Proverbs 8: 1 – 4, 22 – 31

Romans 5: 1 – 5

Wisdom Cries Out

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

Christ UMC, Rochester

May 22, 2016

I have found myself walking the dis-ease of feeling vulnerable these days.

My sense of vulnerability comes from the day by day awareness that we are so real, we human beings and we are so full of fear, we human beings, and we are so needful of reassurance that we matter and that we are safe and that we will be seen and known as sacred and worthy of love.

Don’t you sometimes feel the acute ache of that kind of vulnerability?

I think it is what is going on within us, and I think that kind of raw need for reassurance and respect is going on all around us.

Witness our national political spectacles playing out in both political parties.

Witness the last two weeks spent by the global United Methodist Church as they met together in Portland, Oregon for our every four years General Conference.

Brothers and sisters, the United Methodist Church came up to the brink of disintegration as a United church.

We came to that place of fracture because we human United Methodists are so real, so full of fear, so needful of reassurance that we matter and are safe and we are so needful of the reminder that we are sacred in our various ways of being and we are worthy of human and holy love.

I went to the first week of General Conference.  I went because I got a scholarship from the United Methodist Alliance for Transgender Inclusion.  I went as an advocate.  My father was transgender.  The shame of being “othered” by our culture led to a suicide attempt that weakened her heart.  My father died of massive heart break at the age of 69.  Too young.

And her story is not unique.

(I’d like to ask you to raise your hand if you have a friend or family member who is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.)

…So I went to Portland to see how our church is able to deal with the increasing call to fully welcome all people into ministry and community life.

It turns out the church is not ready to decide that.  With tensions rife in the air and perspectives so varied across our globe – African delegates have been taught by the missionaries who shared the good news of Jesus that homosexuality is an abomination – in the midst of protesting attenders, in the company of the 111 pastors from across the US who came out as gay and lesbian – a move that could cost them their credentials – in that midst the Body of Christ called United Methodists barreled up to a place where there seemed to be no solution other than dissolution.

And then the Rev. Adam Hamilton spoke from the floor.  He asked that the bishops leave the session and come back with a solution.  He asked the bishops to lead.

So the bishops left and met together.  They prayed and wrangled and you know that they were leaning into the assurances Paul gave to the church in Rome:  That God’s love would pour into their hearts and into the hearts gathered.

That through the power of Jesus Christ the power of wisdom – in the midst of community, at the crossroads of life – would speak to and through those bishops in order that we might be the people of Jesus Christ who live open doors and minds and hearts.

The bishops came back to the hopeful and fearful and they delivered the results of their deliberations.  They were not all of one mind.  But they spoke through their president – our bishop, Bruce Ough – words meant to forestall rupture.

What they asked is that all legislation pertaining to human sexuality be set aside for a time.  They asked for a group of disciples from all regions of the globe to come together to craft a way for us to move into our future without ripping out hearts.

And of course, hearts continue to be ripped.

This waiting… the psalmist and gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender children of God and those of us tired of the carnage of ambiguous welcome.  We together cry out:

“How long, O Lord?  How long must I bear pain in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all day long”  (Psalm 13: 1 – 2)

To paraphrase:

“When will the United Methodist Church claim our gay children and our transgender brothers and sisters as beloved and fine?”

In the midst of pain and in the very real possibility of fracture, the United Methodist Church is taking a long breath.

And so we pray:  May this be a time during which wisdom cries out and love sustains in the midst of suffering.

On Wednesday night this past week my sore heart was treated to a time of stunning wonder.

A woman who is transgender shared her story and her wisdom at the crossroads of our town – at the public library.  Ellie Krug spoke of how it is she came home to herself and claimed her need to be whole in the gender she believed God created her to live.

The room was packed.  She told her story of being football player and husband and father and the ongoing sense of not right in her being until she risked all that she loved in order to be fully alive.

I wrote her a note of thanks, and included in her response to me were these words:

“We only have so much time. Often, we forget about the power of words, the force of emotions. In our time, we are being barraged by messages based on fear and mistrust. I want my message—my remaining time—to be filled with hope for the human spirit and the value of compassion for others and self. It is the right thing to do.”

