By Rev. Robin Bartlett
Preached on June 19, 2016 at First Church in Sterling, MA Scripture: Psalm 42 Listen to the sermon here. "Good Bones" (edited for language) by Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real (dump), chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. Just like in a dump someone’s trying to sell you, it’s been hard even to see the “good bones” in the world this week. This place could be beautiful, right? We could make this place beautiful. Please won’t you pray with me. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts together find their way into the heart of God. Amen. The psalmist says: my tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, where is your God? Some of us can probably relate to the psalmist’s words this morning. I’m going to be honest: I am tired of preaching this sermon, so I’ve dreaded it all week. I’m sick of the prescribed mass shooting script. You know your lines. I know mine. They vary only slightly depending on which side of the aisle or the pulpit you and I are on. They vary only slightly based on who or what we’ve chosen to blame this time. The opportunities to preach this sermon are far too frequent, and it doesn’t look like they will let up. Our Gospel text this morning is about Christ healing demons. Christ, heal us. We are all possessed. Human evil is real. We get it. Enough already. If prayers were all we needed, we would have stopped these massacres by now, so show us what to do next. Some of us are brave enough or despairing enough to ask God as the psalmist asks, “Why have you forgotten us? Why must we walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses us?” “Where is our God?” Our psalm today is a psalm of lamentation—a cry to God; a rant, if you will. Our psalmist’s lament is made more painful as he remembers a time of joyful and celebratory faith in the Lord. This remembrance seems almost punishing in the midst of his depression and fear. These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. The 300 or so people at last call at Pulse in Orlando on Sunday morning were a multitude keeping festival. My colleague, Rev. Richard Jones, pastor of First Parish in Bolton preached last Sunday: “For those of us who are of a certain age in the LGBTQ community, gay bars were not just places to drink and dance. They were sanctuaries. They were places of refuge. They were one of the few places men and women like me could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully ourselves.” In other words, a house of God. I can’t stop thinking of the young, mostly Latino, mostly GLBTQ people of God in the Pulse dance club in Orlando on pride weekend that made it out alive on Sunday morning. I think of their young innocence shattered; their lives forever changed. I think of them remembering what it was like to dance, free from fear in the one place where they could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves. These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Beloved, this morning is supposed to be a festival for us, too. This is the Sunday we set aside each year to be grateful for our church and its volunteers. …and this is the second Celebration Sunday--the second year in a row--in which our week would be violently interrupted by a mass shooting—this time the deadliest in recent American history by a single gunman. This is the second Celebration Sunday in a row in which I have needed to respond to a mass shooting that was both terrorism and a hate crime. This Sunday last year, on father’s day, I got up into this pulpit after a gunman came into a Black Church in Charleston—Mother Emmanuel-- and shattered the sacred space of people at prayer with bullets and a body count leaving a trail of racist writings. A house of God desecrated. The one place where folks could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves. And this week, a gunman who had beaten his wife, had been angered by seeing two men kissing, who had been described by employers as “unhinged,” and had been on the FBI list of suspected terrorists, legally bought one of those killing spree guns. And he killed 49 people in another sacred space—a gay club in Orlando on Latin night. Then he called 911 to take responsibility on behalf of Isis. The one place where folks could go and feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves shattered by bullets and blood. Another house of God desecrated. There has been a mass shooting every 60 days now since 2012. Sales of the weapon used in this latest shooting in Orlando sky rocketed since Sunday for “fear they will be taken away.” Political rhetoric has gotten increasingly hateful, even at rallies for mainstream candidates for president. It doesn’t seem like Love is winning right now. It seems like fear is. And so we ask with the psalmist, where is our God? Certainly not in the distortions of holy texts used by religious extremists and terrorists. Certainly not coming out of the mouths of those who would