Laura Ruth 9-18-16
Gospel reading: Luke 16:1-13
Erica Rose is our treasurer. She’s great and she has helped us so much to get things straightened out and to know where we are financially, what we can do next, because she knows where we are and she teaches us to know. Erica is a woman of African descent. She is also a third generation CPA. She came to me in March and said “Oh, Laura Ruth, if such and such a candidate is elected President of the United States, what are we gonna do? I’ve been talking to my mom and dad every day. What are we gonna do?”
And my question for us today is, no matter who is elected President of the United States, what are we gonna do? Please will you pray with me.
Oh God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable to you, God, my rock and my redeemer.
[Erica’s sitting right there. I didn’t realize it. Raise your hand.]
The situation we think that we’re about to find ourselves in if one particular person is elected President is not a new situation for some of us. Some of us who are of African descent have been living in that situation for 500 years or more. It’s not a new thought about how we might live through such an administration when such an administration is not built or made for us. We who are queer, it’s the same for us. We’ve been noticing how the world is not set up for us. I remember when George Bush took the platform at the Republican National Convention when I was in seminary about 29 years ago, that platform, that agenda that was against gay people, and I thought “Oh, we are being used, gay people.” And people of African descent had been living through that for a billion years. [Leaders] saying things not meant for us, not meant for our well being. We who’ve been living in the colonized world. In fact that is true for all of us, each and every one of us in our congregation. We think that maybe because we are white the world was made for us. [But] it has not been made for the blossoming of our spirits, Amen? Everybody gets got in this system. Men get got. Straight people get got.
Jesus was living in such a time as you know. Rome was in Palestine, had colonized Palestine. And the way that they disempowered the Jews that they lorded over was by wringing them economically dry, placing them in such great debt that they couldn’t repay their payments and then they were thrown into debtors prison and their land and their orchards and their trees were confiscated, the women and children left to starve. And so it is in that time that Jesus tells this most peculiar story:
There was a rich man who had a manager and the manager was about to be fired for he wasn’t about to be doing his job well. That is he was not extorting the people or maybe he was extorting for his own benefit. We don’t know exactly. But the rich person was gonna get rid of the manager. So the manager responded in this way. “Okay, let me see what I can do to save myself. Let me go to the people who owe the manager,” Probably other poor peasants. He went to them and said “How much do you owe?” “I owe hundred bushels.” “Okay, then put down 80 and settle it.” “How much do you owe the master?” “I owe a hundred dollars.” “Okay, give me 80. Write it down and you’ll be free to go.” And when the rich man, when the master found out what the manager was doing, he says the most surprising thing and this is perhaps the point of the lesson. The rich man said “You did good.” You did good. We don’t know why but maybe it’s because he wouldn’t have gotten the money anyway or maybe because of the stricture that Jews can’t charge interest and thereby adding surcharges. But what I want you to recognize is that in a place where people are enslaved, in a place where people are impinged, the people have to figure out how to survive. Howard Thurman says that the way black people in slavery survived was by taking care of themselves and here is where the lesson is. Jesus says “When you grow dishonest in the way that you care for yourself, how will you know how to be honest in your life? But if you can take care of yourself in faithful ways and you together are faithful together, you will be faithful for a lot. You who can find your way to be faithful, can find a way to be faithful in a lot.”
Now I know those of us who have come here, many, many of us have come here because we were living in places where we could not act in our full glory. We could not love who we love. We could not get the jobs that we needed, nor were our people educated and so many of us came here because we were hurting. We were not proud of some of the things we had done and we came here and sat in pews and wept. Some of us had our orientation yesterday that Nancy Azar and Kathy Hanlan led and I heard it again. What I’ve heard is “When I first got to Hope Central I sat in the pew and wept.”
After talking with our leadership circle and other leaders in our congregation, we have figured out now and I have been given permission to say now that we are ready to be faithful in a little. That is, we are ready to stand up and be proud. We are ready to stand up and say “what I need for my life and for my people is economic justice, rights for trans folks, racial justice.” You know, we’ve been saying that we want these things, but our leadership circle has now said we are ready to become the kingdom of God, the body of Christ. Dr. King said, “the beloved community,” because, beloved, now is the needed time. It doesn’t matter who will be elected. We are the people that we’ve been waiting for. It’s time to become engaged citizens in our democracy. Yes. It’s time to campaign for those who will do right by the citizens and to vote for them and to work for them and I mean citizens of Hope Central. The time has come. When hate has been unleashed and when our government sends our children through the school system into prisons and when folks go hungry and… it’s time. It’s time now for us to do something because our government sends drones over the homes of children and it’s time now, beloved, because the life expectancy between Roxbury and the Back Bay is 33 years, the lifespan of Jesus. It is time. We’ve come from places where we have been unwelcome, where our bodies and spirits have been rejected. But I’m asking us now to understand that it’s time. We’ve always been a place of respite and I hope we never stop being this. We can be a place of respite. We can be a hospital for souls and a safe harbor. But we can be so much more and we want to be so much more. We want to be active outside the church and inside the church for justice. We want to be merciful not just because others need mercy but because we need mercy. We want to do justice not just because we need justice but because others need justice. We want to be a house of respite to encounter God, not just because others need respite but because we need respite.