Friends, Jesus came that we might have life and have it abundantly.

We only have so much time.

In these days when our hearts are sore worn by fear and mistrust, may we still the toxic chatter of relational and institutional violence too often filling the airwaves of this world God calls us to love.

We are so real, so full of fear, so needful of reassurance that we matter and that we are safe and sacred.

Wisdom – Jesus Christ – calls out to us in the messy middle of our lives – in the places where we long for wisdom most.

May the courage and wisdom of those seeking wisdom on behalf of United Methodist Church enable this mighty movement to fully welcome all in order that all might:

“…Find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God’s grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.”  (Romans 5 The Message)

Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Straight, Brown, White, Man, Woman, African and American.  May we actively seek the kind of wisdom and heart that sings God’s praise.

Out of closets and into the hope-hungry world the people of Jesus Christ will sing.

Amen

While fiddling to forestall work (this happens sometimes) I ran across a Facebook post that jangled my heart.

It had to do with the death of a woman who took my family in and loved us deeply and well.

When we moved to Duluth, MN, we were a family of soon-to-be five.  We were young and living the exhausting adventure that is making home for three young lives whilst creating our own.  Luckily, we landed in a small church that took us in and grounded us deeply.

Woodland United Methodist church was the kind of church you want your children to grow up in.  It was peopled with grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles who knew what it is to slog and glory through life with young children.  They knew the stretch of that work and they knew too how priceless it is to offer tenderness to young children and parents.

Our children grew up on laps.

One of the best belonged to Mickey Olson.  Mickey was a singer in the choir and a lover of my babies.  Her face would light up and her laugh would ring out and Halloween wasn’t Halloween unless we stopped by Mickey’s house for a hug and some of the delight she showered on those she loved.

She coupled her radiant grace with a deep faith and an unwillingness to suffer fools.

On this day her church, family and community are gathering to sing their thanks for her life.

I am singing from far away.

I am singing gratitude and appreciation for the power of love shared and gratefully taken in.

Travelling Mercies, Mickey.

Thank you.

Holy Week is resonant.

Singing through the days are the melodies of love.

What wondrous love IS this that hope and love and beauty and truth are so freely given by our Creator? And what have we done; what do we do to that hope and love and beauty and truth?

Through the power of Holy Week we name the realities of betrayal and fear.

And, we sing and seek to live the triumph of love.

Always this week has moved me. When I was growing up as a pastor’s kid I was aware of deep emotional soundings in my home and in the church community around me. Maundy Thursday meant communion and the heartbreak of love. It seemed like Good Friday was always a gloomy day and the hours between noon and three stretched out my soul.

And then the great joy of Easter dawned. New dresses and gloves and hats and purses (oh, the joy of patent leather!) and air sparkling with celebration and the hunt for sweetness before church and the singing and the mighty organ and the heart-opening wonder of shouting “Hallelujah!” with winter-sombered church family.

All these things sound in the air decades later. They are the story of my faith and my being, these vibrations.

I pray that you too experience this week a deep soul resonance.

Thursday night we gather at table as family to hear the story of the ways God led the Hebrew people to freedom.

God leads us to freedom yet.

We will adjourn to the sanctuary to hear how it is Jesus knelt at the feet of his soon-to-betray-him friends. He knelt before them and took their tired selves into his hands and he washed them with grace.

God washes us with grace yet.

Friday noon and night we will hear the story of how it is Jesus was swept into the fury of fear and it left him hung on a cross to die.

Fear fury mangles yet.

And Easter? Oh my friends, Easter is the best reminder that no stone no conviction no barrier can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus and

God calls us to resurrection yet.

Feel this week.

Come to church.

Prepare for resurrection.

On Sunday April 12th I will preach at my growing-up church.

I will preach in a space that echoes yet the voice of my father who was preacher, prophet and shepherd in that place.

Present in worship will be my siblings and my mother and the gift of my children.

Also present in worship will be people whose hearts sound in my ministry yet:  Sunday school teachers and singers and huggers and life long companions in faith.