bludgeon others with our Bible. Certainly not in the automatic assault rifles that we have made into an idol. For those of you who don’t like it much when I “get political” in my sermons, I want you to know that what happened in Orlando isn’t a political “issue” for me, it’s a personal one. Many of our family’s closest friends and family are gay. I have danced the night away in many a gay club with the people I love. My husband proposed to me in our favorite gay club in Boston on showtunes night. Our friends—gay and straight together-- sang the song you heard this morning (Seasons of Love, from the musical Rent) before he got down on one knee. My oldest daughter’s god parents are both gay. Her father’s cousin who she calls Tio is gay and he is Latino-- just like she is; like most of the people who died at the Pulse night club in Orlando were. My daughter’s god father and his husband just adopted a baby girl in May. My daughter sobbed on Sunday in fear for their lives; for their daughter’s life. I am so tired of trying to explain to my kids why we are handing them a world that is not worthy of their promise. A world where we can’t protect them and the people they love; not even in their schools. For those of you who don’t like it much when I “get political” in my sermons, I want you to know that what happened in Orlando isn’t a political “issue” for me. It’s a personal one. It is personal because I’m a Pastor. And my God calls me to wasteful love and extravagant welcome into Christ’s church. This week, a lesbian couple who had visited our church wrote to me to thank us for welcoming them so fully. She told me this story: She and her wife and daughter had attended another church in our area for a whole year. They loved what they heard and saw. Pious and committed Christians, they loved the church and were looking forward to serving it. When they were ready to join, they met with the pastor. They told him the beautiful love story of who they are, and the child they had just had. And the pastor told them that he believed marriage was between one man and one woman. He said they would probably “fit better” somewhere else. He told them they could keep coming if they really wanted, but handed them a list of places to go instead. “That was the only time I have ever felt personally discriminated against in my whole life,” this woman said to me. “Find God somewhere else,” the pastor said. No wonder dance clubs have become sanctuaries of welcome and safety for the gay community. Our churches have failed to be. There are victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre whose families refused to claim their bodies upon realizing that their children were gay. There were undocumented survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting who upon being questioned by police were marked for deportation. No wonder dance clubs have become sanctuaries of welcome and safety for this community. Our homes and our country have failed to be. Meanwhile, our psalmist cries: As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” My dear friend the Reverend Tim Burger, priest at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Worcester, father, husband, member of God’s rainbow people, spoke this truth at the Worcester Interfaith Vigil for Orlando: “To those who say, where was God? God was there--- in the pulse of the Latin beats, in the sweat, (the lust), the love, the blood... and God will not do what God has given us to do... which is to put our bodies and our votes and our love and our passions where we say they are... in solidarity with those who are suffering. And so to the beautiful, fabulous, fierce queer people gathered here- hear this now: you are so loved. And your love comes from God and is of God and you are blessed. And my prayer is that you know this, and feel this as deeply as the thump and bass inside you- when you decide to dance again. Until then, hold each other close, for God is also holding you. And do not lose hope.” Or as the psalmist says: “Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.” Beloved, you and I can make this a place where people can bring all of who they are, free from fear. A place of hope, where God turns no one away. Let’s end our silent vigil. Let’s live instead in loud defiance of hate, in solidarity with those who are suffering. We can bravely provide a place of sanctuary where all can feel welcome, safe, and entirely, joyfully themselves if we are loud. We can go outside of these four walls and make that sanctuary everywhere we go. Be the church. Be Christ in the world. Get loud. I saw a picture of a church sign yesterday at a United Church of Christ church that said, “Live so fully that Westboro Baptist Church will picket at your funeral.” YES. Beloved, the world is at least 50% terrible, but let’s try to sell it anyway. Like a realtor, chirp on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful. God is love and Love is love is love is love is love is love is love. Amen.
