Lectionary readings
I think most of you know that I’ve just returned from my 7-week summer sojourn to South Korea, during which I taught at a university. Toward the end of the program, I took my students to the DMZ, the Demilitarized Zone that has separated North Korea and South Korea for 60 years. This past July was the 60th anniversary of the armistice that ended formal hostilities that killed more than 4,000,000 people, about 20 percent of the entire population, and cost the lives of 36,000 US soldiers. At the Joint Security Area, the place where officials between the two Koreas meet for formal discussions, where soldiers from the two Koreas stare each other down in silence, we saw a 10-inch concrete strip that demarcates the boundary between the two Koreas. 10 million families are separated because of this division. The DMZ is both a geographic and existential scar that cleaves the peninsula and the hearts and minds of Koreans on both sides of the border, all 80 million souls waiting, praying, hoping for that dividing line someday to vanish into a reunified people no longer at war but finally at a durable peace.
This image of the ongoing, haunting division of Korea, and the horrifying images of bloodshed this past week that has marred the revolution in Egypt, make Jesus’ words in this morning’s gospel lesson profoundly troubling, so counter to the image of Jesus that we see in the rest of Luke’s gospel, the one who is supposed to bring peace on earth. What in the world is going on, to have the Prince of Peace claim that instead of peace his ministry divides parent against child, family against family? What on earth might be the good news in division? Especially when we see how tragedy can result through division, what it can do to a family, a community, a nation, how in the world might we see God’s grace in these words of Jesus? These are hard words to hear this morning, for me very difficult given what I and my students saw last month near the 38th parallel. I wonder if these words are hard for you too, especially those of us caught in the midst of some kind of strife or division that makes our very souls feel torn apart. It makes me, perhaps you and me, want to close our Bibles, pretend that this passage doesn’t exist, and get on with church that will make me feel happier, to go back to a God that takes care of us, to a Jesus that holds baby sheep in one hand and heals the sick and calms storms with the other. This passage makes me want to get on with church that makes me feel better after the service is over, allows me to say that we’ll all be alright, that we and the rest of humanity and God’s creation will be OK, can’t we all just get along? Can’t we just set this passage aside and get back to nice Jesus?
But perhaps that’s the point. Maybe that’s what Jesus is getting at when he says that his message brings not peace but division. Maybe this passage is here to remind us on this dog day of summer that the gospel calls us not to complacent happiness and satiated numbness, but instead to wake up to the fact that things actually are not OK in God’s creation. This passage reminds me of the prophet Jeremiah who 500 years before Jesus said of and to his community, “They have treated the wounds of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.” Jeremiah asked his community, particularly the elites, those in power in 6th century Judah, what kind of peace can you really claim when children go hungry, when poor women are left to fend for themselves, when landowners fatten themselves and their families while landless peasants go hungry on the very land on which they toil? There isn’t any real unity when a society blinds itself to the very real gaps that produce the real divisions of profound inequality and exploitation, discrimination and marginalization. To claim we’re all together while ignoring the miseries that people suffer is really nothing more than a false unity, a false peace. It’s not real peace, but a deathly silence that muffles the cries of the poor and hurting in our midst.
That, I think, is the gospel challenge that Jesus throws to his followers and to us in the church today. When we affirm our baptismal covenant to love our neighbors as ourselves, to strive for justice and peace among all, to respect the dignity of every human being and every part of God’s creation, Jesus tells us, we’d better be ready for the consequences. When we enact the radical love of God’s embrace of God’s world, when we sit at table like our Savior did, with the outcasts and the marginalized, those who suffer in body and spirit, you and I better be ready to get some serious blowback. Because for loving our LGBT sisters and brothers, we will be called heretics. For being stewards of God’s creation, we’ll be teased as tree-huggers. For standing with our brothers and sisters of color, we’ll be demeaned as reverse racists. For claiming that our mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, and women friends have every right to be who God calls them to be, inside and outside the church, we’ll be labeled radical feminists. And for honoring the traditions of those who call God by a different name, we will be pilloried as liberals, as secularists, as fakes. Make no mistake: we who call ourselves Jesus followers will not bring superficial peace when we live out his message of reconciliation for all of God’s people and creation, because we are telling those in the world, especially those in power—especially those who wield authority, political, religious, economic—that God is bigger than your ideology, your agenda, your theology, your false unity can hold. And that, sisters and brothers, is scary, scary stuff, because it threatens to break down the walls that institutions, inheritances, and enclosures try so hard to erect and keep up. This radical gospel that relentlessly calls all of us into God’s embrace shatters every status quo. God’s agenda is sure to divide because it calls us to engage one another and every one we meet as God’s beloved, not predetermined by where you come from, who your parents are, what skin tone you have, or which gender you love.
