Sermon for June 21, 2020 3rd Sunday after Pentecost House of Prayer Lutheran Church
Matthew 10:24-39; Romans 6:1b-11 Rev. Karl-John N. Stone
When the pandemic began, one thing I suddenly had time for on Sunday mornings was taking the dog for a walk before our Sunday morning Zoom coffee hour. As I walked, I listened to the birds. There seemed to be more birds than I remembered from previous springtimes, and they seemed to sing more songs. I listened and thought--those birds are singing my organ prelude, my choir anthem, my worship music--all provided by God in the gifts of the natural world.
Funny how it took a pandemic taking away almost every familiar Sunday routine in order to appreciate the value of this simple gift. How easy it is to think of the birds’ song as something of little value, until you realize the birds’ song is something that can never be taken away. They’ll always be singing, and their songs will always glorify God who created them.
How did people value the birds in Jesus’ day? When it comes to sparrows, we hear in Matthew’s gospel that two sparrows were sold for just a penny. And yet, Jesus tells us, not one falls to the ground apart from our Heavenly Father. And when it comes to you--God even counts all the hairs of your head. So do not be afraid, Jesus promises, you are of more value than many sparrows. Even the suffering of a little bird falling to the ground is known to God--this is the kind of God we have: in solidarity with us; even suffering with us. That’s who Jesus is--he is called “Emmanuel” meaning “God is with us.”
God is with us. Henri Nouwen, a great teacher of Christian prayer and spirituality put it like this: “all human suffering has been suffered by the Son of God. [Therefore all human suffering] has been lifted up into the inner life of God himself. There is no suffering--no guilt, shame, loneliness, hunger, oppression, or exploitation, no torture, imprisonment, or murder, no violence--that has not been suffered by God. There can be no human beings who are completely alone in their sufferings, since God, in and through Jesus, has become Emmanuel, God with us. The Good News of the gospel, therefore, is not that God came to take our suffering away but that God wanted to become part of it.”
God is with us. God even becomes part of our suffering. So where can we look for the presence of Christ within human suffering? Who do we see taking up their cross to follow Jesus? Who do we see that has received Jesus’ promise that “those who lose their life for my sake will find it”? I’ve been remembering the “Emmanuel Nine” this week. June 17th was the 5th anniversary of their martyrdom. June 17, 2015 at “Mother Emmanuel” African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, faithful followers of Jesus were meeting in their church basement for a Bible study. They were beautiful people, faithful disciples of Jesus, members of the oldest AME church in the south, a church with a long history before the civil war of anti-slavery resistance, and a continuing legacy of working for justice.
It was a Wednesday evening. A young man they had never met before appeared at their bible study. He was white and his name was Dylan Roof. So what did they do? He was a stranger so they welcomed him! Their pastor, who was also a state senator, Clementa Pinckney made some space and asked him to sit down next to him. They embraced this guest with Christ-like love and hospitality. And in return he took out a gun and proceeded to shoot, turning their basement into a modern-day Golgotha. He killed nine of these beautiful children of God because he was a white supremacist, and they were black, and he hoped to incite a race war.
Their names were Myra Thompson, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson, Rev. Sharonda Ann Coleman-Singleton, Ethel Lee Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton Doctor, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr., Cynthia Graham Hurd, and the Honorable Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney. Not one of them fell to the ground apart from our Heavenly Father. Christ lifted them up into the inner life of God; God became part of their suffering.
If you’d like to learn more about the Emmanuel Nine, I’ll post a link to their biographies; and if you’d like to see a powerful commemoration service done jointly with the ELCA and AME churches earlier this week, I’ll post a link to that as well. We Lutherans are closer to this tragedy than many of us may realize. Rev. Pinckney and Rev. Simmons were graduates of our ELCA seminary in Columbia, South Carolina. We can be proud that such accomplished alumni chose to study at one of our seminaries. Yet sadly, we also have to face the fact that the shooter, Dylan Roof, was a baptized member of an ELCA congregation in South Carolina.
I doubt his violent white supremacy was preached by his pastors or taught in his Sunday School lessons. It certainly is not in the Bible or in the theology or teachings of our Church. Yet the roots of racism run deep and infected him, and he came to believe not in a God of love who created these nine beautiful black children of God in God’s own image, but instead he believed that white meant good and black meant bad. He chose to “find his life” within a commitment to racist ideology, hatred, and terror. Finding his purpose for life on these terms meant that he had already “lost his life” even before he betrayed their Christian hospitality and pulled the trigger.
God’s ways are life-giving and life-affirming, and that is why the Emmanuel Nine who lost their lives that day had already found their life in Christ long before the day they were killed five years ago. Their purpose for life was God’s purpose. Not only was their church called “Emmanuel” but they lived according to the truth that Jesus is Emmanuel, “God with us”--the God who teaches us to not be afraid of living in the way of Jesus. Of welcoming the stranger in Christian love and hospitality, of knowing that “you are of more value than many sparrows”, so that everyone you meet you treat with the same value and dignity that God has given you. That’s why they are martyrs--”martyr” means “witness”, and they were killed for their witness to the life-giving and life-affirming way of Jesus.
The way of Jesus is the way God called us to live when we were baptized into Christ and given the ability to walk in newness of life. St. Paul teaches us in Romans 6 that we walk in newness of life by dying to sin and becoming alive to God in Christ Jesus.
We die to sin by turning to God in repentance: By examining our hearts for whatever hardness towards others might lurk within; by examining our hearts for the things we’ve done or the things we’ve left undone in ways that haven’t been life-giving for others. This is hard work Jesus asks us to do--so hard that he went all the way to the cross for our forgiveness. And in rising again to a new life, he assures us, “don’t be afraid--you’re already of more value than many sparrows.” So we can do the hard work of repentance that Jesus asks, because he is Emmanuel, “God with us”. And he promises that when we stop trying to find life on “my terms” and instead seek true life by living on “God’s terms” and according to God’s purposes, we gain more than we can even imagine. Amen.
https://emanuelnine.epistles.faith/the-emanuel-nine/