The Master's Tools (The Rev. Deacon Jackie Cherry, September 22, 2013)

I like the challenge of writing a lectionary based sermon. And I like the extra challenge of writing a lectionary based sermon that inspires a congregation to shell out even more of its hard-earned money to the church. But the bar is set ridiculously high this morning as I imagine you’d much rather hear me talk about sex.

Friends, I have 10 minutes to deliver a lectionary based, stewardship, gay-sex-scandal sermon.
Here we go...

I don’t know anyone who likes preaching the Parable of the “Dishonest Manager”. In fact, I bet I’m in the pulpit this morning because the Reverends Richard, Jack and Robert didn’t want to have anything to do with this bothersome gospel. Thanks guys. Isn’t it true that historically it’s the women who do the hard work?

The problem with today’s parable is that the manager is praised for actions that are clearly dishonest. First he squanders the rich man’s money. Then, upon learning he will be fired, the dishonest manager reduces the tenants’ debts. However, this gesture of kindness to the debtors isn’t intended to free them of their debt. Rather, the dishonest manager is angling to protect his own future by making the debtors beholden to him. Soon, the manager will be penniless and without a job, but the tenants have been tricked, and they will welcome this shyster into their homes.

In 1979, the black lesbian poet Audre Lorde wrote an essay called, The Master'sTools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House. Based on theories presented in her essay, Lorde might argue that the dishonest manager is doing more than simply reducing the tenants’ debt for his own gain. At the same time the manager is scheming to secure his own future, he is also exposing the injustice of the existing oppressive system of wealth; a system that kept the poor indebted to the rich landlords who commanded an unfair percentage of their crops. The economic systems in place today are equally unjust. The minimum wage isn’t a living wage.  The rich make their millions off the backs of the dark-skinned workers in falling-down factories, and bent over laborers in blazing hot fields.

Lorde might also suggest, that working within systems that are inherently oppressive, will never produce real change. Playing by the rules that shelter the dominant values, values that protect the strong and endanger the vulnerable is ultimately ineffective. Lorde says:

For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house.
They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game,
but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.

In this illustration, Audre Lorde talking about dismantling the master’s house sounds a lot like Jesus Christ talking about the kingdom of heaven: they both strive to turn the ways of the world upside down. No thrones for the powerful, the lowly lifted up; the hungry are fed, and the stone hearts of the oppressors are broken open. I think it’s fair to say that earthly riches didn’t matter to Jesus. And, the amount of money we have today means nothing to God. But what we choose to do with our money, now that is a different story.

When I enter this holy place, this place that we call St. John’s, I am aware of God’s presence. It’s as if our very church were God’s dwelling place.  This is true for me because when I come into this church, I know I can come just as I am. And when I am here being who I am, without the fear of being cast out because of who I am, I am able to be present to God. And when I am present to God, I can move through this world in love.

Isn’t that all each of us wants to do? Live into the truth of who God created us to be?
And be welcomed for who we are?

That’s what we do at St. John’s, that’s why I’m here. I suspect it’s why many of you are here too. We invite in the homeless, and we share our food with the hungry, we welcome the gays, the bisexuals, the transgenders, in addition to the heterosexuals.  Our doors and our hearts are open to anybody who desires a place to worship God and to share in the Body of Christ. Our church has been a sanctuary for the oppressed and the outcasts for decades.

I have friends – gay friends and straight friends – who have challenged my religion. They ask a valid question –
Why do you want to be part of a church that has historically rejected gay people?
And I tell them about St. John’s:
I am the Deacon at a progressive Episcopal Church in the Mission District;  Our Vicar is a gay man, he has a husband and a son;
He goes to Sacramento and Washington D.C. to fight for immigration reform;  He marches in the streets protesting big banks and their predatory mortgage practices;  He led the fight that stopped Wells Fargo from repossessing the house of our colleague, the Rev. Gloria del Castillo.

Richard Smith represents my values. When I look at Richard, I see a man who shares part of my story. It's true, he is a white male with lots of privilege, but he understands what it's like to be judged as other. Plus, he is one of the kindest, gentlest men I have ever met. And I’m not saying this because he’s my friend, I’ve never told him any of these things.