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Preached on June 5, 2016
at First Church in Sterling, MA by Rev. Robin Bartlett Listen to the sermon here. SINNERS, REPENT!! That is how I began my very first sermon at my ministerial internship at First Parish in Brookline, Unitarian Universalist. That’s a really liberal church in a rather wealthy culturally Jewish town, and I’m quite sure they have never heard a sermon that starts with those two words, or at least not in the last 100 years. So do you know what the congregation did when I said that? They laughed audibly and loudly. Some nervously, some uproariously. “She can’t be serious,” they thought. Or, “I hope she’s not serious,” they thought. “At least she’s only an intern.” I said those words to be provocative, certainly. In truth, I was hoping for a laugh. I was, after all, mocking a certain prototype of a hellfire and damnation preacher. But later I thought, “how arrogant” that I so frequently mock, and laugh at, or gloss over the concept of sin. Or that particular way of being Christian. How quick we are to dismiss, without examining the plank in our own eye. As the letter from 1st John said this morning: if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. If there is one thing I want to get out of going to church and practicing Christianity, it is this constant reminder: I AM NOT BETTER. I am not better than anyone else, or my ancestors. I’m not better than any other preacher, or any other parent, or any other driver on the road. (Except for that guy who rear-ended me and gave me the finger on the rotary in Concord last month. I’m better than that guy. Just kidding) And church, we are not better. We are not more enlightened than the church next door, or than our ancestors, or than people who don’t go to church on Sundays. We are not more virtuous because we are Christians. You are not better than me, and I am not better than you. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. I have now hosted two pub theologies at Barber’s Crossing about sin. If you haven’t come to pub theology yet, you should. It’s super fun. I advertised this one as “come and sin while we talk about sin!” It was Lent, so the topic was a thematic choice on my part. I found something peculiar: that many of the people of all ages who attended these two events wanted to tell me that they were offended by the topic I chose. Some of them came just to tell me so. “The concept of sin is only for Catholics. It’s not a Protestant word,” some said. “When I think about ‘sin’ I think about doing whatever I want as long as I confess to a priest so I associate sin with hypocrisy.” “I don’t relate to that word at all.” “That’s a church word…it’s not a word I would ever use in my every day life.” “That word has been used to tell me I’m bad or that other people are bad, so I resent it.” “That word has caused more hurt in the world than any other.” “My table didn’t talk about sin at all, because we don’t like it.” I was fascinated by this—this rejection of sin in our church. Don’t get me wrong, I grew up UU, so I am quite familiar with people who reject sin wholesale. When I went before a Unitarian Universalist credentialing board to become ordained as a minister, I made reference to my being a sinner. One of the people on that board who would decide my fate was so “offended” by my theology of sin that she almost didn’t let me become a minister. She said, and I quote, that my “belief that I was a sinner would diminish my ministerial authority.” In fact, that’s why I ended up serving here at this UU-ish UCC Christian church out in the wilds of Central Massachusetts. I wanted to be in a place where people “got” me, even if there isn’t a grocery store or a Nordstrom. This is why I was a little shocked to see that such a wide swath of my professed unabashedly Christian congregation rejected the idea of sin outright as well. So I thought we should talk about it. Sin means, in it’s most useful definition, separation from God. The concept or problem of sin is present in every world religion and secular system of ethics in every culture. It is not relegated to Catholics and Evangelicals. It’s not even relegated only to Christianity, but it is of central importance to the Christian tradition. The “problem” Christianity tries to solve is sin, with the salvation of Jesus Christ. Whether or not we think sin should be so central to the Gospel, we cannot fully engage this tradition we share if we aren’t willing to talk about it, at the very least. We need to do so in a way that is healing, and reclaiming. I know that the Christian church has used the concept of sin to shame, to deny full communion to the GLBTQ community, to justify slavery, to oppress women, to demonize healthy human sexuality, to create second class citizens, to hurt, to shut out, to exclude, to kill. I know that. I don’t like that, either. But there is another purpose to the concept of sin besides social control and alienation. Sin connects us to one another in shared humanity. It reminds us of our imperfection. Declaring that I am a sinner is simple humility. It is my way of saying, “I am not God. I am only human and doing the best that I can.” Sin is my freedom from being perfect. It is how I remember not to judge others, because I have my own business to attend to. More importantly, it is my reminder that God loves me even at my most unlovable, and God loves everyone else just as much. Even the dude who rear-ended me at the Concord rotary and gave me the finger. Have you all been watching the news about the Cincinnati Zoo? It is the story that is being talked about around the water cooler at workplaces and the internet comment sections of America right now. My 10-year-old even had an organized debate about it in her classroom at the Houghton School. [They are teaching fourth graders to learn how to debate with people they don’t agree with and