Going to Jerusalem; Proper 17, Year A; August 31, 2014; The Rev'd Richard Smith, Ph.D.

I’ll talk about today’s gospel in a moment, but since we're starting another school year, let me give you a pop quiz about the world we live in.

Question 1: Which country in the world has the largest percentage of its population behind bars?

Answer: The US. With 2.3 million prisoners, the US has more people in prison than China, which has a population four times the size of the US.

Our incarceration rate is six to ten times greater than that of the other industrialized nations--and this is despite the fact that the crime rate in the US has dipped below the international norm.

Clearly, since crime has been going down over the last few decades, this rising mass incarceration is not about stopping crime or reducing the crime rate. Something else must be going on here.

Question 2: Among racial groups in the US, which group is most likely to commit drug crimes?

Answer: Whites, especially White youth.

Yet in some states, Black men have been incarcerated for drug charges at rates twenty to fifty times greater than those of White men. We now incarcerate a higher percentage of Black people than were incarcerated at the height of apartheid in South Africa. When these young men come out of prison,  if they are still young then, they are often unable to find work, either because of discriminatory laws or because of the stigma of having been in prison. And they are not allowed to vote.

Here’s how a Latino high school kid in our neighborhood explained the racial disparity to me. If a White kid is found carrying a small amount of marijuana, the police drive him home, talk to his parents, the parents ground the kid for a few weeks, and that is the end of it. But if a Latino kid in the Mission is found with the same amount of marijuana, he has his head slammed against a wall. Next thing, he’s kneeling on the sidewalk, his hands cuffed behind his back, waiting to be taken to the police station.

As the recent events in Ferguson have brought into bold relief, the practices of law enforcement are often racially charged.

Bonus question: In the City of Oakland, what is the most frequently shoplifted item?

Answer: One study lists it as baby diapers. Many poor women of color have had no other way to get the things they need for their children. Many of these women, after being charged with shoplifting diapers, have then been been torn from their children and sent to prison. For stealing diapers for their kids.

Think about it: None of the Wall Street executives who caused the global economic meltdown have gone to prison so far, but poor moms in Oakland are imprisoned for shoplifting diapers for their kids.

This is our context. We are living in an era that some have called the new Jim Crow, referring back to the days of racial segregation.

And our context resembles in many ways the context of Jesus where the victims of imprisonment and crucifixion by the Romans were nearly always the social outcasts and members of the lowest classes. These were often the same ones rejected by the religious authorities as unclean, as sinners.

It was with these outcasts that Jesus threw in his lot, hanging out with them, even eating and drinking with them. This triggered opposition, it outraged the religious and political authorities. Because Jesus so freely hung out with the outcasts of his day, many wanted to see him put to death.

In today’s gospel, Jesus leans into the opposition. “I must go up to Jerusalem,” he tells the disciples. This is an imperative for him, and it is not trivial.

Jerusalem is where the temple is; in the time of Jesus, it is the very center of both religious and political authority for the Jews. It is the abuse of that very authority that Jesus has challenged in word and deed throughout his ministry. “Hypocrites,” he calls the religious leaders. “Whited sepulchers, you lay heavy burdens on peoples shoulders but will not move a finger to lift them.”

Jesus knows his words and actions have provoked opposition. He can do the math here. And in today’s gospel he knows that if he goes to Jerusalem, he will be tortured and killed. Heavy stuff. Nevertheless: “I must go to Jerusalem,” Jesus tells his disciples. This is, for him, an imperative.

A story. You may have heard this one about the beautiful village alongside a river. It was lovely and peaceful, with lovely homes and beautiful little parks and plazas. Great place to raise a family. And one day, something horrible began to happen. When they looked out over the river they saw human bodies floating down. Some of them were half alive and these they brought ashore and began nurturing them back to life. Others were already dead and these they gave a respectful burial. The next day, the same thing happened, more bodies. They began caring for those still alive, and buried those already dead. Next day and the day after, same thing.

This kept happening until one day, one of the townspeople said, “Maybe it’s not enough for us to care for these people as they are carried down the river. Maybe we also need to go to the top of the river to find out what’s killing all these people in the first place.”

I wonder if this is what Jesus is about in today’s gospel as he turns his face toward Jerusalem, the center of the very religious and political oppression that had been crushing the spirits of so many of his own people. “I must go up to Jerusalem,” he tells his disciples, I must go to the top of the river.

Unfortunately, he doesn’t stop there. When Peter takes him aside to argue with him--“Lord! This must never happen to you!”--Jesus tells him, “Get behind me, Satan!”

If some scholars are correct, what Jesus is saying to Peter in that moment is, “Peter, come and follow me, get behind me. Right now you’re following the way of the world, looking at this in the ordinary human way. But this is not the way of humans who are in touch with God.” 

What Peter needs is an alternate way of thinking and seeing. “Come,” Jesus says to Peter, “get behind me, follow me.” 