So brace yourselves, people of God, you’re going to get blowback, because that’s what Jesus got and what everyone in history who have struggled to follow Jesus has received. Later this month, our nation will remember the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, the incredible gathering of God’s people that culminated in the Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream Speech.” Most of us remember the soaring rhetoric of King’s dream, but it is important to remember also that his dream, like God’s dream, like God’s agenda, is not about a false peace or false unity but about a dream that comes from the clarity of what we as a society are facing and the costs that one might pay if we are to realize this dream. Two years after this speech, 48 years ago this week, on August 20, 1965, an Episcopal seminarian, Jonathan Daniels paid the ultimate price for realizing God’s dream. Moved by Dr. King’s call to clergy earlier that year to come to Selma, Alabama, to join the famous march to Montgomery, Daniels returned to Selma in August 1965 to participate in a voter-registration drive for local African Americans. Arrested on August 14th with other demonstrators, Daniels and his comrades were released on August 20th. As he and others approached a local store to get some soda, Tom Coleman, a deputy sheriff, made a racially derogatory and sexist statement to 17-year old Ruby Sales, and then pointed his 12-gauge shotgun at her. Jonathan Daniels pushed Ruby aside and stepped in the line of fire, and was killed instantly by the blast. Before his death, Daniels would regularly bring Black youth to the local Episcopal Church in Selma, where parishioners would scowl at them for their audacity to integrate the church. Of his ministry in Alabama, he wrote the following before he was killed: “I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection...with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all names that the races and nations shout...we are indelibly and unspeakably one.” In 1991, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church unanimously voted to make Jonathan Daniels a saint and martyr of the church, and we commemorate his life and ministry in our church calendar every August 14th.
Sisters and brothers of Messiah, brace yourselves, for in living out God’s agenda, in following our Savior Jesus as he throws down the gauntlet, the gauntlet where the proud are scattered, the powerful are brought down, the lowly are lifted up and the hungry are fed, where God’s spirit and God’s people break through and break down the barriers of every hierarchy the world throws up, you and I are going to get blowback. There will be no peace, but division, but really there will be no false peace and no false unity as the light and truth of God’s radical grace come pouring into our lives and the lives that you and I encounter when we leave this place this morning. May we, like our Savior, like our brother Jonathan Daniels, be faithful to our call to be agents of God’s true reconciling love, even and especially when it upsets people and the status quo, so that so we can indeed move ever closer to turning the human race into the human family.
A Sermon by the Rev. Ellen Hill
August 11, 2013
Proper 14C
The Reverend Ellen R. Hill
This morning I’d like to share a story with you about a little girl named Sadako who was just 2 years old 68 years ago last Tuesday when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima where she lived with her family. Some years later her father told her how fortunate their family had been because only 6 members of their family had been killed that awful August day. Otherwise, Sadako really never thought very much about that bomb which had fallen on her home town while she was still a baby. Instead, she spent most of her time thinking about the great dream she had from the time she first entered school.
You see Sadako wanted to be a great runner. Her hope was that maybe someday, if she really practiced hard, she might become good enough to compete in the Olympics. By the time she was 9 years old she was already representing her class at the All School Field Day and she was working very hard toward her next goal which was to represent her Junior High School in the All City Races. Each day Sadko practiced with a dedication and a focus which surprised her family and friends mainly because it was highly unusual for such a young child to be so self-motivated and driven to achieve a goal.