Richard Smith is the priest this congregation wanted as its leader the moment the Rev. John Kirkley resigned in July of 2010. And he is the priest Bp. Marc appointed to be our Vicar in December of 2012.

Brothers and sisters, I am heartbroken that our Vicar had to send out an email warning us of a possible disruption in our liturgy this morning.  And I am appalled that he believes it necessary to assure us that he is not a rapist or pedophile.

If Richard is not morally fit to be our Vicar, than I am not morally fit to be your Deacon.

This parish that has been a sanctuary for the oppressed is being terrorized by a virulent strain of homophobia that I thought had been abolished, at least in this city, decades ago.

Some of the qualities that make Richard such a remarkable human being – his sense of fairness, generosity and willingness to give everybody the benefit of the doubt - also leave him vulnerable.

Some of the qualities that make this congregation remarkable – radical hospitality, progressive politics and welcoming people just as they are - also leave us vulnerable.

Audre Lorde knew all about racism and homophobia. She wrote:

Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable know that survival is learning how to stand alone, unpopular
and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths.

Four years ago we welcomed the Rev. Gloria del Castillo and her congregation into our church. Gloria told us her people were refugees looking for a home. The leaders of both congregations identified as companions who stood outside the circle of society’s definition of acceptable. It is clear now that the marriage between our congregations failed because we were trying to build a relationship without respecting our differences. Survival requires us to embrace our differences and make them strengths.

But calling our Vicar the anti-Christ and suggesting that he is not morally equipped to lead our parish goes beyond a culture clash. It is defamation.

Our politically correct radical hospitality and fear of being called racist
has impaired our good judgment and silenced even the most vocal among us.

And here we are, reeling under the threat of protesters and police, the media and lawsuits; and our Vicar, the priest who embodies the values of the absolute majority of this congregation, the priest whom we sought for more than two years; here we are, being assaulted by the master’s tools wielded in the hand of the oppressed.

Until today, I entered this church just as I am. The unconditional acceptance that St. John’s had always offered is why I’ve stayed here over 20 years; I want this church to remain a sanctuary. The world needs this church to remain a sanctuary. I ask that you hold this community in your hearts, we need your prayers, and, as Birgit is about to tell you, we need your money too. Amen.

The Lost Sheep and the Lost Coin (The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith; Year C, Proper 19; September 15, 2013

The other day I was looking for something at the bottom of my backpack. My backpack is like the purses of many women. It’s a virtual Bermuda Triangle where things mysteriously disappear. When you reach in, you never know what you might find: an old key to I can't remember what, an expired Muni transfer ticket, an occasional dollar bill.

The other day, I reached in and pulled out this purple button with the words “More Love”.

If you’ve been around St. John’s a few years, you will recognize this. “More Love” has been our mantra here for many years. The words express what is in our DNA as human beings, as followers of Jesus, as members of this parish. We each desire more life, more beauty, more joy and laughter, and especially more love.

It's the way God made us, this desire for an ever greater fullness and completeness. More Love.

And in today's gospel about the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus suggests that this very same desire is found in the heart of God.

The numbers 100 and 10 are symbols of wholeness and completeness. In these stories, the wholeness has been broken: one of the 100 sheep is lost, one of the 10 coins is missing.

There is an incompleteness, and with that incompleteness comes a restlessness, a drive for wholeness. And so the shepherd is driven to climb through cracks and crevices, run over hill and dale to find the one lost sheep. 

And the woman searches the entire house maybe three or four times looking for this stupid coin. She goes through the trash, looks under the beds, checks her husband’s pockets. She lies awake at night, wondering where she has failed to look, or where she might look again more thoroughly. She talks to all her friends. She wonders if she’s losing her mind.

And then one day, when she is sweeping in a place she’s already been over more than once, she sees a glint of metal. There it is, scuttling across the floor! And so she goes back to all her friends--the same ones who have had to listen to her talk about losing the coin--and they share her joy and relief.

This woman and this shepherd are symbols of God and of God’s insatiable desire for fullness, completeness, more love.