I am a-tremble.

Robbinsdale UCC is celebrating 125 years of ministry.  They are inviting some of their far-flungs back to preach.  Certainly I am such a one.

I feel so many things.  I feel such gratitude to the Body of Christ at Robbinsdale UCC. They taught me the messy love of Christian community.  I feel the loss of my father and the spectacular ways he preached and stumbled and lived and loved.  I feel tenderness toward my mother who was help-meet for my father and template for grace for so many.  I feel wonder at the ways I get to live family with my siblings;  we know things without needing words to name them.

Certainly the power of resurrection is real.

On April 12th, I’m trusting the Holy to speak resurrection through a very human gratitude-wracked woman.

It will be good to be in my father’s house.

Exodus 1: 8 – 2:10
Dread and Water
Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay
Christ UMC
August 24, 2014

I enjoyed a great week of vacation.

My husband Cooper and I camped for two nights and then spent days on end in the company of my children at our cabin. And, we celebrated my birthday, which, according to Cooper is not birth day but a birth month.

Throughout my time away I felt such gratitude for so much.

And I felt such deep pain because a town in Missouri – Ferguson by name – was calling to us as a nation to drop the blinders we have put on. Blinders worn by those of us who walk this earth in skin the color of cauliflower.

I’m talking about racism.

I have ached these past weeks- haven’t you – as those who wanted to cry out against oppression were shot at and muffled and demonized and oh, let us hear this Exodus scripture story of our faith with Ferguson in our hearts.

The Exodus text and our lives must talk to each other.

Because we are sprung, we Jesus followers, our very Genesis as a people of God, is sprung from the same kind of reality and outrage voiced in Ferguson.

Before I read the text it is important to know that our faith ancestors, the Hebrew People, were the victims of incredible oppression. They were powerless. They were slaves in Egypt and they were considered less than human and their value lay in their ability to make Pharaoh and the others in power rich.

The Egyptians used the Hebrew people as slaves. And as the slaves continued to have families, the Egyptians came to dread the slaves.

Those the Egyptians oppressed they also feared. So they sought to contain the Hebrew people through genocide.

Those tasked with helping bring healthy children through a safe birth were told to murder boy children.

But they would not collude with power. The Hebrew midwives would not go along.

So the child who would come to be called Moses was born.

And his mother knew that his racial and ethnic identity made the world unsafe for him.

Can you hear the echoes?

The mother of a precious son had to send him off in a boat on the river and pray that he would be found and be safe in a world made dangerous by dread.

(Read Exodus 1: 8 – 2:10)

Can you imagine a world in which your children’s safety is threatened because of the color of their skin?

Can you imagine knowing that the very existence of your child is somehow a threat to those in power – that your child provokes dread – and so you savor the time you have with him and then, when you can no longer risk having him in your home, you create a boat and give him over to the river?

Praying that someone might find him and shelter him? The Mother of Moses knew that wrench.

And, mothers and fathers in the United States of America know that fear. People of color who love their children know that they are less safe than children whose skin is white.

This is statistically so. I don’t want to believe it is so. I suspect you do not want to believe it is so.

But my brothers and sisters – we who are faith descendants of the oppressed Hebrew People – we must be willing to name the fact that Ferguson has compelled us to once again see.

Racism is real and it is deadly. For Egyptians and Hebrews. For whites and people of other colors. For those in Missouri and those in Rochester.

Racism is real.

A must-read book for us all is a book called “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander. Really. Read the book. If you want to talk about it, let’s get a group together to do that.

Alexander looks at how it is mass incarceration of people of color is today’s iteration of Pharaoh’s abuse of power.

I share some statistics not to slam police officers who are working heroically on our behalf. Their jobs are so difficult and our compassion for them ought be strong. I share some statistics because they are real and must be shared:

According to a Council on Crime and Justice Institute on Race and Poverty report in
September 24, 2003:

In Minneapolis, Blacks were stopped 152% more often than expected and once stopped, subjected to discretionary searches 52% more often than expected. 11% of searches of Blacks produced contraband compared to 13% of searches of Whites.