One day while she was running Sadako suddenly fell. Later as she tried to figure out what had made her fall she realized that she’d fallen because she’d become dizzy. When she thought about it she really wasn’t that surprised she’d become dizzy while running because she remembered that she’d been so busy practicing in the mornings that she’d been skipping breakfast so that she could get a run in before school. Unfortunately, the dizziness continued even on days when she had eaten breakfast. Finally, one day while she was running at school she fell again and this time she wasn’t able to get up. In fact, the teachers weren’t able to get her to stand because her legs just didn’t seem to want to hold her up.
Her parents came to get her and immediately took her to the hospital. Within a few hours their worst fears were confirmed Sadako had leukemia the most feared illness of all for anyone who’d lived in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. For the reality was the radiation which was stored in their bodies from that awful August day eventually caused leukemia in many people. When her parents told her what was wrong with her Sadako cried “But Daddy, it can’t be true. I can’t have the poison. I wasn’t even touched by the bomb!” But it was true. And so Sadako began the endless round of treatments with which doctors all over the world fight this terrible disease for which we still have no cure.
No longer were Sadako’s days filled with hours of her running as swiftly as a deer. Now there were only endless days in the hospital where she was confined to a bed. One day her very best friend came to visit Sadako in the hospital and handed her a piece of paper which had been carefully folded into the shape of a crane. Sadako took the paper crane and thanked her friend. But the friend said, “Sadako, this crane isn’t just a present. This is a good luck piece. Haven’t you heard the story of the crane? You see,” she went on, “it’s said that any sick person who folds a thousand cranes will get well! So let’s get started!” And with that her friend began to teach Sadako how to fold a crane out of a scrap of paper. That very afternoon the two young girls folded 10 paper cranes and strangely enough Sadako felt a little better. After her friend left as she lay in her bed that night Sadako wondered whether the story about the cranes was really true. Could these funny little paper cranes actually bring sick people good luck? So just to be on the safe side the next morning Sadako asked the nurses for paper and she told them that she had to get busy because she had 990 more cranes to fold!
In the days that followed Sadako folded many cranes. Her brother and the nurses hung the cranes from the ceiling and they put them on every shelf in her hospital room. Before long everyone was saving paper for her. But by the time she had folded 200 cranes the dizziness began to get worse. At times she was so weak that it was impossible for her to lift her arms. But then suddenly she would get an unexplained burst of energy and her hands would quickly fold the beautiful paper cranes 300, 400, 500.
After a while the period between the new cranes being added to the collection became longer and longer for Sadako because she was so weak. But no matter how badly she felt her hope never died. For she was determined to finish folding all 1000 cranes. Each day the nurses encouraged the bright-eyed little girl with the sweet smile. “Only a few hundred more to go” they would tell her. Near the end of July when Sadako folded her 600th paper crane her family and friends were told that they would have to keep their visits short because she was getting weaker every day. And yet each and every time they visited her in that special hospital for leukemia victims they found that she had managed to fold a few more cranes. Now, however, the total was counted in 5's instead of hundreds. But still the number of cranes grew 610, 615, 620.
Finally one night Sadako’s strength gave out and she closed her eyes and didn’t reopen them. But Sadako’s friend and their other classmates finished folding the rest of the cranes. And they took those 1000 cranes and they threaded them into a wreath which was placed over her body. You see those paper cranes had become a symbol of hope for that little girl. And folding those cranes had given her the strength to go on and to keep believing in the possibility of her future. But more importantly, those cranes also served as a symbol of hope for her friends and her classmates who finished her task and made that wreath of cranes to place on her body. Then with the help of their teacher those children decided to try to raise enough money to erect a children’s monument in the Peace Park in Hiroshima as a reminder of what the bomb had done to children. After a long and difficult campaign Sadako’s classmates raised the necessary money. And so today if you should visit the Peace Park in Hiroshima you will see on a large hollow pedestal of granite the figure of Sadako with a golden crane perched on her outstretched hand. For she has become a symbol of hope for people round the world who have sent hundreds of crane wreaths to Hiroshima to be draped over her statue as a symbol of their hope that never again will that kind of destruction happen to any other part of God’s incredibly beautiful creation.
