ours? Everything.

You know the other times empire has used that verse from Romans 13?  It’s been used by English loyalists opposed to the colonial revolt, by slave owners demanding a return of escaped slaves, by Nazi Germany, by racists opposed to the civil rights movement, by…well…you get the picture. 

But like those who use snippets of bible passages to discriminate against our LGBT sisters and brothers, our government did not remember to include the rest of that passage.  Had they read only a few sentences later, they would have seen St. Paul’s real meaning, when he said “Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law… ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

Love is the fulfilling of the law. 

You know what else love is?  It is a mustard seed.  That, my friends, is the kingdom of God – a mustard seed of love that will grow and spread far and wide.  It is more powerful than anything on this earth, and it is within each of us.  And with each seed of love we plant, something amazing happens, and St. Paul wrote about that too – we heard it in the passage we read today.  He writes that “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation.”  He’s right too, because if we live as Christ lived, we become mustard seeds ourselves, spreading God’s kingdom – which becomes downright invasive in its spread – nothing can stop it – not hate, not darkness, not even death.  There is no empire stronger than it, and no wall that can block it – it is a new creation of life giving love. 

Look, it’s Father’s day, a day when we celebrate dads and families.  We cannot leave here and do that knowing that somewhere in our own backyard, somewhere in this country of ours, children are suffering at the hands of our own empire.  This is not who we are as a country, and it is most certainly not who we are as followers of Jesus!

On this day then, and forever more, let us proclaim for all the world to hear that we too believe in law – God’s law – to welcome the stranger, care for the poor, tend to the sick, lift up the oppressed, be truthful in our dealings with others – the law fulfilled when we love one another, and we will stand against any human law that attempts to violate it, or worse, try to justify hate  with our sacred texts. 

What will that look like for each of you – maybe it will be the small seed of a Facebook post, or a tweet – because you just don’t know what might happen, and who it might reach. In the 24hrs after I posted that message, it had been shared over 150 times, and viewed by more than 10,000, without any ad being run, and that is just the views off of our church FB page, and doesn’t count the ones on the pages of those who shared the post. 

Or, maybe it will be a small seed of a call or letter to your government leaders.   Or, maybe it will be the small seed of engaging in conversation with out neighbor, whom we are called to love – the neighbor who agrees, and perhaps most of all with the neighbor who doesn’t.

The possibilities are endless, but whatever it is, one thing is clear – it is not to be “saved for Sunday!”  Absolutely not!  It must be proclaimed every day, every hour, every minute – by our words and by our actions in the world – without ceasing, and with every breath we take.

It is time for all of us to plant mustard seeds of God’s kingdom,  to be those seeds in the world, and to make it very clear to all those who would dare use the Word of God to hate, to harm, to marginalize, that we will not stand for it – not now, not ever. 

If we do that, we surely will see blooming everywhere new creation – rooted in love – and nourishing the world.

Amen.

For the audio from the 10:30am service, subscribe to our iTunes sermon podcast, or click here:

[1]http://time.com/5311971/parents-children-us-border/

The Rev. Diana L. Wilcox
Christ Church in Bloomfield & Glen Ridge
June 17, 2018
The Fourth Sunday After Pentecost
1stReading –Ezekiel 17:22-24
Psalm 92:1-4,11-14
2nd Reading –2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Gospel – Mark 4:26-34