remain civil. I love that. We need that, don’t we? Our fourth graders need to be taught they are not better, too.] Anyway, for those of you who have been living under a rock, what happened is that a four- year-old boy somehow ended up in the gorilla exhibit at the Cincinatti Zoo. He got away from his parents, and ended up in the custody of an endangered and beloved animal—the zoo’s gorilla, Harambe, who carried the toddler through the water moat in his enclosure rather violently, terrifying the gathered crowd. The zookeepers had to make the heart-breaking decision to shoot Harambe dead in order to save the four-year-old boy from this 400 pound primate. Animal rights activists blew up the internet with #justiceforHarambe, and protested outside the zoo. Parents and animal lovers started debating about whether human children’s lives are more important than gorilla’s lives. The public started playing everybody’s favorite: the Blame game. Everybody started looking for someone to blame—the zoo for not securing their gorilla exhibit, the zookeepers for shooting an animal they were charged with protecting, the human species for putting animals in captivity for their education and entertainment to begin with, the four-year-old for not respecting rules, kids these days. Multiple sermons could be preached on the ethical dimensions of this story. But what shocked me the most was the immediate and vicious attacks on the parents of the four-year-old child, especially by other parents. My kid came home from school saying that her entire class blamed the four-year-old’s parents’ for what happened to Harambe. Apparently, the mom took out a phone to take a picture, and her four-year-old disappeared and ended up in the gorilla habitat. This one act brought out a stunning lack of humility and grace from others. I read countless facebook comments from parents saying that they “have never” let their children out of their sight, and their kid would “never” end up in a similar fate. Internet comment sections were full of people saying that the parents who lost their child at the zoo should be imprisoned and sterilized, their kids taken away. One satirical headline announced: “Rescue Mission Launched As Thousands of Internet Commenters are Stranded on Moral High Ground” Those of us who are not stranded on moral high ground know this truth: Most of us are just trying to get through the day, very aware of the fact that we are lucky our kids weren't eaten by a gorilla yet. There but for the grace of God go all of us. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. The truth is not in us. The truth is this instead: we are inextricably connected to one another and to creation, and we are just as capable of getting it wrong as we are of getting it right. I am you and you are me and we are one. Our capacity for sin reminds us of this fact, just as our capacity for love does. My colleague Rev. Diane Dowgiert writes: I am the adventurous child that feels safe enough in the world to climb over a fence and into the world of a caged gorilla at the zoo. I am the gorilla that reacts with instincts that are at once tender and frightened. I am the zookeeper that must respond quickly, with their best judgment, to the unfolding drama, in a way that serves the highest good. I am the sharp shooter that pulls the trigger and releases the bullet that ends the gorilla’s life. I am the parent of the adventurous child that clutches their racing heart and holds their churning stomach. I am the bystander in the crowd that screams in fright and dismay, unable to look away. I am the adventurous child that looks into the eyes of the gorilla and then feels their self being lifted, tossed, and dragged – their flesh being scraped and torn. I am the gorilla that feels the flashing pain of a piercing bullet and feels the life force drain out of their body. I am the parent of the child that watches, helplessly. I am the zookeeper that must live with the consequences of their decision, being forever more questioned, and even reviled for their gut-wrenching choice. I am the child whose life is now marked by a terror no one else will ever understand. I am the parent whose life is now marked by a terror and a guilt no one else will ever understand, a parent whose life is now marked by public scorn. I am the bystander that now must make sense of what I have witnessed. I am the member of the public at large that now must wrestle with moral and ethical issues I had not considered before, issues of valuing one life over another, issues of freedom and individual agency, issues of responsibility for and protection of those entrusted to our care. I am the person whose heart is broken open by a tragedy beyond anyone’s wildest imagination. I am the person that rushes to judgment and finds some comfort in assigning blame. I am the person that must live in this world where there are no easy answers, where people just like me are called to respond to circumstances that I have only visited in my worst nightmares. I am the person that finds within myself a capacity for compassion and an embrace for ambiguity that stretches me into the fullness of what it means to be human. Beloved, this is why we come to church. Not to claim moral high ground, but to be stretched into the fullness of what it means to be human. We come here so that we might learn to stop playing the blame game. We come to church in an attempt to manage ambiguity, not to find easy answers. Acknowledging our capacity for sinfulness is a defiant proclamation that we are not better than anyone else. We are only human, doing the best that we can. We are not better. Creating earth as it is in heaven depends on our humility as much as our love. Amen. |
AuthorRev. Robin Bartlett is the Senior Pastor at the First Church in Sterling, Massachusetts. www.fcsterling.org Archives
February 2021
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