Of St. Paul’s famous trio: faith, hope and love Paul claimed the greatest was love which is undoubtedly true. But it’s also true that perhaps the most neglected one of those three virtues is hope. And yet it’s a major theme through-out both the Old and New Testaments as well as the theme that runs through this morning’s lessons. The word hope had a much deeper meaning for the Hebrews than it has for us today. It was nothing other than hope that sustained Abram and Sarah as they struggled to believe the incredible promise that God had made to them. The fact that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars even though Sarah was well past child bearing years and all of the facts of their lives said that was nothing but crazy wishful thinking, a pipe dream. Yet they continued to hope and they trusted in God’s promise even when all of the evidence of their lives pointed to the contrary.
You know in many ways you and I are a lot like Abram and Sarah for at various times in our individual lives you and I have to struggle to continue to believe in God’s promises and to trust that God will come through for us. And most of us have difficulty doing that because very often the everyday facts of our lives are awfully hard to deny and so sometimes it’s so much easier to give into hopelessness and despair and even depression. It’s very hard to hold on to hope and continue to believe in God’s promises when the facts of our individual lives don’t support the possibility that God’s promises could ever be kept. And yet that’s precisely what you and I need to do if we’re going to survive like Sarah and Abram did.
And the kind of faith that you and I need to do that is beautifully described in that Letter to the Hebrews as hope. That’s what sustains all of us whenever we face adversity in our lives. For at those dark and frightening times you and I often have to struggle to keep our faith alive; to continue to hope in the possibility of our future. And that’s as real and exhausting a struggle for us as it was for Sadako to go on folding those cranes as she grew weaker and weaker day by day. But you and I have to do it because the triptik for our individual life’s journey isn’t complete. Oh the point of our departure is clear. God has called each one of us into life. But the route our lives will take is not clear. It’s not marked with that florescent marker that they use at the Auto Club when you go in and ask for a triptik for your next road trip.
To make things even worse, none of us is totally certain exactly where it is that we’re ultimately headed. All we know is that we’ve been called into life and we’re trying to be as faithful as we can be on a road which is often filled with terrors. The only thing that makes it possible for us to continue on our journey and the reason that we won’t just throw in the towel and quit is because you and I have hope. We believe that there is a land of promise that awaits us at the end of the road of life. And so we trust God’s promise and we keep going. Just like little Sadako, you and I keep folding those cranes and we do that because we know that it’s hope itself which reshapes our lives. It’s hope which gives us the courage to continue our journey into our unseen and unknown future. And that hope which propels us, comes from our faith because it reminds us that the course of our lives isn’t limited nor determined by what we can see. It reminds us that the way into God’s future is through living in the present with the resilient hope and confidence that God who is the builder and maker of the whole of creation still has unseen graces to offer us daily.
And so my friends to live in hope as Sadako did is to live in gracious openness to God, resisting the impulse to turn around and go back, or to hold back, or to quit. Hope enables us to remember that our faith teaches us that God’s promise is never exhausted because God is always on the move, working in the creation calling us to God’s self. And so this morning as we leave church let’s remember that it was hope that inspired the lives of Sarah and Abram and little Sadako and that God is preparing a future for us. A future that can’t be measured by the confines of this world and because of that promise let us allow the irresistible hope filled power of our faith to keep our own present realities continually open to the inbreaking of God’s future in our individual lives. Amen.
Proper 14C
The Reverend Ellen R. Hill
This morning I’d like to share a story with you about a little girl named Sadako who was just 2 years old 68 years ago last Tuesday when the world’s first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima where she lived with her family. Some years later her father told her how fortunate their family had been because only 6 members of their family had been killed that awful August day. Otherwise, Sadako really never thought very much about that bomb which had fallen on her home town while she was still a baby. Instead, she spent most of her time thinking about the great dream she had from the time she first entered school.