I see this desire for fullness, for more love, at work our parish. It is what has moved us to do our work together the past few months. During the first few months of the year, we shared our stories in small groups in each others homes. We talked about those things that keep us awake at night:

• Things like what's going to happen to each of us and the people we care about as we get older 
• And our fear of violence, not just here in the Mission but in our own neighborhoods
• And the sense of isolation we can feel in this vast post-modern urban landscape

Each of these issues in its own way echoes the desire we each have for more life, more love. And these stories have led us to move in some bold new directions.

For example, last week our Bishop's Committee decided to officially become part of the San Francisco Organizing Project (SFOP), a federation of 30 faith communities working to improve the City. Because we’re not the only ones who have lied awake at night worrying about aging and violence and isolation.

• Many people in San Francisco worry about their futures as they and their parents get older. Right now, the Affordable Health Care Act , Obamacare, is being rolled out across the country. Here in San Francisco, our political leaders are making decisions that will affect people like our own beloved Nico and Marie Fowler and many of us sitting right here this morning. Because of our partnership with SFOP, people like Nico and Marie and others in our parish will be able to sit down with people like the Mayor and other political leaders, telling them our needs, making sure that people in our community are not left out of the decisions affecting our healthcare as we get older. At the risk of sounding flip, we hope to see a little “more love” from our elected officials.
• We’re not the only ones who worry about violence in our neighborhoods. Again in partnership with the faith communities in SFOP, we will have the chance to address this fear head on. For example, we’ll be able to join other faith communities in nightwalks. In these nightwalks, clergy and people of faith spend an evening each week walking as a group through the most dangerous streets of their towns, providing a presence of peace, urging an end to the violence. These nightwalks are already well underway in Oakland and Richmond, and where they have walked, the homicide rate has dropped by as much as 30%. A few lives saved. A little less violence in our neighborhoods, a little more love. You’ll hear more about nightwalks in the coming weeks.
• And we’re not the only ones who feel isolated in our rapidly changing, individualistic urban scene. One of our best antidotes to this isolation is right here in our own parish community and what happens each week around this table as we recommit ourselves to each other and to the work that Jesus has called us to. 

But there are other things happening in our parish:

• The pastoral care team has been reviving itself to help us stay more connected.
• I try to send out a weekly e-newsletter to help keep us in touch. 
• A few folks are working on a way for parishioners to meet in small groups to share our lives and faith in more intimate settings.

All of these are ways to counter the isolation we can sometimes feel, to find here in our parish more love.

That love goes beyond the walls of our parish and community.

• As you may know, one out of five Latino kids in the Mission now lives in poverty--nearly twice San Francisco’s poverty rate. Seven of the 10 lowest performing schools in San Francisco are here in the Mission. It's why years ago this parish gave birth to Mission Graduates, to help kids stay in school, graduate from high school, and go on to college. It’s one of our City’s strongest community-based academic programs. This year we’ve renewed and deepened our connection with Mission Graduates. You can see them once again using this space for their special trainings and celebrations, and they are happy to remember that St. John's is their home.
• We've continued our connection to El Porvenir, the amazing organization that helps people in rural Nicaragua dig wells to bring clean water to the people of their villages.
• Every Saturday morning, at our the Julian Pantry, 250-300 people receive food.
• Every Thursday noon, our own Robert Cromey vigils at the Federal Building for an end to the wars.
• And we've stood by many Latino families in our neighborhood who have been at risk of being torn apart by our broken immigration system, sometimes trying to stop an unjust deportation, at other times joining them in calling for immigration reform.

These are just our collective efforts. I could go on to describe the amazing things that each of you do every day on your jobs and other volunteer efforts around the Bay Area.

This desire for More Love keeps moving us to do some amazing things.

And this is the context for what I want to say next, about what it takes for us to do these amazing things.

For example, one thing essential to our ministries is this amazing space.

Have you noticed how the light is in here around, say, 5 or 6pm? Something happens to people who come here that time of evening. They might stumble in here unwittingly, thinking they were coming to just another meeting to strategize about immigration reform, or plan a press conference around the foreclosure issue, or talk about their experiences as transgendered women and the assaults and violence they've been experiencing at the 16th street BART station.

