Who is Our Neighbor? Lenten Sermon, and out with the Night Ministry, 3/11/18
Tuesday night,
The students visiting from
Appalachian State University,
Their Pastor and other leaders
Drove alongside myself
Into the Back of the Yards neighborhood
To serve alongside
The Night Ministry
We served navy bean soup for the soul
And health care packets
For the body
We shared conversation
Information
And even humor.
(pause)
As we left to return to Augustana
There were, heartfelt questions
“We’ve been out here for an hour,
And I know my feet are cold;
How do they keep warm?
What do they do for heat?
Is this all the help that they get?”
(pause)
And I had to be honest with them
That although every Sunday,
People fill up pews
Raise their hands in the sanctuary
They are only concerned about saving themselves
Self preservation,
And walk out those glided doors
Ignoring the sin they contribute to
Sin of allowing others to rot with hunger
(pause)
“What about this neighborhood?”
If you know anything about 54th and Halsted,
It’s a desert.
And I had to tell them
What they are witnessing
Is the result of policies,
Laws,
Regulations
Put into motion
So that these bodies
Deemed imperfect
Because of skin,
And language
And status
And disability
Would not have enough means to gain sustainability
Much less wealth
Those bodies,
That place
Are only recognized
By the effects of their failure
Shame
By their perceived sloth,
And laziness.
(pause)
You can run on,
For a long time
Run on,
For a long time
Run on
For a long time
Sooner or later
God’s gonna cut you down (repeat)
(pause)
As commuters travel
Back and forth from Illinois to Indiana,
Via the Skyway,
They can’t help but see the smattering,
Littering the shores of Lake Michigan
Factories
Refineries
Erasing any aspect
Or possibility
Of Creation’s existence
Or reemergence.
One story,
Surrounds a massive mountain of Petco
Or
Petroleum coke
That laid uncovered
Exposing its harmful toxins
To flow over into small pools,
On playgrounds
Dusting the roof of houses
Touching the skin,
Of those who lived,
And even worked
In these industries
(pause)
And the result is that,
The people whom have been affected,
Have been burdened with bronchitis,
Lung cancer
Asthma
Who battle a sense of hopelessness
And despair
These are the forgotten
Hard working, but steeped in poverty
Penalized because of that poverty
Taken advantage of, by those who are more tied
To the sin of greed
Simply because, sometimes you have to do what you have to do
(pause)
You may throw a rock, hide your hand
Workin’ in the dark against your fellow man
But sure as God has made the day and the night
What you do in the dark will be brought to light
(pause)
“For God so loved the world
that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him
may not perish
but may have eternal life,”
(pause)
We hear John 3:16,
We see a scrap of salvation,
We consume it,
But we don’t remain in the spaces,
That are created
To transform us
So that we fight for transformation for all
From death
To
Life.
(pause)
Odetta Holmes
A Woman of Color,
despised by the dominant culture
for who the Creator has molded and birthed into being,
sings this hymn
and people of her time listened to it
and perhaps thought she was speaking of morals
But I wonder
if they ever listened to her words
and if their soul shook,
because sooner or later
they’d have to answer
Answer for what they had done in the dark
to their fellow human being
How they inverted the Cross to a symbol of hatred and torture
in so that
My Ancestors,
My People
lived
and
died
in
Fear.
(pause)
Odetta’s prophetic lament,
Is calling us to task,
Of the collectively responsibility
When we sin
Against
One
Another.
How that reverberates into the atmosphere
Until
We can’t help
Noticing
The plume of acidic poisonous
Permeating
And choking
The sacred breath
Out
Of
Us.
(pause)
Maybe that’s why,
There is an absence of crosses
In many of our Churches,
Because looking upon a symbol,
That is an oxymoron,
That has been inverted
From death
To
LIFE
That if we look upon the Cross
We are reminded
Not only we
LIVE
BUT
BECAUSE
Of the Cross,
That salvation
Is not
An
Individual
Event!
(pause)
It’s so curious,
That people have been
Wailing,
Pleading
For God
To come quickly,
And save us-
Deliver us,
From our sin
From Sins
We don’t take the ownership,
Of the destruction
That happens
Each moment,
We allow
Brokenness
To nip
And tear
At our collective being
(pause)
It’s so interesting,
That we come to the Table
Weeping
Begging
For forgiveness,
From the chaos
And violent
Waves of life,
We ignore,
The profane,
That still slithers
And eats away,
(pause)
Are we surprised,
That Jesus has not returned
Especially when we decide,
Because of an infraction of the law,
Our siblings should pay dearly,
For the rest of their lives
Being stripped of their rights
Or met with death?
That people who live with their bodies,
Can not live authentically
And forced to be something they are not?
Are we surprised,
That we have not experienced
That new heaven,
And new earth,
When we have destroyed the only home we will ever know?
(pause)
Can I be real for a moment?
And I know that I touched on this earlier,
But this whole conception
Of giving things up for Lent.
An article recently came out
About this whole Lenten practice
The author stated that in a conversation
With another person,
She was told
She must give up something for Lent,
So that God could see her pain,
And honor
And sacrifice.
It should be noted,
That the author,
Is a Woman of Color
And I am sure the Creator sees her sacrifice,
everyday
(pause)
And so the author gives us her insight
“Perhaps this Lenten season will not be about fasting
but giving ourselves permission
to be refueled in the pursuit of joy.
Could it be possible that,
instead of “dying to ourselves”,
we find ways to live
into the abundant life Jesus came to give?”
(pause)
Hmmm, there’s a thought
We keep claiming Jesus Christ as Lord
We keep proclaiming that we know of His Truth
So instead of always coming to the throne and throwing ourselves
As if life is so unbearable,
We see the Cross
We are filled with the Holy Spirit
We receive the forgiveness
And then we RADICALLY CHANGE
We eradicate ANYTHING
That would cause any of us,
All of us
Suffering.
We see our faults
And confess
And CHANGE this life!
(pause)’
What if,
The Church
As a whole
Gave up
What the Empire has been slithering into
Our sacred spaces?
What if,
We gave up
Racism,
And the power and domination over bodies
That it gives
What if we confess,
That as a Church
We have been complicit
In slavery
And forced assimilation
Of bodies
That we
As a Church,
Did not do
Have not done
Refuse to publicly denounce
Or twisted God’s word
Into our human theology of weakness
(pause)
What if,
We confess,
That we are addicted
To weapons,
And to the economic insatiability
That keeps us in thrall
Until we ignore,
The trail of bodies
That we step over
As we laud our guns,
And easily sacrifice our siblings
All in the name of our self preservation
(pause)
What if we used fasting as a vehicle
To call attention that we consume,
Hoard so much
Instead of giving of ourselves
So that others too, might live?
What if we gave up,
Everything
That keeps us
From the LIGHT
Of the Creator God,
Or that we shared what had been given to us,
So that others might live,
And rejoice
Because we can give?
Because we experience the LOVE
That God gives to us?
(pause)
What if,
We as the Church,
Spoke
Truth?
Did
Truth?
Lived
Truth?
Thanks Be to God.