You see Sadako wanted to be a great runner. Her hope was that maybe someday, if she really practiced hard, she might become good enough to compete in the Olympics. By the time she was 9 years old she was already representing her class at the All School Field Day and she was working very hard toward her next goal which was to represent her Junior High School in the All City Races. Each day Sadko practiced with a dedication and a focus which surprised her family and friends mainly because it was highly unusual for such a young child to be so self-motivated and driven to achieve a goal.
One day while she was running Sadako suddenly fell. Later as she tried to figure out what had made her fall she realized that she’d fallen because she’d become dizzy. When she thought about it she really wasn’t that surprised she’d become dizzy while running because she remembered that she’d been so busy practicing in the mornings that she’d been skipping breakfast so that she could get a run in before school. Unfortunately, the dizziness continued even on days when she had eaten breakfast. Finally, one day while she was running at school she fell again and this time she wasn’t able to get up. In fact, the teachers weren’t able to get her to stand because her legs just didn’t seem to want to hold her up.
Her parents came to get her and immediately took her to the hospital. Within a few hours their worst fears were confirmed Sadako had leukemia the most feared illness of all for anyone who’d lived in Hiroshima when the bomb fell. For the reality was the radiation which was stored in their bodies from that awful August day eventually caused leukemia in many people. When her parents told her what was wrong with her Sadako cried “But Daddy, it can’t be true. I can’t have the poison. I wasn’t even touched by the bomb!” But it was true. And so Sadako began the endless round of treatments with which doctors all over the world fight this terrible disease for which we still have no cure.
No longer were Sadako’s days filled with hours of her running as swiftly as a deer. Now there were only endless days in the hospital where she was confined to a bed. One day her very best friend came to visit Sadako in the hospital and handed her a piece of paper which had been carefully folded into the shape of a crane. Sadako took the paper crane and thanked her friend. But the friend said, “Sadako, this crane isn’t just a present. This is a good luck piece. Haven’t you heard the story of the crane? You see,” she went on, “it’s said that any sick person who folds a thousand cranes will get well! So let’s get started!” And with that her friend began to teach Sadako how to fold a crane out of a scrap of paper. That very afternoon the two young girls folded 10 paper cranes and strangely enough Sadako felt a little better. After her friend left as she lay in her bed that night Sadako wondered whether the story about the cranes was really true. Could these funny little paper cranes actually bring sick people good luck? So just to be on the safe side the next morning Sadako asked the nurses for paper and she told them that she had to get busy because she had 990 more cranes to fold!
In the days that followed Sadako folded many cranes. Her brother and the nurses hung the cranes from the ceiling and they put them on every shelf in her hospital room. Before long everyone was saving paper for her. But by the time she had folded 200 cranes the dizziness began to get worse. At times she was so weak that it was impossible for her to lift her arms. But then suddenly she would get an unexplained burst of energy and her hands would quickly fold the beautiful paper cranes 300, 400, 500.
After a while the period between the new cranes being added to the collection became longer and longer for Sadako because she was so weak. But no matter how badly she felt her hope never died. For she was determined to finish folding all 1000 cranes. Each day the nurses encouraged the bright-eyed little girl with the sweet smile. “Only a few hundred more to go” they would tell her. Near the end of July when Sadako folded her 600th paper crane her family and friends were told that they would have to keep their visits short because she was getting weaker every day. And yet each and every time they visited her in that special hospital for leukemia victims they found that she had managed to fold a few more cranes. Now, however, the total was counted in 5's instead of hundreds. But still the number of cranes grew 610, 615, 620.