To make matters worse, Jesus adds that there will be consequences if he does this. Peter, like Jesus, will provoke opposition. He, like Jesus, just might end up carrying a cross. 

What would it mean for Jesus to give that same invitation to us in our own day, in our own context, an invitation to follow him to Jerusalem, and possibly to carry a cross?

What would it mean for us to follow him to Jerusalem in these days when we see bodies floating down the river, and mourn the deaths of young Black men, and witness the mass incarceration of people of color? What would it mean for us, in our own context, to go with him to Jerusalem? 

What would it mean for you as an individual in the context of your own life--your job, your relationships, and skills and pleasures and responsibilities. What would it mean for you to follow Jesus to Jerusalem?

What would it mean for us as a faith community to follow Jesus to Jerusalem?

I have an idea about the latter, for us as a community. It is of a piece with the Nightwalks many of us have done to reduce the gun violence here in the Mission. 

On the November ballot, the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act will appear. It’s called Prop 47. This initiative will make a big difference to many families here in the Mission, the Bayview, and other poor neighborhoods in the City. It was developed by our own District Attorney George Gascon. It has the support of many others in law enforcement and all the major faith leaders including our bishop are behind it. We at St. John’s could help it pass.

Prop 47 changes the lowest-level, nonviolent crimes, such as simple drug possession and petty theft, from felonies to misdemeanors. Since we won’t have to spend millions keeping all these people in prison, we’ll be able to redirect the savings to schools and crime prevention. I mentioned the moms in Oakland imprisoned for shoplifting diapers for their kids. This measure would return them to their kids and provide them with needed services to start over.

St. John’s can play a key role in passing this initiative, even though it might mean pushing the envelope a bit and moving slightly outside our comfort zones to do phone banking, voter registration, canvassing neighborhoods, meeting with various public officials to gain their support, talking about the initiative with our friends, financially supporting the effort. Even just a few volunteer hours can make a big difference. 

I'll offer more details as they become available. For now, I just wanted to alert you to this possibility. I’ll be including information about Prop 47 in the weekly parish email, and I hope we can have a forum or two to kick it around among ourselves. For now, faith leaders throughout California are inviting us to be part of this important work, and I throw it out as one possible way for us, in our own context, to accompany Jesus on the way to Jerusalem.

However we choose to respond, the invitation of Jesus remains--to follow him to Jerusalem, even though it might mean carrying a cross as it did for him. 

This morning, Jesus the teacher beckons us as he did Peter to get back into following him. He wants to remind us of the paradox at the very heart of our faith as his disciples: that through this journey that sometimes involves carrying a cross, we find the deeper life, the deeper joy that sustains us; we find resurrection.

St. Mary the Virgin, 2014, Mr. Timm Dobbins

He-Qi, the Annunciation

May my thoughts and words today be acceptable to God. Amen

An Episcopal priest died and was waiting in line at the Pearly Gates. Ahead of him is a tough looking fellow with tattoos, blue jeans, and a leather jacket. St. Peter says to the man, “Who are you, so I’ll know whether or not to let you into the Kingdom of Heaven?” The man says, “I’m Tom Hitchens, and I drove a cab in New York City.” St. Peter looks at his list, and says, “Take this silk robe and gold staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. NEXT!”

The priest steps up and sticks out his chest very proudly, and says, “I am the Reverend Andrew Simon Ellington, Rector of Christ Church, Albany for 42 years!” St. Peter again checks his list, and says, “Take this flour sack robe and hickory staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The priest says, “Hold on, that man was just a taxi driver, why did he get a silk robe and gold staff?”
St. Peter says, “When you preached, people fell asleep. When he drove, people prayed!”

I hope my words today will not have you sleeping.

I actually wrote three sermons for today. The first followed the lectionary for this Sunday, the 17th and although I thought it an acceptable sermon, it just didn’t move me when I read it aloud. I asked a Deacon, whose preaching I love, for some advice on what to say when one is asked to preach, and the lectionary just doesn’t speak to them, but they have a sermon they would like to preach. She said to always preach the sermon that’s in your heart, and find a way to make the lectionary fit! So I wrote a second sermon, which I loved very much and worked the lectionary in. BUT, last Sunday, I found out that we were not using the lectionary for the 17th had to write a third sermon for today. Let this be a lesson that if Fr. Richard asks you to give a homily, always check which readings will be used for the date before you say yes! Since you no longer have to feed the parking meters on Sundays, I contemplated delivering all three sermons, but I know you, and none of you have been bad enough to deserve that!

Raise your hand if you have ever been a teenager. Now keep your hand raised if you did everything your parents told you to do as a teenager without questioning why. That’s about what I expected.