They might come here thinking it’s for just another planning meeting. But while they're here in this space, something happens. Other parts of their heart open up. Suddenly they are talking not just about politics and strategies and plans, but also about their faith and how it sustains them through all their struggles. They let down their guard and talk about the faith of their immigrant parents who brought them to this country for a better life, their trust that even in the midst of their struggles God is very near to them.

I've seen this more than once. It is always unplanned. I don't completely understand it, and yet I marvel each time I see it. Something about this space.

When I see this, it makes so very worthwhile all the work the wardens and Bishop's Committee do to maintain this space: replacing the roof, keeping the heat on, sweeping and mopping and vacuuming, cleaning the carpets and the furniture, securing the premises, keeping things in good repair. All these nitty gritty, mundane tasks without which none of our efforts to find and share More Love could ever happen here.

And there are the smaller things: 

• A temperamental copy machine, computers, phones, electricity, heat, cleaning supplies, light bulbs.
• And a part-time staff: a parish administrator to make the service bulletins, answer the phone, run to the bank, manage the paperwork 
• A music director to gather our dulcet tones during liturgy each week 
• A sexton to help keep the space clean 
• And, of course. yours truly (thanks for helping me support my family)

When we talk about More Love, we're talking about all these nitty gritty things. This is how More Love happens, becomes real. 

It's our fundraising season. Over the next few weeks we’ll each be discerning how we will participate financially in the life and work of this amazing parish. In a couple of weeks, we will each be asked to fill out a card stating the amount we plan to contribute over the coming year. This information will make it possible for our Bishop’s Committee to create a budget and plan the year ahead.

Please pray about this, so that your decision is grounded not just in running the numbers in your checkbook, but in a deeper place, in your heart and what you believe, the values you cherish, the kind of person you want to be.

Our tradition invites us to tithe, and it’s a worthy goal for all of us. This means giving away 10% of our income. You can give part of that 10% to the church and the rest to other good works.

You may decide that you’re not able to tithe this year. No worries, give what you can. No pledge is too small. I’m thinking of the African proverb: “If you think you're too small to make a difference, you haven't spent a night with a mosquito.”

Be as generous as you can, even if you sometimes feel like a mosquito.

Be like the crazy shepherd and the compulsive-obsessive woman in today’s gospel, driven for a desire for wholeness, a greater fullness. Let your financial discernment be grounded in your heart’s deepest desire for more love.

Banquet Strategies (The Rev. Dr. Richard Smith; Proper 17, Year C; September 1, 2013)

If I ever decide to do drag, I want to be like Dorothy Parker. She was an American writer known for her clever and scathing wit. Once she was attempting to go through a doorway at the same time as the glamorous socialite and playwright Clare Boothe Luce. Words were exchanged. Clare Boothe Luce stepped back for Dorothy and said, “Age before beauty.” Dorothy Parker replied; "Age before beauty? You mean pearls before swine." Then she swooped through the door.

Gotta hold on to our place in the social hierarchy, the food chain of money and status and looking cool.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus is invited to a banquet and notices how the guests are jockeying for the best seats at the table, the best positions in the social hierarchy. What he offers them is something like a New Yorker cartoon, a parody of their own self-serving strategies to gain a higher status.

Flannery O'Connor, the Southern, Christian writer, was once asked why her characters were so grotesque. She replied that you had to paint large, grotesque figures for the blind to see. She said we are largely blind to the assumptions that we live by and that drive our behavior. She fashioned grotesque characters and violent plots to wake us up to who we are and what we are truly concerned with. Her stories shock, but they also reveal. She was doing in her stories what Jesus does in this gospel passage today.

Like Flannery O'Connor, Jesus is holding up a mirror to the folks at the party, exposing the self-serving way their minds work.

And he offers them a ludicrous, non-starter of a strategy for gaining the edge on everyone else at the party. He suggests playing humble in the hope of winning big for all to see. Don’t head for the best place at table, take the lowest one, pretend to be humble, and then the host will reward you by inviting you up higher.