So I want to ask Erica’s question again. “What will we do, anyway?”
So how will we start? How can we become expansive and active? And I want to ask you to do that by doing little acts of leadership, taking little small joyful steps, participating in what we are becoming. If you come to Hope Central 101, you know that we ask 5 responsibilities of our covenant partners and I would say of anyone who wants to be active in Hope Central. The first, you know, is to deepen your spiritual life and to develop the spiritual life of our congregation through spiritual practices, prayer, giving, generosity. The second responsibility is to know, develop, and use your spiritual gifts on behalf of the world and we, the preachers of Hope Central, will take you through this in the next three weeks. A third responsibility is to come to services and congregational meetings and to be present for others for your presence is a gift to us. The fourth is to participate in the welcome and vision and mission of the church and you know the mission of the church is “to make ultimate meaning, to draw nearer to the heart of God, to repair the world.” And the last responsibility is to support the church with time and money with other covenant partners, to own and support the maintenance of this building.
But I want to get more specific, please. Come to church as often as you can, I want to ask you. We are a dispensary of spiritual medicine, but also need you to be the medicine and the community for others, you as individuals and we collectively are the spiritual doctors and we’re also the party throwers for God. Two, feed people. Feed people. Invite people into your homes and feed them. Take them out for dinner. Find André Zaleska and sign up to do hospitality once or twice a year after church. Talk to Barbara McQueen and offer to take food to families, shut ins, and new babies. Bring labelled ziploc bags with food that you made and put it in our freezer. That’s how we help folks who walk through our door who show up hungry. Three, sign up to help out. We have easy things that you can do to begin. Greet friends and visitors at the door on Sunday morning and be sure they have a bulletin and nametag. Help them get their children down to Sunday school. gina Boise and Kathy Hanlan, they have a signup sheet for you today. Get the information that you need to participate in our congregation. Sign up for the yahoo group and make sure you get the weekly newsletter. Sari Mauro has got a signup sheet for you. Or if you’re having trouble, write your name down and we’ll help you. Look on our website. There’s a church calendar there. Know what you need to know in order to participate in our congregation. Help out with our children. Our children belong to our whole congregation. These children are your children. Courtney and the other Sunday School teachers need you once or twice a year to volunteer in our Sunday School room. Talk to Courtney after services or sign up on her sheet next week. Deepen your spiritual practices. Begin to try to pray. Find a Bible. Participate in a Bible study or start one. Read a book. See D’anna because she and Walter are going to lead a book study using Richard Rohr’s book. Become a sacristan. Come on Sunday morning and help set up our altar. Put out the divine things that our whole congregation needs for worship. And if you want to do that, you can see Susan Lacefield and she can teach you how to do that and accompany you in that work. You can count the offering after the Sunday morning service. You can see Mary Lou Steeden and she can show you the protocol and how to do it. Come at 10 a.m. and fold some bulletins. Help us with the building task list. You can go with Beth Moling who’s gonna climb up into our steeple to find out what kind of motor we need to make our steeple clock turn. Pick up an elder and bring them to church and Barbara McQueen will help you know who to pick up. Begin to understand your spiritual gifts and purpose. We’re starting a preaching series next week.
Beloved, we are a thing. This congregation is a thing. We are not people coming and going in the night. We are a body. We are a kingdom of God. We are a beloved community and we know that now is the time. Because what are we gonna do together? No matter who is elected. I’m asking for our leadership circle members to stand because I want you to see who your leaders are. I want you to understand that they have committed for our congregation to the work of racial justice for all people of color, for the care of the earth, for the rights and safety of queer folks, including and especially trans folks, gender queer folks and gender outlaws. They are going to lead us to move toward economic equity which includes health care, housing as we seek ultimate meaning, as we move toward the heart of God with Christian spiritual practices. And you too, if you’re committed to deepening your spiritual growth, I’m asking you to stand. I’m asking you if you are willing to commit to spiritual practices of prayer and giving and singing and teaching and sharing and searching our sacred scripture and tradition, please, rise. If you find yourself willing to seek the heart of God in the universe and through acts of wonder, rise. If you’re willing to give yourself to the discipline of loving your neighbor, rise. If you’re willing to seek ultimate meaning with your thinking and your doing and your feeling and your being, rise beloved! We are a thing. We are the body of Christ. We are, in the words of Dr. King, a beloved community. We are Hope Central. We are risking becoming the kingdom of God. We are risking becoming a purpose greater than ourselves. We are risking, each and every one of us, to be faithful in a little so that together we may be faithful in a lot. Will you say Amen? Amen.