If Minneapolis officers had stopped Blacks at the same rate as other drivers approximately 12,804 fewer Blacks would have been stopped in Minneapolis in 2002. If Blacks stopped in Minneapolis had been subjected to discretionary searches at the same rate as all stopped drivers, 1,053 fewer Blacks would have been searched.

African American people of color are profiled and they are incarcerated at a rate nearly six times that of whites. (The New Jim Crow)

The incidence of drug usage is much higher among people who are of European American descent, but a survey conducted in 1995 asking the following question:

“Would you close your eyes for a second, envision a drug user, and describe that person to me?” The startling results were published in the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education. 95% of respondents pictured a black drug user, while only 5 percent imagined other racial groups.

These results contrast sharply with the reality of drug crime in America. African Americans constituted only 15% of current drug users in 1995 (the date of the survey), and they constitute roughly the same percentage today (in 2010 when the book was written). Whites constituted the vast majority of drug users then (and now), but almost no one pictured a white person when asked to imagine what a drug user looks like.” (The New Jim Crow, pg. 106)

What does this kind of racism look and feel like in the human hearts affected?

I ran across a piece written by a pastor, an man of Asian ancestry, who lives in Seattle. He shared conversation with a man about racism. He shared this story:

“Pastor Eugene, (he said), you speak of injustice and prejudice. Thank you for sharing your story. I wanted to also share my story with you. In fact I feel my “otherness” every single day. Every single day.

You see, I get on the Seattle Metro bus early on its transit up North as it makes its way South to downtown Seattle where I work. As you can assume, the bus gets eventually crowded. In fact, it gets packed. But when I get on the bus, I am always among the first ten passengers and each of us can choose where to sit. And yes, we all choose to sit… alone. But as the bus makes its way from stop to stop. I being to notice something. People are eager to find seats and every single day, every seat is taken…but nearly every single day,,, one seat remains… the last seat taken.

Can you guess what seat that is?

Yes, it is the seat next to me. It is the last seat taken. Nearly every single day.

Do you know why?

Do you know why?

Because I am a dark-skinned Black Man… and people believe I am dangerous.

This is how I begin my day.

Nearly every day.

This is my story.

(https://eugenecho.com/2013/remembering-trayvon-martin-the-singular-story-of-the-suspicious-black-man)

Dread kills.

And rivers save.

By rivers I mean the power of the the river that carried Moses and the power of the river that Jesus waded into for baptism and by river I mean the water that marked you and me as disciples of Jesus Christ and WE ARE WITNESSES to the insistence God places upon our hearts and lives that the legacy of our being as followers of Jesus is that we must hear the pain of our brothers and sisters and know it as our own.

It is our own.

So the pain of racism? As the descendants of the Hebrew people we will name it and begin to acknowledge its soul and life-killing power in order for us to create a world in which mothers and fathers don’t have to live in terror that Pharaoh’s dread will kill their babies.

We can do this work. God is with us in this work. We must be the midwives and the descendants of Moses.

And here is what that work looks like.

There was an article in the Rochester Post Bulletin about Katherine Switzer who is in town for the three-day Mayo Clinic Heathy Human Race Weekend.

Katherine Switzer was a runner before women were supposed to be doing such things. Marathon running was not open to women. She determined that she wanted to run the Boston Marathon. She just wanted to run. So she entered the race.

Two miles into the race she was attacked by a race official who was so incensed that she didn’t know her place in life. He tried to pull her off the course.

Switzer became very frightened and even more determined as she sought to get away from him.

What happened? Male runners moved in to form a protective curtain around Switzer, until the protesting trainer was finally wedged out of the way.

She finished the marathon. She made history. (Rochester Post Bulletin 8/23/14)

Because those who had privilege – the male runners – saw the injustice and worked together to create safety the world was forevermore changed.

And so it is for us each and all. We have so much privilege. Will we allow ourselves to hear the cry of the oppressed and will we know that the legacy of our faith compels us to know it as our own?

It’s our work, brothers and sisters in Christ.

It’s our work.

Amen