It’s a questionable strategy, and you’d have to be pretty obsessed with your own advancement in the food chain to even try it.

You could lose big time. Instead of inviting you higher, the host could end up saying, "Well, I see you've found your rightful place." Or you could end up enjoying the riff-raff at the lower end of the table so much that, when the host does invite you higher, you decline because you're having so much fun.

So Jesus' strategy is a questionable one, and if the guests entertain it even for a moment, they are exposed, busted for the status whores that they are. It suddenly becomes clear that what is driving them is their own insatiable drive for status.

In exposing them in this way, Jesus is inviting them to something deeper, something more real. To find their dignity, their deepest joy, not in their place on the food chain, but somewhere else.

When we  know we’re infinitely loved by the Creator of the Universe it really doesn’t matter where we sit at somebody’s dinner party. Or if we even invited. There is great freedom in not having to worry about those things. We find that our dignity doesn't depend on that stuff, but on something deeper, on our being loved and cherished by God. And that is something no one can take from us.

Our hearts are centered somewhere else, our treasure lies somewhere else. Maybe this is what St. Paul meant when he wrote:

But whatever gain I had, I count as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.

These are the words of a man who has really found something, something more important than where he happens to be in the social hierarchy and in the eyes of others.

In addition to advice for the guests, Jesus has some advice for his host:

When you give a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

He’s calling out the “I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine” approach to dinner parties . He’s revealing that this host’s guest list is not just about the host’s extravagant generosity, but about reinforcing the social hierarchy and ensuring his own place in it.

Once again, he is holding up a mirror so the host can see himself and the game of social posturing and hypocrisy he’s caught up in.

This past week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. King’s life-changing “I Have a Dream” speech. Maybe today’s parable sheds light on what we Americans celebrated there...

What if America was a banquet, and at this banquet the servings were fair wages, just trials, civil rights and liberties, but only certain people were invited? According to those who “March(ed) on Washington,” this was exactly the case. Blacks were simply not invited to that feast and they have had to struggle to receive the same opportunities as whites, the same level of respect, and equal rights.

Blacks’ experience of slavery, the most recent verdict in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman situation, and the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act--these things show the struggle persists because our corporate and political leaders go to great lengths to keep the social hierarchy intact, to tightly control the guest list to the banquet, to keep a place of privilege for whites.

White privilege. The writer Tim Wise, who happens to be white, gives a few examples of it from various studies, including some from the Justice Department.

• Job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview than applicants with black-sounding names, even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same. 
• White men with a criminal record are more likely to get a call-back for an interview than black men who don’t have one, even when all the qualifications, demeanor, and communication styles are the same. 
• White women are far more likely than black women to be hired by temp agencies, even when the black women have more experience and are more qualified.
• In the housing market, there are about two million cases of race-based discrimination against people of color every year in the US. That’s not just bad for folks of color; the flipside is that there are, as a result, millions more places I can live as a white person. White privilege.
• Or consider criminal justice. Although whites are equally or more likely than blacks or Latinos to use drugs, people of color (blacks and Latinos mostly) comprise about 90 percent of the persons incarcerated for drug possession.
• And although white men are more likely to be caught with drugs in our cars (if we are even searched), black men remain about four times more likely to be searched in the first place.
• And as the war drums start to beat yet again, it is black and Latino kids, their moms and dads and families, that will pay the heaviest price.

That’s privilege for the dominant group. It is far from Dr. King’s dream that we remembered this last week, that we not be judged by the color of our skin but by the content of our character.

Jesus seemed to feel more comfortable at a different kind of banquet than the kind he was invited to in today’s gospel, the kind we seem to have in this country. He loved to have dinner with whores and tax collectors and known public sinners. And as a devout Jew he looked for the day when all people of every tribe and nation would feast in the kingdom of God, where everyone would have a place, no one would be excluded.

And, like Jesus, we look with hope to that day, too, and re-commit ourselves to bringing it about, and celebrate it, as it were, in advance, every time we gather at this table, where everyone has a place and no one is excluded.