Finally one night Sadako’s strength gave out and she closed her eyes and didn’t reopen them. But Sadako’s friend and their other classmates finished folding the rest of the cranes. And they took those 1000 cranes and they threaded them into a wreath which was placed over her body. You see those paper cranes had become a symbol of hope for that little girl. And folding those cranes had given her the strength to go on and to keep believing in the possibility of her future. But more importantly, those cranes also served as a symbol of hope for her friends and her classmates who finished her task and made that wreath of cranes to place on her body. Then with the help of their teacher those children decided to try to raise enough money to erect a children’s monument in the Peace Park in Hiroshima as a reminder of what the bomb had done to children. After a long and difficult campaign Sadako’s classmates raised the necessary money. And so today if you should visit the Peace Park in Hiroshima you will see on a large hollow pedestal of granite the figure of Sadako with a golden crane perched on her outstretched hand. For she has become a symbol of hope for people round the world who have sent hundreds of crane wreaths to Hiroshima to be draped over her statue as a symbol of their hope that never again will that kind of destruction happen to any other part of God’s incredibly beautiful creation.
Of St. Paul’s famous trio: faith, hope and love Paul claimed the greatest was love which is undoubtedly true. But it’s also true that perhaps the most neglected one of those three virtues is hope. And yet it’s a major theme through-out both the Old and New Testaments as well as the theme that runs through this morning’s lessons. The word hope had a much deeper meaning for the Hebrews than it has for us today. It was nothing other than hope that sustained Abram and Sarah as they struggled to believe the incredible promise that God had made to them. The fact that they would have descendants as numerous as the stars even though Sarah was well past child bearing years and all of the facts of their lives said that was nothing but crazy wishful thinking, a pipe dream. Yet they continued to hope and they trusted in God’s promise even when all of the evidence of their lives pointed to the contrary.
You know in many ways you and I are a lot like Abram and Sarah for at various times in our individual lives you and I have to struggle to continue to believe in God’s promises and to trust that God will come through for us. And most of us have difficulty doing that because very often the everyday facts of our lives are awfully hard to deny and so sometimes it’s so much easier to give into hopelessness and despair and even depression. It’s very hard to hold on to hope and continue to believe in God’s promises when the facts of our individual lives don’t support the possibility that God’s promises could ever be kept. And yet that’s precisely what you and I need to do if we’re going to survive like Sarah and Abram did.
And the kind of faith that you and I need to do that is beautifully described in that Letter to the Hebrews as hope. That’s what sustains all of us whenever we face adversity in our lives. For at those dark and frightening times you and I often have to struggle to keep our faith alive; to continue to hope in the possibility of our future. And that’s as real and exhausting a struggle for us as it was for Sadako to go on folding those cranes as she grew weaker and weaker day by day. But you and I have to do it because the triptik for our individual life’s journey isn’t complete. Oh the point of our departure is clear. God has called each one of us into life. But the route our lives will take is not clear. It’s not marked with that florescent marker that they use at the Auto Club when you go in and ask for a triptik for your next road trip.
To make things even worse, none of us is totally certain exactly where it is that we’re ultimately headed. All we know is that we’ve been called into life and we’re trying to be as faithful as we can be on a road which is often filled with terrors. The only thing that makes it possible for us to continue on our journey and the reason that we won’t just throw in the towel and quit is because you and I have hope. We believe that there is a land of promise that awaits us at the end of the road of life. And so we trust God’s promise and we keep going. Just like little Sadako, you and I keep folding those cranes and we do that because we know that it’s hope itself which reshapes our lives. It’s hope which gives us the courage to continue our journey into our unseen and unknown future. And that hope which propels us, comes from our faith because it reminds us that the course of our lives isn’t limited nor determined by what we can see. It reminds us that the way into God’s future is through living in the present with the resilient hope and confidence that God who is the builder and maker of the whole of creation still has unseen graces to offer us daily.
And so my friends to live in hope as Sadako did is to live in gracious openness to God, resisting the impulse to turn around and go back, or to hold back, or to quit. Hope enables us to remember that our faith teaches us that God’s promise is never exhausted because God is always on the move, working in the creation calling us to God’s self. And so this morning as we leave church let’s remember that it was hope that inspired the lives of Sarah and Abram and little Sadako and that God is preparing a future for us. A future that can’t be measured by the confines of this world and because of that promise let us allow the irresistible hope filled power of our faith to keep our own present realities continually open to the inbreaking of God’s future in our individual lives. Amen.
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