Today we celebrate a very special teenage girl named Mirium, or as we know her, Mary. As she entered history, she was just a normal country girl in a backwater village, still living with her parents and biding her time to be married to an older man, a carpenter named Yusef. On just another average day, when she was probably at her chores, maybe sorting lentils for a dinner stew, or spinning some wool into cloth, or hanging up the family laundry, something absurd and shocking happened to her. As she looked up from her work in the house, she was startled by a stranger standing before her.

Don’t you imagine she was even more than startled? After all, young girls were never in the company of a man without being chaperoned. That was strictly forbidden in Jewish society!

The stranger shocks her with the salutation, “Greetings most favored one! The Lord is with you.” One minute she is doing her work, daydreaming about what her life will be like outside her parents house, and what it will be like as Yusef’s wife, and this apparition just pops in and says she is ‘most favored.’ Luke says she was ‘deeply troubled’ to hear this. I think I would be too! It might be like having your phone ring one evening as you’re watching TV, and a voice on the line says “Hello, you are VERY special, and God has a huge job for you that’s going to make you world famous!” I imagine most of us would hang up immediately. But Mary kept on listening to the message.

The angel Gabriel could plainly see that Mary was troubled, so he told her not to be afraid of this greeting. It is only the prelude to the message that she is soon going to be the most favored woman in
the world. That in fact, people for centuries afterwards will call her blessed among women. How on earth did she wrap her teenage mind around THIS news?

Then Gabriel tells Mary she’s going to have a son who will be great, and eventually be ‘King over Israel forever.’ How would you react if someone appeared in your house and gave you news like that on a Thursday afternoon? Don’t you suppose this information set of a chain of questions in Mary’s mind about who is this Gabriel, how he knows these things, and how on earth is she going to bear a son when she’s only just engaged to Yusef? And that last question would be the scariest to Mary, because a girl who got pregnant before marriage was libel to be put out of her family and community at best, or stoned to death at worst.

So it would be only logical that Mary had a whirlwind of thoughts and questions, with confusion, wonder and excitement crowding in as well. But somehow, for some reason, she had clarity and presence enough in her stunned condition to say to Gabriel, “Here I am. I am the Lord’s servant; as you have spoken let it be.” BAM, the biggest unquestioning and unequivocal YES to God in all Judeo-Christian history, and it comes from a teenaged girl!

I usually don’t trust people who say YES to God that readily. As Susan B. Anthony said, “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” I’ve seen too many televangelists bilk people out of their money, too many self-avowed Christians who are so full of hate that I can’t see where they have any room for God, too many people who have blessed lives but don’t want others to have the same blessings. Many people only say yes to God as a bargaining chip, hoping to get the best out of the deal. God, if you find me a job, if you heal my daughter, if you bring us rain, I promise I will....

But Mary wasn’t asking what she would get out of it from God. She was pure enough and simple enough to decide that if God was calling her to do this, then she would honor that call, and do as God wished. And deciding to do so as quickly as she did must indicate that her trust in God’s plan and providence was much greater than her fear of losing her reputation, family, and perhaps her life. It was a decision of ‘so be it’, given whole-heartedly. The decision to give in to God’s will is one that most of us wrestle with all our lives.

Along with you, I say every week that I want to follow God and do God’s will via The Lord’s Prayer, but the rest of the week, it’s a struggle between my will and God’s; whether or not to sleep in on a Saturday morning instead of volunteer at the pantry, to have a nice lunch with a friend on Thursday instead of standing in the windy cold outside the Federal Building with a “No More Wars” sign in my hand, to watch that movie from Netflix instead of walking around the Mission at night saying I want the gun violence to end.

Our minds are constantly bombarded with messages about what we need to buy to be happy, what we need to drive to be thought well of, what we need to eat to be satisfied or the ‘right shape.’ And we don’t often stop in the midst of all this noise to ask what it is God wants. It takes some quiet and prayer in the midst of all the distracting noise to discern what God wants us to do in the world, to be for the world. And if we sometimes think we’ve gotten a clear message, we are sure it must not be quite right because it requires some action of us that we’d rather not do.

The question of what we are to build with our lives as we answer the clear calls to justice, is addressed in a poem called “So?” by the late Cal Berkeley professor Leonard Nathan.

So you aren’t Tolstoy or Saint Francis
or even a well-known singer
of popular songs and will never read Greek
or speak French fluently,
will never see something no one else
has seen before through a lens
or with the naked eye.
You’ve been given just the one life
in this world that matters
and upon which every other life
somehow depends as long as you live,
and also given the costly gifts of hunger,
choice, and pain with which to raise
a modest shrine to meaning.

God’s message and request to Mary certainly required of her hunger, choice, and pain in plenty. Her entire life would become God’s living parable of surrender to, and acceptance of, a higher calling . Being the theotokos, the literal bearer of God’s eternal love would tax anyone to the depths of their soul, as Mary would find out towards the end of that job. And that a young, inexperienced girl could say YES to God shows us that all of us, deep down, are capable of doing the same. Thank you Blessed Mary for being that example for all us. Amen